This research strives to enrich criminological and educational literature by providing a better understanding of relationships among school performance and achievement, attendance, and demographic information based upon the number of exclusionary disciplinary actions within public high schools. Using data on 409 traditional high schools from the…

"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…

Many students enter large comprehensive high schools without having the necessary social and academic skills or understanding of what will be expected of them as they move through the high school curriculum. To help a higher number of students experience success, schools must help them develop academic, social, and self-management skills.…

Great strides have been made by community school initiatives across the nation in their efforts to impact student achievement, attendance, student engagement, graduation rates, parent involvement and more. Data on community schools is growing and the authors encourage readers to review research reports and syntheses on results. The results…

Were colleges obliged to address the dilemmas faced by the many first- and second-generation Americans who enrolled after World War I? No, replied many administrators who espoused exclusion or assimilation, or who expressed indifference. These attitudes meant that many students would never learn to navigate the turbulent waters of campus social…

"Exito" means "success" in Spanish, so it is a fitting name for a dropout prevention program. Set in a large neighborhood high school in a low-income, largely Latino section of Philadelphia, Exito supports ninth- and tenth-grade students who are at risk of dropping out of school by providing them with afterschool programming…

Between 2000 and 2009, the Hispanic population more than doubled in 25 of 67 Pennsylvania counties. Over the same period, the Hispanic student population in Pennsylvania schools also rose, from 4 percent to 8 percent (Pennsylvania State Data Center 2011). The focus on Hispanic students' level of academic achievement rose along with this rapid…

Few people realize the impact that high school dropouts have on a community's economic, social, and civic health. Business owners and residents--in particular, those without school-aged children--may not be aware that they have much at stake in the success of their local high schools. Indeed, everyone--from car dealers and realtors to bank…

The Stoneleigh Foundation of Philadelphia has historically focused its strategic investments on improving outcomes for youth involved or at risk of involvement in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Stoneleigh began its support for youth courts by providing a fellowship award from 2009 to 2011 to public interest lawyer Gregory Volz to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the college enrollment and persistence rates of rural high schools in Pennsylvania; the types of postsecondary institutions in which students from such schools enroll; and the student, school, and college characteristics associated with enrollment and persistence outcomes. The study used extant data from…

The merits of a public campaign can rarely be gauged fully in its early months or even in its initial year. Rather, the true measures of a campaign's successes are revealed over time: in its ongoing impacts on opinion or policy, and on the tangible results it achieves. On both accounts, Philadelphia's Project U-Turn campaign continues to make…

Graduation and dropout rates are the center of the conversation about high school reform, with President Obama and the U.S. Department of Education leading the charge to boost high school and college graduation rates among our nation's students in the next ten years. Recognizing the need for a comprehensive approach to keeping teens in school and…

This report presents the deliberations of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Advisory Committee (RAC), one of 10 RACs established under the Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002 (20 U.S.C. sections 9601 et. seq.) to assess the educational needs of the region. The committee's report outlines the educational needs across the District of Columbia and…

Recent reports have demonstrated that the United States has a dropout crisis of alarming proportions. In some large-city school systems, more than 50% of students leave high school without a diploma. A large proportion of these dropouts have not accumulated enough credits to be promoted beyond ninth grade. Using survey and student record data for…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…