Educator and researcher specializing in student retention, Tinto discusses own experience leaving doctoral program to join Peace Corps, reviews internal and external causes of attrition, characteristics of successful retention programs, and role of teaching in retention. Favors establishing a sense of community on campuses to enhance students'…

Describes a study that examined which factors made a difference in distance learners' achievements and their continuous enrollment status over one year in the Korea National Open University. Results of a path analysis discusses learners' job load, grade point average, study time, social integration, face-to-face activities, and drop-outs. Contains…

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data indicate that sense of personal control increased from age 14 to 22. Dropping out of school hampered development; teen pregnancy did not. Adolescent sense of control and further adult development correlated positively with cognitive skill and parental education. Low perceived control predicted subsequent…

About 500,000 youngsters drop out of school each year. Reasons children drop out involve a combination of school and personal problems. Dropouts typically believe they have little control over their lives. Sidebars discuss ways of counting dropouts, suggest what schools should do, and provide selected references. (MLF)

Two studies of gifted high school dropouts (n=3,854) found many dropouts were from low socioeconomic-status families and racial minority groups, had parents with low levels of education, and participated less in extracurricular activities. Dropout behavior was related to student's educational aspiration, pregnancy or child-rearing, gender, and…

Reports on qualitative study of focus group interviews with Chicano/Latinos who had dropped out of school. Responses revealed themes of alienation and discrimination in the school setting. Discusses roles of school counselors as multicultural advocates and community-family-school liaisons. Recommendations from focus groups centered on three areas…

Many studies have identified factors that contribute to success in economics principles courses, but few have examined the causes and effects of student drops and failure. The author follows 239 students through their economic principles course and tracks the students in the year after the course. The author constructs a model predicting student…

Nonreturning students are comprised of several student subpopulations including drop-outs, stop-outs, opt-outs, and transfer-outs. All too often these student groups are not differentiated in retention studies. The current study profiles these student subpopulations, each with varied reasons for discontinuing their studies, and examines the…

Inner-city youth are at high risk for dropping out of high school. Within this article, risk factors associated with dropout and strategies for effective prevention and intervention are reviewed. An example of a school-based drop-out prevention program is highlighted. The FUTURES Program is a school-based drop-out prevention program designed to…

Whether the dropout rate is a good measure of a quality education is debatable. One could probably make a case that a high dropout rate is just as credible an indicator of a quality education program as a low dropout rate. As with any high-stakes measure of performance, those being evaluated scramble, sometimes frantically, for strategies that…

High school principals and career and technical education (CTE) teachers throughout Illinois were subjects of this study which described principals' and CTE teachers' perceptions of the impact the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has had on high school CTE programs. Findings indicated principals and teachers collectively disagreed with "No…

In this paper, absorbing markov chains are used to analyse the flows of higher degree by research candidates (doctoral and master) within an Australian faculty of business. The candidates are analysed according to whether they are full time or part time. The need for such analysis stemmed from what appeared to be a rather poor completion rate (as…

In the fall of 1988, the Dallas (Texas) Independent School District mounted an initiative to locate, document, and possibly recover students who did not return to school following summer vacation as expected (no-shows). A scan of the district's student database yielded 7,105 secondary school no-shows and 7,880 elementary school no-shows. Rosters…

THE BOYS WHO HAD UNDERGONE THE VOCATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAM IN MERCER COUNTY WERE FOLLOWED UP. LACK OF READING ABILITY AT GRADE LEVEL CASUED MOST DROPOUTS. A PROGRAM OF PRACTICAL JOB PREPARATION ON THE BASIS OF INTEREST WAS PROVIDED, AND THE PLAN WAS QUITE SUCCESSFUL. A FACTOR WHICH LED TO SOME UNEMPLOYMENT AFTER TRAINING WAS THAT SOME OF THE BOYS…