Data from Berea College, which has a full-tuition subsidy and large room/board subsidies, were used to examine low college graduation rate of low-income students. The high attrition rate despite subsidies suggests that the cause is unrelated to costs and may be due to poor precollege educational opportunities or noncost-related difficulties in…

Purpose - This paper aims to compare the performance of building trades apprenticeship programs in the USA, sponsored jointly by employers and unions, with those sponsored unilaterally by employers. It reviews enrolment and graduation rates, including participation of women and minorities. The article also looks behind the numbers to examine the…

Students who are at risk of dropping out of school can be identified retrospectively as early as third grade on the basis of attendance patterns, academic performance, and behavior. Check & Connect is a model designed to promote student engagement, support regular attendance, and improve the likelihood of school completion. The program has been…

Since the mid 1970s the national rate at which incoming 9th graders have completed high school has fallen slowly but steadily; this is also true in 41 states. In 2002, about three in every four students who might have completed high school actually did so; in some states this figure is substantially lower. In this paper I review state-level…

The importance that is placed on graduation rates as a measure of the success of institutions of higher education warrant the ongoing research into understanding the determinants of these educational outcomes. This study examines the role of institutional factors in determining graduation rates at doctoral universities. While controlling for…

Three decades of mounting academic and testing requirements are snagging growing numbers of students in the 9th grade. "The bulge" is the name education researchers give to the percentage increase in students in the 9th grade over the same period. This article reports on factors that might explain the growing 9th grade bottleneck and…

California's three-tier public postsecondary system is meant to provide equal access to higher education for all students in the state. Yet even though Latina/os will soon make up the majority of students in K-12 education, the enrollment of Latina/os in the state's postsecondary institutions remains low. When compared to the percentage of…

To create an education pipeline capable of moving all students through to an advanced level of skills and credentials and connecting young adults to the well-paying jobs being created in Massachusetts, two challenges deserve the special and immediate attention of state leaders: (1) Substantially increasing the percentage of the state's low-income,…

The Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics has been collecting Enrollment and Degree data for over four decades. This departmental census goes out in the fall of each year to all physics and astronomy departments in the US and Puerto Rico. This report is based on data collected in the fall of 2005 from the 764 departments…

"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) House Committee Holds Hearing on NCLB Reauthorization: Alliance President Offers Testimony on NCLB and High Schools;…

New research from the Center for Collaborative Education finds that students in Boston's Pilot high schools outperform students from other non-exam Boston Public Schools on every standard measure of engagement and performance. This level of achievement holds for every racial, economic, and academic subgroup examined. Pilot high school students…

In this Issue Brief, differences in the average number of course credits earned between high school graduates and dropouts, both within and accumulated across academic years, are examined in order to describe enrollment and completion behavior of high school graduates and dropouts. Differences in course credit accrual by selected subjects…

In January 2005, leaders from Connecticut's business, higher education and civic communities came together to create the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN): a nonprofit organization designed to be a catalyst for the fundamental changes needed to move Connecticut from having the largest to having the smallest achievement gap in the…

According to a report by National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), scholarship athletes at Division I institutions continue to graduate at a rate higher than students over all. Among white male students, athletes graduated at a lower rate than their peers in the student body at large. In a handful of the biggest programs, athletes completed…

Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community College Count, this issue of "Data Notes" is the first of a two-part series investigating the characteristics of late stop-outs--students who accumulate at least 30 credits within the first two years, only to stop out without completing credentials or transferring. Seventy-five percent of…