School grades provide an easily understandable metric to measure the performance of a school. Parents and the general public can use the informational baseline school grade and its associated components to understand how well each school is serving its students. The school grades calculation was revised substantially for the 2014-15 school year to…

This report provides information on retention, graduation, and transfer rates for students entering Maryland community colleges as first-time, full-time students between 1993 and 2013. This edition of the report includes analysis of student outcomes two, three, and four years after matriculation. The first section contains analysis of student…

California is at a crossroads in terms of STEM and health workforce development. On the one hand, California has more available entry-level STEM jobs than any other state in the country and a steadily growing health workforce, giving large segments of its population access to stable careers. On the other hand, California's public colleges and…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires the State to calculate a four-year cohort rate. Utah implemented this federally defined cohort graduation rate in 2008. The graduation rate for the 2016 cohort includes all students who started ninth grade in the 2012-13 school year, plus students who transferred into the Utah public…

In this investigation, we analyzed Hispanic student access and success in health-related degrees by examining enrollment and graduation rates over a period of 13 years. Archival data were obtained from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board consisting of the number of Hispanic students enrolled and number of degrees awarded in the…

Western culture admonishes that ''winners never quit,'' but sometimes the termination of a specific goal is the best choice for a student. Cognitive perseveration is commonly defined as one repeating an action after learning that it produces a poor outcome and may be considered a form of ''never quitting.'' This type of cognitive perseveration…

Increasing global competition in technology and commerce has led many nations, including the United States, to focus on the productivity and output of their higher education institutions. Data from the last few years show that the U.S. is falling behind many developed countries in degree production, and this is particularly true for STEM subjects…

In 2011, the Board of Regents (BoR), through the development and implementation of the Master Plan, advanced its vision for the future of postsecondary education by adopting the following three broad goals: (1) Increase the educational attainment of the State's adult population to the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) States' average by…

In this study, the researcher compared the success of community college graduates who entered college with a GED, a high school diploma, or an alternative diploma. The researcher used a quantitative analysis method with the existing data of students for three years within a single community college system to answer research questions to determine…

For the 2006-2007 At-Risk 6th-grade cohort, more fine arts enrollment in middle school was correlated with more positive high school outcomes for students in the following areas: academic persistence (i.e., graduating, completing the GED, or maintaining enrollment beyond their expected graduation date), attendance, standardized achievement tests…

This is an excerpt from "Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education" (The New Press, 2012). It concludes that GED programs need more resources, not less. The programs tend to be populated by low-to-modest income people who failed school the first time around and now are considered less worthy of investment. GED…

While several studies have examined the impact of expenditures on graduation rates in higher education institutions, historically Black colleges and universities have strong government dependencies that suggest that these links might be different than for other universities. This paper investigates these links by estimating the production function…

When it comes to state education accountability systems, times are changing fast. This is clearer than ever with the advent of not only waivers from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) but also the multitude of state accountability index systems and "A through F" school-grading systems rolling out across the country. The multiple measures of…

Since the Coleman Report in 1966, researchers have been analyzing educational resource inputs with respect to district, school, and student level outputs. There has been an increase in federal and state control of local school districts, as demonstrated in the adoption of the Common Core Standards and mandatory national and state assessments. In…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…