In 2008, almost 40% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students enrolled in the Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotion at The University of Sydney failed to complete the course. Although this was not considered unusual when compared to previous years, the decision was made to investigate why so many students struggled to meet the…

This research explored the perceptions of high school principals and teachers on the implementation of professional learning communities (PLCs) in their schools. These perceptions were surveyed using the Professional Learning Communities Assessment-Revised (PLCA-R). Data results were examined for areas of agreement and disagreement between the…

This paper was a keynote address at the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) conference held in Canberra in April 2012. The author notes that industry is arguably the key stakeholder in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector, but is not a single actor nor a disinterested consumer of…

The White House will soon unveil a final version of its "college scorecard"--an online tool giving college-bound students and their families a hype-free snapshot of reliable information about any U.S. campus: real costs, graduation rates, student debt statistics, and earning potential of graduates. The college scorecard is a good idea…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Four More Years: Obama Wins Re-election, Plans to Continue Education Reforms Through Race to the Top, NCLB Waivers;…

With tax revenues beginning to rebound in most states and endowments on the rebound at many private and public institutions, colleges and universities are growing more hopeful about their financial outlook and instituting new strategies to take advantage of the opportunities. Yet as the economic recovery has slowed in the past few months,…

In 1999, under federal government legislation, Mi'kmaw communities in Nova Scotia won the right to manage the education of their children for the first time in a century. With support from Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, an education authority that provides central services, local Mi'kmaw schools deliver language immersion courses, culturally-appropriate…

Judicial sanctions are used by drug courts to encourage clients to comply with program requirements. However, few studies have explored the application of sanctions in drug courts or the relationship between sanctions and drug court graduation. This article reports the results of a study of sanctions as applied in a drug court in southwest…

The completion agenda seeks significant increases in educational attainment, and its goals are quite laudable. The United States is lagging behind other industrialized nations in terms of the proportion of adults holding postsecondary degrees, and states have been challenged to implement policies that ensure improvements in degree completion…

People who deal with at-risk teens say dropping out is not an event; it's a process. Youngsters miss school and get "backed up" in class, so they miss more school because they're bewildered or embarrassed, and fall further behind. In the three years the 75-seat Hampton Performance Learning Center (PLC) has been open, it claims to have…

Using detailed individual-level data from public universities in the state of Ohio, I estimate the effect of various institutional expenditures on the probability of graduating from college. Using a competing risks regression framework, I find differential impacts of expenditure categories across student characteristics. I estimate that student…

As a first generation immigrant born in Mexico City, academic coaching is one of the keys to success for Juan Arias, a 24-year-old junior at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. The community college transfer student was provided with his own personal coach during orientation who provided weekly visits or calls to guide him…

This paper adds to the considerable literature on low completion rates for apprenticeships and traineeships by looking at whether the reasons given for not completing vary by how far the individual is into their contract of training. The approach the authors take is to calculate the probability of apprentices and trainees giving a particular…

It is well documented, that Indigenous students, compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts, attend school less frequently, and are more likely to develop anti-schooling attitudes leading to their early exit from school (Hayes et al., 2009; Gray & Partington, 2003; Hunter & Schwad, 2003). Although research does suggest that there has…

According to current estimates, more than a quarter of all students and over 40 percent of African American and Hispanic students do not graduate from high school on time. The vast majority of those young people who do not graduate with their peers drop out. The enormous costs to these individuals, their communities, and our society require us to…