Non-continuation in higher education is rising up the political agenda. In the vernacular, it is often described negatively as 'dropping out'. But despite any terminological confusion, all such measures describe a gap between learners' original stated intentions and their situation when they leave their course. This policy note looks at the scale…

The growing number of educational options and job opportunities has made career planning increasingly complex and uncertain. To help students navigate these choices, this paper introduces Career Guidance Application (CGA), a tool designed to assist secondary level students (grades 9-12) in selecting their field of study based on their academic and…

Male minority students with disabilities drop out at higher rates than their white peers. Approximately 33% of American Indian or Alaskan Native, 19% of Asian or Pacific Islander, 32% of African-American, and 27% of Latino students with disabilities dropped out compared to 15.5% of White students with a disability (Grady & Bost, 2014).…

The purpose of this guidebook is to provide guidance to school districts in completing their local Tribal Education Status Report (TESR). Any data that is reported in the local TESRs has to comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) which is a Federal law that protects the privacy of…

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…

The Forum Guide to Early Warning Systems provides information and best practices to help education agencies plan, develop, implement, and use an early warning system in their agency to inform interventions that improve student outcomes. The document includes a review of early warning systems and their use in education agencies and explains the…

The purpose of this document is twofold. First, it provides a brief summary of states' Federal Fiscal Year 2015 (FFY2015) IDEA Part B Indicators 1: graduation rates, 2: dropout rates, 13: transition components of the IEP, and 14: post-school outcomes. These Indicators pertain only to students with disabilities and are reported yearly to the Office…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

According to the European Commission's "Europe 2020" strategy, the early school leaving (ESL) rate in European Union (EU) Member States must be reduced to a maximum of 10 per cent by 2020. This paper proposes a nonlinear distribution method based on dynamic targets for reducing the percentage of early school leavers. The aim of this…

Roughly defined as grades four through eight, the middle grades are a known pressure point in the educational pipeline -- a make or break period for determining future academic success. Research has shown that students who are not proficient in reading by the beginning of fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Similarly,…

The purpose of this report is threefold: to provide a brief overview of national dropout issues--both data and risk factors, with emphasis on those in rural areas--and then focusing on the particular factors that have the greatest impact on students in Mississippi; present the critical challenges for rural areas; and finally to recommend…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

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.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

The Communities In Schools (CIS) Model of Integrated Student Supports aims to reduce dropout rates by providing students with integrated and tiered support services based on their levels of need. The model includes preventive services that are available to all students (Level 1 services) as well as intensive, targeted, and sustained services…