This year, the Center for Community College Student Engagement focuses its national report on college completion--and the teaching and learning that must be the foundation for high-quality certificates and degrees. Effective teaching and meaningful learning: They are the heart of student success. This report describes four key strategies to…

This book embraces the idea of listening to and learning from students. Although many educational theorists have long argued that incorporating children's perspectives about teaching and curriculum has the potential for increasing students' interest and participation in learning, their radical perspectives are still ignored or dismissed in theory…

The Monitoring the Future (MTF) study is an ongoing series of national surveys of American adolescents and adults that has provided the nation with a vital window into the important, but largely hidden, problem behaviors of illegal drug use, alcohol use, tobacco use, anabolic steroid use, and psychotherapeutic drug use. For more than a third of a…

Although the subject has been debated and examined for more than 3 decades, it is still not clear whether all psychotherapies are equally efficacious. The authors conducted 7 meta-analyses (with a total of 53 studies) in which 7 major types of psychological treatment for mild to moderate adult depression (cognitive-behavior therapy, nondirective…

In this paper, we present data from an evaluation of the educational impact of a school breakfast program implemented in rural schools in Peru. The results showed positive effects on school attendance and dropout rates, and a differential effect of the breakfast program on multiple-grade and full-grade schools. Particularly in multiple-grade…

There is an increasing awareness that school failure and early school leaving are processes, rather than discrete events, that often co-occur and can have lasting negative effects on children's development. Most of the literature has focused on risk factors for failure and dropout rather than on the promotion of competencies that can increase…

North Carolina has a dropout crisis--only two thirds of North Carolina high school students graduate. One reason this crisis has not received the attention it deserves is because the state was reporting badly inflated graduation rates (supposedly as high as 97 percent) until it finally adopted a more realistic reporting method earlier this year.…

Research has documented a crisis in South Carolina's high school graduation rate. While state officials report a graduation rate above 70 percent, researchers from South Carolina and elsewhere place the rate just above 50 percent, with rates among minority students lower than 50 percent. South Carolina's graduation rate is the worst of all 50…

In order to gather data on the causes of student attrition, a study was conducted at a Florida community college to identify the relative importance of a set of selected environmental factors and student characteristics. A cohort was developed from the fall 1990 first-time-in-college students and was tracked for 2 years using the college's…

South Carolina's Occupational Education delivery system made progress in achieving the 3-year goals contained in the Two-Year State Plan for Vocational-Technical Education, FY 1995-96, especially through its continued implementation of tech prep. Workshops provided technical assistance related to standards and measures. The system consisted of 242…

This paper describes the development of a predictive model to determine potential high school dropouts and identify areas for intensified assistance at the individual or group level. V. Tinto's (1975, 1987) model of college attrition was validated for use with high school students in rural, low socioeconomic areas of the Southeast. Ex post facto…

This case study describes a 2-year (1988-90) demonstration dropout prevention program, a collaboration between a rural school and a university. The dropout prevention program attempts to identify effective teaching strategies that will increase the academic successes of at-risk sixth-grade students and expand the use of those strategies among the…

A study was conducted at William Rainey Harper College (WRHC) of 400 students who had attended WRHC in fall 1990 but failed to enroll in the subsequent term. The sample was divided into two groups: students who had completed fewer than 16 credit hours and those who had completed more than 16 but less than 48 credit hours. All of the stopouts were…

The Elementary At-Risk Program was an intensive counseling, guidance, community outreach, and family case-management support system for a selected group of acutely at-risk students (approximately 60 students at one level and 180 students at another) in eight Houston (Texas) Independent School District (ISD) elementary schools. Social worker…

This practitioner's guide is designed to provide an overview of a schoolwide study skills program that accommodates individual student learning styles of at-risk students who may be potential dropouts at the secondary education level. The schoolwide skills model described here is appropriate for all grade levels especially secondary levels as it…