With the rapid expansion of mobile, blended, and seamless learning, researchers claim two factors, lack of self-discipline and poor time management, adversely impact learning performance. In online educational environments, reduced social interactions and low engagement levels generate high dropout rates. Self-regulated learning (SRL), the…

This article exploits a natural experiment to estimate the effects of need-based aid policies on first-year college persistence rates. In fall 2006, Ohio abruptly adopted a new state financial aid policy that was significantly more generous than the previous plan. Using student-level data and very narrowly defined sets of students, I estimate a…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative using several years of state data on attendance, graduation, dropout rates, and performance index scores. Results indicate differences between small schools or small learning communities, and traditional schools that have similar school profiles to small…

In January 1998, the Montgomery County (Ohio) commissioners created the Montgomery County Out-of-School Youth Task Force to identify why 22% of high school students were dropping out. The task force concluded the dropout epidemic was having devastating effects on the local economy. In addition to the obvious problem of local employers having…

Background/Context: Past studies have consistently found modest academic gains for minorities as a result of desegregation. In addition, school effects have tended to be small or even null once student-level nonschool factors are controlled. However, traditional approaches not only treat desegregation as a policy that may be sufficient by itself…

Those educators who work with academically high-achieving college students have long known that these individuals face challenges along with their less scholastically prepared peers. Recently, the author and her colleagues at Miami University were reminded of this fact when they discovered that 80 percent of their honors students were exiting the…

Miami Valley Career Technology Youth Connections, an alternative high school located in Dayton, Ohio, has an enrollment of 160 students and was created as a joint venture among local politicians to address the high dropout rates in Montgomery County, Ohio. To achieve this, the Montgomery County commissioners created a task force to develop…

The migrant population is the most undereducated major subgroup in the United States. The high school dropout rate of the children of migrant farm workers is 43 percent, higher than any other group in the United States. It is estimated that over 70 percent of migrants have not completed high school, and 75 percent are functionally illiterate.…