We use event history analysis on an aggregate dataset from 1997 to 2018 to understand the state-level antecedents associated with the adoption of test-based grade retention policies. Findings indicate that the educational conditions of a state to be more predictive of retention policy adoption than the political, economic, and geographic measures.…

Growing accountability pressures, accompanied by a lack of readily accessible measures of institutional performance, have led to an increasing focus on graduation rates. Although previous research has illuminated myriad factors influencing students' likelihood of educational success, it has not paid adequate attention to how state contexts may…

Data from the fifteenth American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages survey on foreign language enrollment are presented in charts which indicate public high school enrollments (in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Latin) from 1980-1985, foreign language enrollment by state, level of instruction, and enrollments in less…

After a period of dramatic growth in secondary school completion in Australia, school retention rates are declining. Analysis of state, system, geographic, social, and gender patterns suggests that during the 1990s the downturn in completion rate has been uneven; some groups who had come to rely on schooling during the 1980s for future economic…