In both the stacks of research compiled by education think tanks and in the conversations had around the dining room table by families of aspiring college students, one stumbling block to college enrollment predictably crops up--financial aid. The topics range from avoiding endless, crushing debt to options for part-time jobs. But often the focus…

This chapter presents findings of a three-year longitudinal study of academic motivation and school engagement among low-income high school students enrolled in a corporate work-study program. Our findings demonstrate ways in which the workplace functioned for students as a conduit of emotional resources, offering instrumental support from caring…

The mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, including the threat of closing a school for underperformance, have led to multiple public school turnaround attempts. Because turnaround is a relatively new area of focus in education, there is limited research on what does and does not work, and even the definition of turnaround is a work in…

This quantitative study examined how social capital and finances influenced community college students' intent to transfer to a four-year institution within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. Focusing on the community college students enrolled in a rural midwestern state, the authors employed a structural equation modeling…

This longitudinal transition study was conducted in collaboration with teachers who interviewed students who graduated from 177 school districts in a Great Lakes state. Special education students were interviewed at exit and 1 year following graduation using a survey based on the National Longitudinal Transition Study. The data were analyzed using…

The corporate internship program is a cornerstone of the education that students receive at San Miguel High School in Tucson, Arizona. Four students share one job, so each student works for a corporate partner outside of the school every fourth day. The money they earn is used to help defray the cost of their education, and the experience is…

Proposed child-labor-rule changes--the most ambitious in 30 years--would carve out a permanent exemption to U.S. Department of Labor regulations for the work-study program run by a national network of Roman Catholic high schools. The program is a requirement of the Chicago-based Cristo Rey Network, which now has 12 high schools around the country…

This paper validates the concept of exemplary practice in work-based education (WBE) programs. The validation uses two theoretical frameworks: Social Cognitive Career Theory, and Billett's research on workplace learning. The empirical component of the validation study consists of two widely differing case studies of high school students in work…