Over the past decade, charter schools have been among the fastest-growing segments of the K-12 education sector in Chicago and across the country. In this report, the authors examine the following issues related to charter schools (1) Are charter schools attracting high- or low-achieving students and do transfers affect the racial mix in the…

What are states doing to improve graduation rates? A requester asked a state scan matrix of Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states or other states with similar student demographics, and other states with exemplary programs with great successes. This paper responds to this request.

The public educates children because of our common interest in ensuring that children become responsible and productive adults and to provide an opportunity to every child to achieve their potential. Unfortunately, several national studies show that we aren't doing a good job educating foster children. Foster children have lower test scores, lower…

This author reports that, among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. While four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year, the students who…

This report details the graduation rates for the class of 2003 for Montana High Schools. Sections include: Montana High School Completion and Graduation Rate Overview, and Montana High School Completion and Graduation Rates, 2002-03 School Year.

The purpose of this analysis was to examine the persistence, graduation and transfer rates of full-time students who received an EAG (Educational Assistance Grant) or GAG (Guaranteed Access Grant) and matriculated during the 1996-1997 academic year. The performance of these students was examined on the basis of the number of years in which…

The purpose of this document, the first of a two-part report, is to examine doctoral education delivered at public universities and health-related institutions in Texas. The second part of the report, due in October, 2004, will provide recommendations for enhancing its effectiveness in closing the gaps in participation, success, excellence, and…

The typical high school has not changed significantly over the past 50 years. Faculty members are segregated into departments based on their subject, and students rush from one 50-minute class to another throughout the seven-hour day. Reform efforts, however, are growing both nationally and in California. Reformers say that high school students…

About a third of students entering high school do not graduate and face limited job prospects. The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to use graduation rates to measure how well students are educated. To assess the accuracy of states' rates and to review programs that may increase rates, GAO was asked to examine (1) the graduation rate…

This report consists of two volumes, the first takes an in-depth look at the various graduation indicators, with a description of the computational formulas, the data required for each indicator, the assumptions underlying each formula, the strengths and weaknesses of each indicator, and a consideration of the conditions under which each indicator…

Because of concerns that not enough students who start college are completing a bachelor's degree, and in response to a Congressional request, the General Accounting Office (GAO) examined the extent to which students who enroll in a 4-year college complete a bachelor's degree and the factors that affect completion. The study also investigated what…

West Virginia's future is contingent on continuing to improve high school and college graduation rates and ensuring that graduates have the knowledge and skills required for 21st-century jobs. The state population is declining, and educational pipeline estimates for 20251 predict a substantial decrease in the population of working and young…

Policymakers, educators, and researchers recognize the importance of community colleges as open door institutions that provide a wide range of students with access to college. At the same time, competing demands for the state funds that would support community colleges have resulted in reduced public allocations and higher student tuition fees.…

Emphasizing graduation rate, W. Bowen and D. Bok (1998) argue that race-sensitive admission at selective colleges enhances the educational attainment of underrepresented minority students, and that the effect increases with college selectivity. Focusing on graduation in science, however, R. Elliott and colleagues (1995) conclude that: (1)…

This white paper was prepared for Staying the Course: High Standards and Improved Graduation Rates, a joint project of Achieve, Inc. and Jobs for the Future. Its goal is to provide policymakers with an overview of research about the dropout problem and the best strategies for building an early warning data system that can signal which students and…