Noncognitive constructs such as self-efficacy, social awareness, and academic engagement are widely acknowledged as critical components of human capital, but systematic data collection on such skills in school systems is complicated by conceptual ambiguities, measurement challenges and resource constraints. This study addresses this issue by…

We analyze how fatal shootings in high schools affect schools and students using data from shooting databases, school report cards, and the Common Core of Data. We examine schools' test scores, enrollment, number of teachers, graduation, attendance, and suspension rates at schools that experienced a shooting, employing a difference-in-differences…

School suspension rates have been rising since the early 1970s, especially for children of color. One body of research has demonstrated that suspension from school is harmful to students, as it increases the risk of retention and school dropout. Another has demonstrated that school dropouts impose huge social costs on their states and localities,…

"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…

The value of education has rarely been disputed in the United States. The importance of education has been so critical to the country's well-being that elementary and secondary education has been a free public good and postsecondary education has been heavily subsidized through grants to public institutions and to students. In this report, the…

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…

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) serves a large majority of socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are struggling academically and are underprepared for high school graduation and college. This article describes the partnership between LAUSD and the Los Angeles Education Research Institute, and how this collaboration endeavors…

Every educator's quest is to help students learn in the environment that will allow them to obtain and retain the information presented to them. In the new age of technology, more students are able to choose the environment in which they learn. This study is a quantitative comparative study of the academic performance between online and…

Too many students drop out of school, which results in economic losses and increased crime. The problem is particularly acute for black and Hispanic students. A recent study of more than 130 9th-graders in five California high schools revealed some interesting information: Most of them (three-quarters) said they liked school, and more than 80% saw…

San Francisco's Bridge to Success (BtS) initiative brings together the City and County of San Francisco, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), the City College of San Francisco (CCSF), and key community organizations to promote postsecondary success for underrepresented students. Partners agree that the first step in achieving this…

Students who make adequate yearly progress in grade-level mathematics courses should expect to pass the mathematics portion of their high school exit exam on the first attempt. Expectation theory states that teachers' beliefs about their own students are an important factor in students' success. The purpose of this nonexperimental study was to…

This study follows a cohort of first-time 9th graders in San Bernardino City Unified School District from 2001/01 to 2005/06 and documents their dropout, reenrollment, and graduation rates. For the one-third of dropouts who reenrolled in the district over that period, it reports course credit accrual and graduation outcomes as well as students'…

This study follows a cohort of first-time ninth graders over five years in San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD) to describe the magnitude of its dropout problem and the numbers, characteristics, and graduation outcomes of the dropouts who subsequently reenrolled in the district. Additionally, it documents reenrollment issues…

The transition into high school is a critical point in the educational pipeline, and ninth-grade can be characterized as one of its leakiest junctures. This policy brief examines how some states and districts are currently easing the transition into high school for students. It focuses on five key challenges that states, districts and schools…

The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992, and the scale of the charter movement has since grown to 4,000 schools and more than a million students in 40 states plus the District of Columbia. With this growth has also come a contentious debate about the effects of the schools on their own students and on students in nearby traditional public…