Earning a college degree increases a person's life outcomes in income, employment, health, and quality of life. The average person with a bachelor's degree earns almost twice as much as a high school graduate and nearly triple that of someone who did not finish high school. The unemployment rate for people with bachelor's degrees is about…

The four-year cohort graduation rate for WCPSS [Wake County Public School System] in 2009-10 was 78.2%, down slightly from 2008-09, when 78.4% of that year's cohort graduated within four years. Female students in WCPSS had a much higher graduation rate than male students (82.9% vs. 73.6%). Graduation rates for the Asian (91.3%), Hispanic/Latino…

In this paper I evaluate the effect of student aid on the success of academic studies. I focus on two dimensions, the duration of study and the probability of actually graduating with a degree. To determine the impact of financial student aid, I estimate a discrete-time duration model allowing for competing risks to account for different exit…

Communities In Schools, Inc. (CIS) is a nationwide initiative designed to connect needed community resources with schools to help students, particularly those identified as at-risk, successfully learn, stay in school, and prepare for life. As part of a comprehensive 5-year national evaluation of CIS, ICF International conducted a school-level…

This paper suggests an alternative to the standard practice of measuring the graduation rate performance using regression analysis. The alternative is production frontier analysis. Production frontier analysis is appealing because it compares an institution's graduation rate to the best performance instead of the average performance. The paper…

This High Impact Practices (HIPS) contribute to higher retention and graduation rates. HIPS are effective for racial and ethnic minorities in particular, who disproportionately experience high and persistent levels of postsecondary attrition. Little is known about the mechanism by which HIPS promote retention. Based on a random survey of 268…

This white paper was prepared at the request of the Advisory Committee to the Athletic Study Center as a result of their concern over poor graduation rates in football as released by the NCAA in 2012. The paper received extensive review by the members of that committee as well as several other knowledgeable faculty and senior administrators before…

The study reviewed in this paper examined the effect of school choice on the criminal activity, academic achievement, and high school graduation rate of more than 2,000 male middle and high school students in North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district. For the 2002-03 school year, all district students were given the choice to either…

The "Comparative Indicators of Education" report series has been published on a biennial basis since it began in 2002, although this year's is the first to expand its focus to the G-20 countries, having previously been focused on the G-8 countries. "Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries:…

The purpose of this quantitative, causal comparative study was to examine the extent to which attending an alternative educational program at some point during high school could likely influence the graduation rate of at-risk students in an urban school district in the state of Missouri. Four years of nonrandom samples of graduation data from 2006…

In 1997, policymakers in Kentucky enacted perhaps the most sweeping higher education reform legislation of any state in the past two decades. Kentucky's Postsecondary Education Improvement Act (House Bill 1) has been heralded by many higher education leaders across the U.S. as one of the great success stories--a rare instance when a state's…

Since the federal law IDEIA of 2004 allowed for the determination of LD eligibility for Special Education services, it was expected that School Psychologists would have begun spending less time devoted to standardized tests, and more time providing other services such as counseling, consultation, and interventions. Moreover, any benefit that these…

This study compared differences in diploma and graduation dropout rates among students with and without disabilities, analyzed differences in various graduation-types by disabilities, and offered recommendations to improve graduation rates through evidence-based practices. The geographic catchment area of this study was limited to twelve Southern…

Identifying what commonalities exist in high schools where students consistently outperform other demographically similar students is of particular interest to administrators and practitioners looking to increase graduation rates among all students. Schools that particularly improve the performance of students with special needs and those from…

It is widely accepted that postsecondary education has become a necessity for US youth. College access, however, has been found not to be equal for all. As a result, federally funded college-readiness programs, such as Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP), have been established to increase the numbers of…