The District conducts two kinds of dropout analyses every year in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The "cross-sectional" analysis of student dropouts examines dropout rates among students enrolled in various grades at one point in time. A "longitudinal" analysis, also conducted annually, tracks a group of students in the same…

"Career Academies" is a dropout prevention strategy for youth considered most at risk of dropping out of high school. Students in the program take both career-related and academic courses and acquire work experience through partnerships with local employers. "Career Academies" integrate rigorous academic curricula with career…

Over the past decade, national initiatives have shifted States' attention to the challenge of turning around low-performing schools. The lack of consistent, dramatic improvements in the lowest-performing schools reflects the severity of the school turnaround challenge, but also suggests the need to continuously evaluate and refine turnaround…

We use statewide administrative data from Florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10. To identify the causal effect of structural school transitions, we use student fixed effects and instrument for middle and high school attendance based on the terminal…

Nearly 7,000 students drop out of the nation's public high schools each school day, and 3,000 of them are in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states. Altogether, an estimated 1.3 million teenagers in the United States abandon high school each year without earning a diploma. In 1,700 of the nation's high schools, less than 60 percent of…

"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) Governor Bush Signs Middle Grades Reform Act, Sends 250 Reading Coaches into Florida Middle Schools; (2) The…