Mooresville Graded School District (MGSD) in North Carolina, USA, was in a tough situation that is all too common for districts across the country. Its student poverty ratio rose significantly from 2007 to 2011 because of the economic recession, and it was ranked 99 out of 115 school districts for per-pupil expenditure in the state. No less than…

The aim of this article is to give a brief overview of the context to the Adult Better Learning and Education (ABLE) 18-21 programme and the objectives which the programme aimed to fulfil in light of the challenges facing early school leavers. The article will also document the triumphs and challenges experienced by the participants when returning…

Chronic disruptive behaviors during early childhood are associated with many poor developmental outcomes including, but not limited to, school dropout and conduct disorder during adolescence. Much is known regarding effective intervention procedures for disruptive classroom behaviors by preschool children. Unfortunately, evidence-based…

Women, on average, outnumber men and are more successful in higher education. A literature overview showed that these differences may be explained by gender differences in learner characteristics, by external factors and by institutional factors. This study aims to explain gender differences in higher education in more detail by focusing on one of…

Previous studies on school dropout in Cambodia often used data from subjects after they already dropped out or statistics from education-related institutions. Using data from children in two rural provinces before they dropped out, this study examines four main factors in order to identify their influence on primary school dropout in Cambodia.…

This article presents an interview with Dr. Ken McCluskey, Dean and Professor of Education at the University of Winnipeg. He is known internationally for his work in several areas including: (1) mentoring; (2) attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; (3) at-risk children and youth (where his "Lost Prizes" and related projects serve as…

President Obama has set an ambitious goal for the nation: By the year 2020, the United States will have the highest proportion of adults with college degrees in the world. The Obama administration sees the successful completion of postsecondary education as essential to American competitiveness. Governors likewise see the economic future of their…

This replicated study (A. Tucho, 2000, "Factors Influencing the General Educational Development [GED] Program at Community College of Philadelphia as Perceived by the GED Students") determined which of the 3 types of educational barriers (institutional, situational, and dispositional) represented the major difficulty preventing adult…

In an effort to address dropout, the Louisiana state legislature mandated an initiative in 2009 which required all school districts to offer an alternative vocational high school diploma. Because this alternative diploma, known as the Career Diploma, is being implemented in all high schools throughout Louisiana, this research was designed to…

This study was conducted in Quebec with 608 students (aged 16-19) in four "second chance" schools of the greater Montreal area. The objectives were twofold: (a) to identify the strategies of these students in the context of five learning activities; and (b) to compare the strategies of students who had withdrawn from school after their…

The use of analytic tools to predict student performance is exploding in higher education, and experts say the tools show even more promise for K-12 schools, in everything from teacher placement to dropout prevention. Use of such statistical techniques is hindered in precollegiate schools, however, by a lack of researchers trained to help…

This retrospective study documents the Masters and PhD training of 131 Dental Research Institute (DRI) postgraduates (1954-2006) to establish demographics, throughput and research outcomes for future PhD pipeline strategies using the DRI database. Descriptive statistics show four degree-based groups of postgraduates: 18 PhDs; 55 MScs; 42 MDents…

This article explores social class and gender differences in entry to the two main higher education sectors, universities and institutes of technology, among school leavers in Ireland over the period 1980-2006. A rational choice perspective is adopted, with participation hypothesised to reflect the costs and benefits attaching to attending the two…

This study utilized school-level data from several combined national databases to address two questions regarding school security policy: (1) What are the school characteristics related to levels of security? (2) How does security relate to school suspension, dropout, and college attendance rates? Among the predictors of school security, having a…

MOOCs (massive open online course) is a disruptive innovation and a current buzzword in higher education. However, the discussion of MOOCs is disparate, fragmented, and distributed among different outlets. Systematic, extensively published research on MOOCs is unavailable. This paper adopts a novel method called blog mining to analyze MOOCs. The…