The academic and economic benefits of school spending are well-established, but focusing on these outcomes may underestimate the full social benefits of school spending. Recent increases in U.S. child mortality are driven by injuries and raise questions about what types of social investments could reduce child deaths. We use close school district…

During the 2010-11 academic year, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that supports Wikipedia, worked with professors at universities across the United States who were interested in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in their classrooms through a pilot version of the Wikipedia Education Program. This article presents a case study…

The recent appointment of a new superintendent, the need for priority-setting in the face of dramatic state budget cuts, and increased national attention on school reform have elevated the performance of the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to the forefront of local media and civic attention. Consequently, the need for an understandable and commonly…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…

Prediction models using graduation rate as the performance indicator were obtained for community colleges in California, Florida, and Michigan. The results of this study indicated that institutional graduation rate could be predicted effectively from an aggregate of student and institutional characteristics. A performance measure was computed, the…

Every year 1.3 million U.S. high school students drop out of school with one quarter of female students failing to graduate on time. Female dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, to earn less when they are employed, to become pregnant before the age of 20, to become obese, to smoke, and to drink more heavily than their male counterparts. This…

The educational achievement and attainment of young people in the United States has been a long-standing issue of concern. While analyses of long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students in the United States have made gains in reading and mathematics over the past few decades, a sizeable…

Assessment is a worthwhile undertaking when meaningful data are generated, evidence-based improvement initiatives are thoroughly considered and discussed, and results are ultimately used to improve educational effectiveness. National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) results are oriented toward such practical use. Each year, more campuses use…