Participating school districts conforming to the standardized dropout reporting system of a pilot project of the National Center for Education Statistics indicate that revising collection and reporting can be difficult but may yield more accurate results. Recognizing long-term payoffs, administrators nevertheless dislike the time and expense of…

Urban secondary school students (n=1,064) were administered the Dean Alienation Scale to determine differences in feelings of alienation among African Americans, Caucasians, and Latinos, as well as sex and age differences. Higher levels of alienation reported by African Americans and Latinos and by males in all ethnic groups are discussed as a…

Because of a 50% drop-out rate of first-year to second-year students at Mountain Empire Community College, retention was identified as a priority. Students and faculty were surveyed to determine causes of student withdrawals, a summer retreat was held, and a retention task force was created to develop a comprehensive retention plan for the fall of…

Describes the creation of the cooperation, investigation, literacy, and community (CILC) model within a holistic educational project in Acre, a Jewish-Arab mixed city in northern Israel, focusing on the implementation of cooperative learning at the schools and the work of the dropout investigative task force which was created to build community in…

Ethnographic research was carried out in 1997-98 to identify factors that determined school attendance among Nepali women in the Kathmandu Valley a generation ago. Findings indicate that gender, caste, poverty, cultural prejudice, and rural residence prevented a majority from going to school. Of those who went, most, regardless of academic talent,…

This paper reports the results of a survey conducted to examine the root causes leading to student dropout at a Greek distance education university. Data was gathered from two different courses--an undergraduate course leading to a Bachelors degree in Informatics (characterized by high dropout rates), and a postgraduate course leading to a Masters…

In spring 1995, Illinois' Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC) conducted a two-part survey of a random sample of 800 new students to determine their activities, satisfaction with college services, problems at the college, and sources of help. In addition, variables associated with the student retention and attrition through 1995-96 were…

Educational policy trends have contributed to rising rates of student grade retention over the past two decades. This research bulletin looks at the evidence about whether and how grade retention may influence the chances that a student would drop out of school. In 1992, evidence indicates that about 20% of 14-year-olds may have experienced a…

A two-phase study was conducted to gather data on the persistence of adult women enrolled in a 1-semester re-entry program at a community college. Specifically, the study sought to develop a model of persistence that took into account the effect of student characteristics, initial goals, academic and social integration, goal changes, and external…

People worry about dropouts because they believe that leaving high school before graduation is detrimental, both to the individual and to society. This view does not include students' view of the situation, and in order to clarify students' perceptions of at-risk factors, qualitative data on high school seniors were collected. The central question…

This study analyzes NELS:88 data from a dropout sample of students who were enrolled in the eighth grade in 1988 but who were not enrolled in school in 1990. The data for this analysis were collected in Spring 1990 to examine reasons for dropping out and plans for dropouts to resume their education. In both areas, differences were found on…

This report presents the outcomes from two international 1991 conferences, one held in Washington, D.C., and the other in Scotland, which addressed developing a framework for cooperative research in the area of measuring quality in postsecondary education. The first meeting established the foundations for collaborative research and the second…

This study evaluated the validity of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in predicting overall performance and persistence in college of students with disabilities, especially those participating in special test administrations. An earlier validity study by H. Braun, M. Ragosta, and B. Kaplan (1986) had used grade point average (GPA) in college to…

This report contains the school-year and annual dropout counts for the Austin (Texas) Independent School District (AISD) for 1990-91 and trends and comparison data from the previous 8 years. Also reported are the current status of entering ninth graders from 1983-84 through 1990-91 and the current status of entering seventh graders from 1984-85…

A study was conducted of African American students at Contra Costa College (CCC), in California, enrolled through the Extended Opportunity Program and Services component, to examine differences between academic persisters and non-persisters. A questionnaire was used to gather information about students' pre-matriculation characteristics and…