Background: College attendance has become a crucial determinant of life chances in U.S. society. Besides college costs and academic preparation, college-related cultural and social capital may help explain socioeconomic differences in whether and where students attend college. While high school counselors are seen as potential agents of social…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often struggle with features of adult life, including obtaining and maintaining gainful employment. Many factors seem to contribute to this issue, such as: (a) access to financial resources, (b) interaction between the unique characteristics of ASD and employment settings, and (c) curriculum and…

Programs of study are the most recent in a series of federal efforts to create a more transparent and rational system for school-to-work transition for all youth. The current article places this construct in the context of today's labor market and the new focus on college and career readiness for all students. It then provides evidence indicating…

Background: Annually, American colleges and universities provide developmental education (DE) to millions of underprepared students; however, evaluation estimates of DE benefits have been mixed. Objectives: Using a prototypic exemplar of DE, our primary objective was to investigate the utility of a replicative evaluative framework for assessing…

In his first inaugural speech, President Obama declared that "our schools fail too many" and an essential component of laying "a new foundation for growth" will be "to transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age." Concerns about our nation's position in the global education race have led to a focus on…

Prevailing policy and practice in the field of transition emphasizes the importance of designing services and supports based on research-based practices. We reviewed every article published across the 35-year history of "Career Development and Transition for Exceptional Individuals" (CDTEI) to document methodological trends in research…

This policy brief presents results from a random assignment evaluation of the City University of New York's Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). An ambitious and promising endeavor, ASAP provides a comprehensive array of services and supports to help community college students graduate and to help them graduate sooner. The evaluation…

Higher education institutions have been challenged with retaining students until graduation over the past forty years. The greatest attrition occurs during the freshman-to-sophomore year. College administrators must evaluate data trends to determine the academic needs of enrolled students so effective programming can be developed and executed to…

More than half of students in community colleges need remedial education. Colleges spend over a $1 billion each year to provide instruction to students who are academically behind or struggling to demonstrate necessary academic skills, yet only a quarter of students are completing these developmental courses. The reasons why so many students do…

For students in developmental math, a primary short-term goal of learning communities is to accelerate students' progression through the math sequence and into college-level coursework. A longer-term goal is that enrolling in developmental math learning communities will increase students' ultimate likelihood of earning a credential or transferring…

College requires students to read strategically in order to be academically successful (Caverly, Nicholson, & Radcliffe, 2004). Strategic readers utilize a variety of strategies, including metacognitive reading strategies (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). However, not all students use the same strategies when…

In this article, the author discusses the meaning and importance of high grades and high achievement in terms of giftedness. She offers some reasons to tell children about the importance of school achievement. She suggests that good grades are no guarantee of eventual adult success, whether that is defined as a high income or a rewarding,…

Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, this issue of "Data Notes" is the second of a two-part series investigating the characteristics of stop-outs at Achieving the Dream colleges. In this issue, students who stop out during high- frequency terms are examined by age, developmental referral status, grade point average and…

Students at a large urban community college enrolled in fourteen sections of a developmental algebra class. While cognitive variables are often used to place students, affective characteristics may also influence their success. To explore the impact of affective variables, students took ACT's Engage survey measuring motivation, academic-related…

The Australian federal government recently set a challenging national aim: By 2020, 20% of higher education enrolment at the undergraduate level will include students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Although refugee-background students are often members of the targeted sub-population, their educational journeys frequently require special forms…