The District conducts two kinds of dropout analyses every year in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The "cross-sectional" analysis of student dropouts examines dropout rates among students enrolled in various grades at one point in time. A "longitudinal" analysis, also conducted annually, tracks a group of students in the same…

While many charter school leaders across the country grapple with how to best provide and pay for special education, New Orleans recently became the first city in the nation to tackle special education on the fiscal, human capital, and program fronts in the context of a full-choice public education landscape. Over time, it may offer scalable…

The "Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Almanac of Post-Secondary Education in Canada" is a source for the most current statistical information available on post-secondary education in Canada. The Almanac provides statistics on the following: (1) university and college finances; (2) academic staff salaries and gender; (3)…

This paper brings together some data on student retention in distance education in the form of graduation rates at a sample of distance institutions. The paper suggests that there is a "distance education deficit" with many distance institutions having less than one-quarter of the graduation rates of conventional institutions. It looks…

Although parents, high school students, and most civic leaders in this country and around the world see a college degree as important, this perspective has been attacked over the last five years. Once the Great Recession began in December 2007, there were far fewer good jobs available for new college graduates. The soaring price of college had…

The Benjamin Banneker Scholars Program (BBSP) was designed at an HBCU to increase the academic performance, retention, and graduation of minority students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). At the end of each academic year, students completed a BBSP Post-Program Satisfaction Survey. Each year Mentoring was consistently…

Little has been published in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) literature on the topic of pre-apprenticeships, which are a loose type of preparatory courses for apprenticeships available in some trades. Nevertheless, pre-apprenticeships have been in existence for several decades. With continuing concern over skill shortages in…

As New York State transitions from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy, few institutions are playing a more important role than the state's 35 community colleges. With more than 328,000 students enrolled statewide, community colleges are boosting New York's economic competitiveness by upgrading the skills of a large chunk of the state's…

Student retention rates and graduation rates currently play a major role in measuring the success of institutions of higher education. To contribute to the likelihood of this success many institutions offer programs designed to increase the academic performance of their students especially those classified as incoming freshmen. Others are more…

For any school closing policy to minimize adverse effects on student achievement, students from closed buildings should be placed in higher performing ones. To provide a more in-depth analysis of the potential academic impacts of the School District of Philadelphia's proposed school closure plan, Research for Action (RFA) compared 32 schools…

Remedial and developmental courses and services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) are designed to address differences in pre-college preparation among our diverse student body. Often the instruction aims to address gaps in knowledge ("remediation") and provide students with the skills needed for continued learning and college…

The goal of the study is to develop an equity-minded theory of college writing readiness. An estimated third of incoming students are academically underprepared for college writing. The majority of these students will not earn a baccalaureate. Because rigorous pre-college preparation is a chief indicator of postsecondary achievement, improving…

The shift in education reform to a goal of college and career readiness for all students is a change that has been embraced widely across the country. The challenge of designing new policies and programs that could accomplish the goal that all students should graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college…

A 4 Ps perspective addresses immediate needs: to help institutions gain traction in their retention strategies by framing and reframing the challenges and the possible responses, by challenging some of the traditional mental models about retention that can distract or dilute those strategies, and by offering focus and coherence to institutional…

Because of low college completion rates, the focus in higher education has shifted from encouraging students to enroll in college to getting students to complete college. In essence, the paradigm has shifted from student access to student success or completion. In addition to a national agenda focusing on higher education with an emphasis on…