Alaska's Department of Education & Early Development shares a vision that all students can succeed in their education and work, shape meaningful lives for themselves, exemplify the best values of society, and be effective in improving the character and quality of the world about them. To support this mission, the Alaska State Board of…

As the poor performance of U.S. high schools has been acknowledged and come to the forefront of education policy debates over the past several years, so too has a recognition of the need to improve graduation rate calculations and accountability for increasing those rates. A range of state, national, and federal efforts have been launched toward…

As part of his quest to help the United States reclaim its status as the world's top producer of college graduates by 2020, on July 14 President Obama introduced the aptly named American Graduation Initiative (AGI). The sweeping proposal would, if approved by Congress, pump an unprecedented $12 billion into the nation's community colleges to help…

For over 20 years, Advocates for Children of New Jersey has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on the state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, food insecurity, child…

Public colleges and universities, which educate the vast majority of the nation's students, are an important part of states' economic competitiveness efforts. These institutions face a number of pressures that will demand increased productivity and a data driven investment strategy moving forward. Increasing productivity in higher education will…

For young people entering the twenty-first-century job market, high school graduation is no longer the finish line, but the starting line. While one-third of students will fail to graduate from high school, too many students who do graduate and make it to the postsecondary starting line find that they are underprepared for postsecondary work. A…

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) requires that Title IV degree-granting institutions disclose annually the graduation rates of first-time, full-time degree- or certificate-seeking undergraduate students, disaggregated by gender, each major racial/ethnic subgroup, and receipt or non-receipt of a federal Pell grant or subsidized…

The nation cannot reach its degree attainment goals without substantially increasing Latino college completion. While all groups will have to increase college degree attainment to meet the goals, increasing Latino educational attainment is crucial for the U.S. to meet its future societal and workforce needs for three main reasons: (1) the Latino…

Increasing the participation of minority groups at public colleges and universities is a longstanding goal of the Board of Governors for Higher Education, as first outlined in its 1983 "Strategic Plan to Ensure Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Connecticut Public Higher Education." The minority groups defined by the plan are:…

Starting with the troubling statistics regarding community college completion rates of under-represented minorities this study sought to analyze how the success or failure of these students is understood within the literature of higher education and the organizational and cultural contexts that shape their experiences. The study's theoretical…

Dual enrollment (DE), an arrangement by which high school students take college courses, is becoming increasingly popular as a means of improving high school education. However, there is very little rigorous evidence on its impact on student outcomes. A particular concern in evaluating its effects is the selection bias that arises because more…

Many students in Grades 9-10 are not meeting state standards on standardized mathematics tests in the Southeastern United States. The focus of this study was to determine if a teacher's confidence level affects student success in mathematics and to discover which type of teacher self-efficacy best predicts student performance. Bandura's social…

This case study investigated the effects of year-round school on students with learning disabilities at Abraxas High School in Poway, California. Abraxas is an alternative school that operates on a block schedule and year-round calendar. The researcher attempted to answer the question: How does year-round school impact students with learning…

From 2000 to 2008, enrollments by recent high school graduates grew faster than enrollments by adults age 25 and older (25.3 percent v. 23.6 percent). Between 2009 and 2019, this trend is expected to reverse, with adult enrollments increasing by twice as much as enrollments by traditional age students (22.6 percent vs. 9.7 percent). This paper…

The growing reliance on adjunct faculty has been a recent controversial trend in higher education. One of the often overlooked aspects of shifting instruction to part-time faculty members is the impact of this policy on student learning outcomes. This paper studies the impact of faculty status on both short-term and long-term retention and student…