In this study, we explore how high schools, through their structures and organization, may influence students' decisions to stay in school or drop out. Traditional explanations for dropout behavior have focused on students' social background and academic behaviors. What high schools might do to push out or hold students has received less empirical…

Career and technical education (CTE) offers a major solution for many problems in the nation's education system. CTE also has a profound impact in saving the youth that even No Child Left Behind (NCLB) leaves behind. Each year, tens of thousands of kids, feeling disconnected and disenfranchised, drop out of school. In its present state of…

This article reports the aggressive outreach efforts exerted by various schools in fighting truancy among its students. These actions were driven in part by the No Child Left Behind Act, which required schools and districts to improve their students' academic performance or face sanctions. According to educators, ensuring that students show up for…

This 2010 Annual Report for the Missouri Department of Higher Education takes a close look at the performance of Missouri's system of postsecondary education in Fiscal Year 2010. The annual report follows the format of the state's public agenda for higher education, "Imperatives for Change: Building a Higher Education System for the 21st…

These proceedings include 13 "perspectives from the field" and 9 selected papers (with abstracts) from a national conference on recommended policies and practices for investing in youth. The 13 perspectives papers are as follows: "Saving the Next Generation" (Berlin); "Effective Strategies for Investing in Youth"…

This quarterly publication contains 13 articles covering various aspects of education and youth employment in Australia. "Youth Employment Strategies: Public Service of South Australia" (Jenny Rhodes) describes opportunities for South Australian youth to enter public service. "School Influences on Retention in Victorian Government…

Older teens living in families receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) face serious sociodemographic disadvantages. When combined with the characteristic risk-taking behaviors of adolescence, these disadvantages pose a threat to TANF teens' immediate and future physical, psychological, and emotional health and to their long-term…

The vocational education and training (VET) outcomes of Australian school-leavers were examined. School non-completers identified in the 1995 national cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) were tracked annually from 1995, and their school experiences, educational attainment, and postschool participation in education,…

Two innovative approaches to delivering vocational education and training (VET) in schools were examined to identify ways of helping Australia's indigenous students achieve academic success by ensuring a close cultural fit between course content and the realities of local employment opportunities. The first VET-in-School program, which was located…

Changes in the nature of work have resulted in a significant loss of employment opportunities for Australian youths. Since the 1980s, the Australian government's perspective on the problem of youth unemployment has moved from emphasis on job availability to emphasis on individual job readiness. A 1999 Tasmanian study of early school leavers and…

This report summarizes AISD's evaluation results of its 2003-2004 state compensatory education programs.

The estimated 518,000 children in foster care in the United States are among the most at-risk children in American society. Research shows that foster children are more likely to be at risk of poor life outcomes. The quality of a foster child's primary and secondary education is a major factor in future life success. Early warning signs of these…

The Newark Public Schools (NPS) has been at the center of reform and improvement efforts in New Jersey for the better part of 12 years. The results of these efforts are both significant and frustrating. The school district has made substantial progress over the last few years; but it also has a long way to go before it attains the level of…

This Policy Brief takes a first look at a newly identified national population of GED holders, who are compared with their counterparts who received a high school diploma as well as with their counterparts who have no high school credential. The focus of these comparisons is on long-term postsecondary education outcomes. Because these…

American schools, resegregating gradually for almost two decades, are now experiencing accelerating isolation and this will doubtless be intensified by the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2007, the Supreme Court handed down its first major decision on school desegregation in 12 years in the Louisville and Seattle cases. A…