Although Oregon has made recent gains in its overall high school graduation rate, 21?percent of public school students entering grade?9 in 2014 did not graduate within four years, by 2018. To improve graduation rates, Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 98 in 2016 to fund dropout prevention and college and career readiness initiatives in high…

Building on previous research showing how well ninth-grade student behaviors predict on-time high school graduation, this experimental study investigates the impact of a ninth-grade intervention on student attendance and course passing. The study, conducted in 41 geographically and demographically diverse high schools within a single state,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a school-wide attendance and truancy intervention and universal procedures (ATI-UP) on student attendance. Student attendance was measured through average daily attendance and the percentage of students who would be considered chronically absent, i.e., missing 10% or more of school. The…

A growing body of research points to the ways in which principals influence teachers, classrooms, and, ultimately, student achievement. New Leaders aims to prepare transformational school leaders by partnering with districts and charter schools to offer rigorous, research-based training for aspiring principals. The Aspiring Principals program is…

Ninth Grade Academies (NGAs)--also called Freshman Academies--have attracted national attention as a particularly intensive and promising approach for supporting a successful transition for high school freshmen. An NGA is a self-contained learning community for ninth-graders that operates as a school within a school. NGAs have four core structural…

Although high school graduation rates are rising--the national rate was 82 percent during the 2013/14 school year (U.S. Department of Education, 2015)--dropping out remains a persistent problem in the Midwest and nationally. Many schools now use early warning systems to identify students who are at risk of not graduating, with the goal of…

Early college high schools are a new and rapidly spreading model that merges the high school and college experiences and that is designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and enroll and succeed in postsecondary education. This article presents results from a federally funded experimental study of the impact of the…

Employing a randomized field trial, this 3-year study explored the effects of a multiyear summer school program in preventing the cumulative effect of summer learning losses and promoting longitudinal achievement growth, for a total treatment group of 438 students from high-poverty schools. Longitudinal outcomes for the participants were…

A study of eight successive freshman cohorts at the University of South Carolina found that both participating in a freshman orientation seminar and living on campus reduced freshman dropout rates. Students who both participated in the seminar and lived on campus had the lowest dropout rate, whereas those who did neither had the highest dropout…