"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) "Cities in Crisis": New Report and National Campaign Focus on the High School Dropout Crisis in the United…

"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) "A Tipping Point in Education": Report Finds Educational Attainment of Younger Generations Has Not Increased; (2) Building a…

Growing concern about the quality of public education in the United States has driven numerous educational reform efforts across the last three decades. These reforms include increased accountability as exemplified by various requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the introduction of new curriculum and instructional methods in…

High school students have high ambitions but do not always make choices that maximize their likelihood of educational success. This was the motivation for investigating the relationships between high school sexual behavior and two important milestones in academic attainment: earning a high school diploma and enrolling in distinct postsecondary…

This 17-year longitudinal study tested whether low peer-perceived acceptance and association with aggressive-disruptive friends during preadolescence predicted students' failure to graduate from secondary school. Participants were 997 Caucasian, French-speaking boys from low-socioeconomic status, urban neighborhoods. The boys were recruited in…

The U.S. Congress has mandated that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) produce an annual report to help inform policymakers about the progress of education in the United States. Using data from across the center and from other sources of education data, "The Condition of Education 2015" presents 42 key indicators on…

This report provides an update on the Illinois public high school class of 2002 and its progress through the higher education system. Three years after graduation, who has persisted, who has stopped out, who has transferred, and who has completed a two-year program? (Contains 16 tables and 5 footnotes.) [This publication was produced by the…

This E.D. TAB presents findings from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Spring 2005 data collection, which included four components: Student Financial Aid for full-time, first-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students for the 2003-04 academic year, Enrollment for fall 2004 and 12-month counts for 2003-04.…

In April 2006, the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) released a report on college enrollment, preparation, and completion by students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). This was the first endeavor in the nation to use data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) to track the progress of a large district's students following…

The National High School Center released methods for improving low-performing high schools based on some of the most rigorous research currently available in the school reform arena. This research brief identifies lessons learned as well as key practices used to strengthen high schools and is based on evaluations of four widely used high school…

Student progression and retention is an area of increasing social importance and concern around student non-completion rates is expressed in many arenas. Research suggests many reasons for student non-completion, including the balancing of social and academic integration into university life. The increasing diversity of the student body…

We present a multiple spells-competing risks model of stopout, dropout, reenrollment, and graduation behavior. We find that students who experience an initial stopout are more likely to experience subsequent stopouts (occurrence dependence) and are less likely to graduate. We also find evidence of the impact of the length of an initial spell on…

This article explores the growing popularity of Advanced Placement (AP) courses in U.S. high schools and examines whether AP courses are the solution to the nation's perceived academic gap. Some researchers do not think that AP courses are a panacea for improving science in U.S. schools based on a recent study's finding that AP courses do not…

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between the desired outcomes of the National Plan for Higher Education and the funding formula. It further wants to explore the current situation regarding specific challenges in higher education, namely increased participation, broadened social base of students and equity, as well as a…

College students studying art traditionally host a senior art show displaying the works included in their portfolio before graduating. Why not borrow this tradition of a senior art show and apply it to physical education? Currently, most institutions of higher education ask their physical education teacher education (PETE) candidates to prepare…