This article uses survey data gathered in fall 2020 and spring 2021 from students at a public, midwestern university to explore the factors affecting self-reports of learning during the pandemic. The consistent finding is that social relationships--support from professors and connections to peers--are critical. The impact of social relationships…

The 2014 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the Mackinac Center's second effort to measure high school performance. The first high school assessment was published in 2012, followed by the Center's 2013 elementary and middle school report card, which used a similar methodology to evaluate school performance. The…

Over the past 15 years, federal, state, and local officials have pursued a broad range of reforms aimed at ensuring that the nation's public school system is more accountable--that it delivers a rich, full education for children in communities across the country. New research from the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda suggests that there are…

Assessing a high school's effectiveness is not straightforward. Comparing a school's standardized test scores to those of other schools is one approach to measuring effectiveness, but a major objection to this method is that students' test scores tend to be related to students' "socioeconomic" status--family household income, for…

IN THE FALL SEMESTER 1961 AT GRAND RAPIDS JUNIOR COLLEGE, MICHIGAN, ALL FRESHMEN WHOSE HIGH SCHOOL GRADE AVERAGES WERE BETWEEN 1.5 AND 2.5 WERE ENROLLED IN A GENERAL STUDIES CURRICULUM. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RECORDS OF 398 SUCH STUDENTS SHOWED LOW CORRELATIONS BETWEEN FIRST SEMESTER COLLEGE GRADES AND SCORES ON MEASURES OF SCHOLASTIC…

The high school has paradoxically undergone a loss in status while gaining in importance for young people. Education has become essential to survival in today's world. Along with the government's financial neglect of public high schools in favor of the development of post secondary institutions, the high school's educational task has become more…

In a longitudinal study of a 1939-40 birth cohort of Michigan men, the educational, occupational, and earnings costs of discontinuous patterns of school attendance over the life cycle were examined. The intracohort analysis aimed to identify plausible causal antecedents and consequences of discontinuities in schooling in the context of the…

The basic theory underlying this research is that the behavior of children in school, especially their achievement in academic subjects, is a function in part of the subculture of the school. It is hypothesized that each school has a set of norms, evaluations, and expectations characterizing the achievement expected of students in general and of…