In 1988, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) developed a private school data collection that improved on the sporadic collection of private school data dating back to 1890 and at the same time developed an alternative to commercially available private school sampling frames. Since 1989, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has conducted…

Roughly defined as grades four through eight, the middle grades are a known pressure point in the educational pipeline -- a make or break period for determining future academic success. Research has shown that students who are not proficient in reading by the beginning of fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Similarly,…

Today, a growing number of North American postsecondary institutions are incorporating the use of noncognitive variables into their requirements for a holistic admissions process. Why is there more and more interest in utilizing these nonacademic variables for students who are applying to these institutions? It is all about student success and…

School voucher programs have become a prominent aspect of the education policy landscape in the United States. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only federally funded voucher program in the United States. Since 2004 it has offered publicly funded private school vouchers to nearly four thousand students to attend any of seventy-three…

This study examines the change process to enhance student persistence and graduation rates in four North Carolina community colleges. Using a qualitative research methodology, Lewin's change model is presented as a framework to investigate the acceptance and implementation of AtD principles in two community colleges. Processes to enhance student…

A "Capital Commitment" is the five-year strategic plan that sets ambitious targets for the future of DC Public Schools (DCPS). In School Year 2012-13, the first year guided by this plan, student performance hit an historic high. The groundbreaking progress made in year one is promising. This document highlights statistics for this year…

This article focuses on the cross-national relevance of theories of college student departure formulated by U.S. scholars. Some aspects of U.S. developed theories of college student departure hold some semblance of cross-national relevance. Economic and sociological perspectives provide such aspects. The weighing of costs and benefits inherent in…

In 2005, the graduation rate for the Council Bluffs Community School District was, at 68 percent, the lowest in Iowa. District leaders knew that to improve, they needed to create a cultural change throughout the community. They began by getting community members involved in creating a strategic plan and mission statement that included a guarantee…

This study analyzed the relationships between variables of institutional expenses, library expenses, and library use and variables representing graduation and retention rates for colleges and universities. Using data drawn from the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System and the Academic Library Survey, institutions were compared by their…

The study used earliest available student data from a flagship university in the southeast United States to build data mining models like logistic regression with different variable selection methods, decision trees, and neural networks to explore important student characteristics associated with retention leading to graduation. The decision tree…

Many scholars call for more diverse data on learners' behaviour in CALL (Colpaert, 2012; Fischer, 2007, 2012; Stockwell, 2012). Student retention and the inconclusive efficacy of online language courses (Gaebel, 2013) has received increased attention with the proliferation of MOOCs (Koller, Ng, Do & Chen, 2013). In this paper we introduce…

This study examined the relationship between student engagement and graduation rates between Black/African American students and White (Non-Hispanic) students in their senior year at faith-based institutions in the southeastern region of the United States using the NSSE benchmarks of effective educational practices. Specifically, scores from the…

In April 2013, "NEJHE" launched its New Directions for Higher Education series to examine emerging issues, trends and ideas that have an impact on higher education policies, programs and practices. In this installment, DiSalvio interviews Pamela Tate, president and CEO of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). Topics…

Two pivotal and interconnected claims are addressed in this article. First, strategy precedes program effectiveness. Second, graduation rates and rankings are insufficient in any account of academic progress for African American students. In this article, graduation is regarded as the floor and not the ceiling, as it were. The ideal situation in…

As Lumina Foundation releases a new edition of the signature report, "A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education," the central message is the same one conveyed since the first of this series of reports in 2009. Lumina remains convinced that significantly increasing college attainment is the key to ensuring a brighter future for our…