Completing a college degree, or failing to, is a major factor in determining whether a person will have an economically stable future. While it might have been possible a few decades ago to graduate from high school, enter the job market, and find a career that enabled one to earn a solid middle-class life, that path to success has been almost…

In this interview, Maggie MacDonnell, recipient of the 2017 Global Teacher Prize, discusses how growing up near a First Nations reserve in Nova Scotia opened her eyes to inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. She talks about the influence of Moses Coady, who instilled in her an appreciation for co-operative…

Our personal and professional lives intersect: the story of how one young man dropped out of a doctoral program in physics to figure out what to do about the continuing problem of dropout in higher education.

This author argues that college and university education in North America is in trouble. Education surpasses health, war, and the economy as the most important issue for the future. It does not get the attention it deserves because its effects are long term and people have short attention spans. In this article, the author explains why so many…

Persistently high dropout rates are one of the biggest challenges to fulfilling the right to education in India. This paper attempts to assess the magnitude of the problem of dropout. The paper critically reviews the evidence on some of the commonly cited reasons for dropout, including poverty, limited to access to credit, child labour, and…

The federal role in education will soon be transformed in ways that could produce an even greater society than President Lyndon B. Johnson envisioned. The authors identify underlying principles of this new role and describe how it represents a significant departure from the past. Historically, for example, the federal government has been…

African-American student achievement outcomes have been and continue to be a critical concern for education researchers. Much of the framing of African-American student outcomes centers on what is known as achievement gaps that exist between African-American and White students. Unfortunately, these gaps have remained roughly the same since the…

The College Board has just published a "Wake-up Call to the American People and American Educators." In a report entitled "Coming to Our Senses," it argues that this "nation's dominant position in the world order is at great risk.... Across the globe, leaders have put their faith in education. They understand that economic…

This article provides an approach to understanding the widely acknowledged difficulties experienced by young people in the transition from pre-16 to post-16 mathematics. Most approaches to understanding the disenchantment with and drop-out from AS-level mathematics focus on curriculum and assessment. In contrast, this article looks at the role of…

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has measured various types of high school graduation, completion, and dropout rates for decades. In 2006, NCES was directed by senior managers in the Education Department to reduce use of its standard graduation and completion rate measures and instead promote the…

The academic success of students in schools across the state is a top priority for California policy-makers. But for some students, academic goals set by the state remain out of reach. The issue of "CenterView" concentrates of the situation of the more than 74,000 children in the California foster care system. By the standard measures…

This article presents a speech that Senator Barack Obama delivered in Thornton, Colorado, in May 2008, summarizing his education beliefs and proposals. One of the highlights of Obama's education proposal is fixing the broken promises of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). As President, he will work with the nation's governors and educators to create and…

The issue of high school dropouts in America is both serious and important. Statistics, socioeconomic factors that most dropouts may face, preventative methods, and alternative forms of education that can help students still receive an education will be discussed. Dropping out of high school can lead a student to a more likely future of hardships…

The richest nation of the world, the United States still struggles to graduate 50% of its Latina/o high school students. Nominal policy attention on this issue begs the need for bolder and more creative initiatives that call attention to this crisis. States, districts, and schools need to reconfigure this pedagogical crisis by leveraging all…

The size of schools and districts in which they are located has become a salient policy issue in recent years. While consolidation of school districts and expanding high school size were in vogue from the 1960s until recently, funding agencies are now sponsoring projects to reduce school size under the assumption that smaller schools will lead to…