The absence of federal support leaves undocumented students reliant on state policies to financially support their postsecondary education. We descriptively examine the postsecondary trajectories of tens of thousands of undocumented students newly eligible for California's state-aid program, using detailed application data to compare them to…

Contemporary Career and Technical Education (CTE) models have shifted from isolated courses to sequences of study that integrate academics and skills in high-demand sectors. Providing career pathways to high school students may reduce asymmetries about the available careers and strategies for attaining them but they may also catalyze students'…

California requires each school district to belong to a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) for special education planning and governance. The California Department of Education (CDE) and the State Board of Education (SBE) are interested in the impact on the surrounding small and midsized districts when large districts become single-district…

MOOCs are becoming more and more involved in the pedagogical experimentation of universities whose infrastructure does not respond to the growing mass of learners. These universities aim to complete their initial training with distance learning courses. Unfortunately, the efforts made to succeed in this pedagogical model are facing a dropout rate…

Despite increases in college enrollment, college completion rates have not kept up, at both 2-year and 4-year institutions. In California specifically, the 6-year graduation or transfer rate for students at 2-year institutions was only 48%. In response to the idea that students arrive at college unprepared, driving these low college success rates,…

I examine a new generation of Career and Technical Education (CTE) models that has shifted from isolated courses to sequences of study that integrate academics and skills in specific career areas. I use data for a competitive grant administered by the California Department of Education (CDE) that incentives K-12 school districts to partner with…

The California Community Colleges served 2,116,293 students in 2017-18 and 2,089,209 students in 2018-19. It is the largest system of higher education in the nation. One hundred and fourteen of the 115 California community colleges use state funding allocated for Disabled Student Programs and Services (DSPS) to assist in providing support services…

The California Community Colleges served 2.1 million students in 2015-16 and 2.1 million students in 2016-17. It is the largest system of higher education in the nation. Each of the 115 colleges in all 73 districts use state funding allocated for Disabled Student Programs and Services (DSPS) to assist in providing support services and educational…

Although there is substantial evidence of the negative effects of being incarcerated or having a father imprisoned, there is little research on the spillover effects created by the concentration of incarceration within disadvantaged communities. This article addresses this limitation by investigating the association between mass incarceration and…

The customary perception is that students who drop out vanish from school enrollment rosters for good. This is an incomplete picture of the complex dropout story; dropping out is not necessarily a permanent high school outcome. Following the enrollment and course history of a district cohort of first-time 9th graders, this article documents the…

While educators have long argued that when local schools are successful, local communities benefit; there's now clear evidence that is the case. A new report, "The Economic Benefits from Halving the Dropout Rate: A Boom to Businesses in the Nation's Largest Metropolitan Areas," released in January by the Alliance for Excellent Education…

Concerned about the persistently high dropout rates from big-city secondary schools, education leaders are trying a new approach to increasing the graduation rate--multiple pathways to graduation. Multiple pathways initiatives are relatively new and far from proven. Even the most advanced examples face significant issues, i.e., the need to…

This paper examines the graduation/dropout crisis among American Indian and Alaska Native students using data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Data from 2005 is drawn from the seven states with the highest percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native students as well as five states in the Pacific and Northwestern regions of…

This study which has much of its base in the Education, Excellence & Equity (E3) program is about the dropout rates among minority students within a certain county in Northern California. Why are minority students dropping out at higher rates than their white counterparts? The research hypothesis is that the dropout rate is higher among…

This report analyzes the economic and social costs of the high school dropout problem in California from the perspective of a state taxpayer. The authors' analysis considers the consequences of this problem in terms of labor market, tax revenue, public health, and incarceration costs. The authors' quantification of these costs reveals the sizeable…