Within the context of increasing numbers of second language (L2) learners in Canadian schools and expanding standards-driven testing frameworks, a passing score on the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) is a recently imposed secondary school graduation requirement in Ontario. There is evidence, however, that tests designed on the basis…

In this article, the academic and personal characteristics of Accounting faculty members at Colleges and Universities in the United States are analyzed to determine the demographics of the Accounting Professorate. Data on 12 variables were collected for the 2004-2005 academic year as a means of constructing a professional profile of the typical…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of the Georgia Department of Education Science Specialist teacher-mentoring program on student achievement on science standardized tests. This study analyzed the impact this program has had on student achievement in participating high schools when compared with high schools across the state where…

Dual enrollment programs continue to grow in the United States; however, little empirical research examines the relationship between this high school experience and future college success and degree attainment. This study examines degree attainment for first-time beginning students who began their postsecondary education at a Virginia Community…

For most high school non-completers, the GED[R] (General Educational Development) credential is the bridge to postsecondary education, but little is known about how successfully they could make that transition and whether their participation shifts across time. The American Council on Education (ACE) has begun a three-year longitudinal study to…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) "Informing Adolescent Literacy Policy and Practice": Alliance Brief Offers Lessons Learned from Federal…

With more than one million students dropping out of high school each year, Grad Nation is specifically designed to offer solutions and tools for every size community and presents a compelling case for all sectors of society to get involved. The guidebook is part of the Alliance's Dropout Prevention Campaign. The guide brings together the nation's…

In 2007, the presidents and chancellors of nearly two dozen public postsecondary systems created the Access to Success Initiative to pursue two goals: (1) increase the number of college-educated adults in their respective states; and (2) ensure that their institutions' graduates included more young people from low-income and minority families by…

The questions guiding this research seek to discover the factors that affect high school math course completion and college readiness in a Texas suburban public school district. The first research question examines the relationship between 8th grade completion of Algebra I and high school mathematics course taking patterns and college readiness.…

Student retention in online education is a concern for students, faculty and administration. Retention rates are 20% lower in online courses than in traditional face-to-face courses. As part of an integration and engagement strategy, a face-to-face orientation was added to an online undergraduate business information systems course to examine its…

Getting and keeping "all" young people engaged in learning and on track to graduate from high school ready for college and the 21st century workplace is going to require wider, deeper, and more systemic change. Recent policy focus on raising standards for high school graduation and aligning high school curriculum to college entrance requirements…

A study of 21 flagship public universities and four entire state systems (in Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia), conducted by the authors, demonstrates that if this country is to regain its leadership in higher education, it must fix two interwoven problems: (1) the stagnant level of overall educational attainment, as measured by…

While "general education" is a phrase heavily used in higher education, Leskes and Wright note that it has multiple meanings: it can refer to those courses that a college or university requires all of its students must pass as a condition for graduation, a common curriculum, a distribution requirement, or even core texts. This analysis of general…

This third article in a series describing survival analysis of engineering student retention and graduation introduces accelerated failure-time as an alternative to the Cox proportional hazards model to the context of student data. The new survival analysis of graduation data presented here assumes different distributions including exponential,…

Students who pursue a bachelor's degree in four-year colleges and universities often take longer than four years to complete their degrees. The reasons for prolonging the time to degree seem to fall into three broad categories: part-time enrollment, deficiencies in academic readiness, and inadequate course planning. This paper focuses on the…