The purpose of the study was to identify factors that affect students' persistence in completion of the GED. Exploration of characteristics of participants that do/do not persist and obtain their GED assists the high school dropout, potential GED recipient, GED program staff, and society as a whole. More information was needed in order to…

Today's society is global, multicultural, multilingual, and digitally connected. Learning no longer occurs just in the classroom, delivered by teachers. At the same time, research has repeatedly shown that no single strategy or approach will turn around low-performing schools and reengage students. As a result, districts and schools are reaching…

Although there are many reasons why students dropout of college courses, those reasons may be unique for students who are enrolled in an online program. Issues of isolation, disconnectedness, and technological problems may be factors that influence a student to leave a course. To understand these factors, an online survey was developed to collect…

This study examined transitional experiences of first-year college students who were homeschooled in high school. It sought to determine if experiences of such students corresponded with Tinto's (1988, 1993) theory of student departure. The qualitative study found that there was little distinction between the transitional experiences of…

The purpose of this paper is to examine a single study participant and overall graduation rates as they relate to both the general education and special education population. As more federal requirements are defined, especially the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, along with individual state requirements, the overall graduation rate of both of…

Each year, more than 8,200 young Philadelphians drop out of school. The first step to a solution, taken in 2005, was the gathering and examination of data to truly understand the dimensions of the problem and the characteristics of struggling students and out-of-school Philadelphia youth. These studies, conducted by researchers at the University…

This paper investigates reasons Indigenous Australian medical students gave for leaving their courses prior to graduation. Indigenous students who had withdrawn or deferred from their medical courses were asked about the barriers and disincentives that had dissuaded them from graduating. Although the response rate to the questionnaire was very…

There is a widespread belief that youth drop out of youth development programs during the middle school years. Alternative explanations for the smaller number of adolescent program participants have yet to be explored. We examine age trends in program enrollment using data from over 221,000 youth enrolled in the California 4-H Youth Development…

This article presents reflections on the high dropout rate at distance education universities in general and at the FernUniversitat in particular. The introduction outlines four reasons why the dropout rate should not be as high as it is. The first chapter--on general aspects--addresses problems of definition of dropout, the astounding differences…

This document provides a brief overview of the ongoing dropout studies cited in the press and around the Austin Independent School District (AISD) in Austin, Texas. It includes a list of key observations which notes that the dropout rate among adolescents is too high; that approximately 20% of 16- to 24-year-olds in Texas do not have a high school…

To examine why school leavers have difficulty completing high school and to study their long- and short-term career decisions, 250 school leavers or potential school leavers, aged 18-21, were surveyed. Based on 172 returns (69 percent), respondents were classified in three subgroups: (1) those who left high school, tried an alternative program but…

In addition to studying the prevalence of drug abuse among transient youth this study attempted to relate certain drug-use patterns to the student drop-out rates by trying to determine why students leave school and when. (Author)

Results include: (1) the most able, most autonomous group included those who withdrew; (2) the most authoritarian, those who became seniors; (3) the most nonconforming, those who "continued" without becoming seniors, and (4) the highest ability to think abstractly, scientifically and to solve problems, the academic dismissals who gained…

Growing concern over the high percentage of students leaving the Oregon public schools before graduation led to this study, which attempted to determine the activities and plans of early leavers and their reasons for leaving school. Telephone interviews were conducted with leavers in September 1980 in five geographic regions of the state.…