ArtScan at a Glance summarizes state policies for arts education identified in statute or administrative code for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity. Information is based on a comprehensive search of state education statute and codes on each state's relevant websites. Complete results from…

This paper investigates the effect of high school graduation requirements on arrest rates with a specific focus on the number of required courses and the use of exit exams. Identifying variation comes from state-by-cohort changes in the laws governing high school graduation requirements from 1980 to 2010. Combining these law changes with arrest…

Retention rates of honors students in experiential learning programs have dropped in recent years as students left these programs at an unprecedented rate -- much to the dismay of administrators (Deka, 2020). Decreased year-to-year retention numbers affect the anticipated growth rates and sustainability of these programs. As current honors…

Over the last decade, secondary schools around the United States have rapidly adopted ethnic studies courses. For instance, California's governor mandated ethnic studies as a high school graduation requirement in 2021 (Magcalas, 2023). According to scholars, ethnic studies courses offer educational experiences that disrupt the erasure and…

General Education (GE) is a distinctive feature of U.S. higher education. Regional accreditation standards emphasize the inclusion of a GE component in degree programs, the identification of learning outcomes, and the assessment of those outcomes. Although GE reform is occurring on many campuses, the role of student choice of GE courses has…

The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) is committed to providing guidance and support for high school faculty, staff, and administrators to ensure clear pathways to graduation. Many high school students face challenges in accrual and recovery of credit towards graduation. Class offerings, credit calculation, and course…

This nation needs many more students to attend college and graduate, but several things are getting in the way, particularly for marginalized students. Among those who do get in, many are unable to finish. Children in this country need to be successful in school, graduate, and have options to either attend college or join the workforce. This…

Drawing on case study evidence, this article explores the development of compulsory courses in a China's high-level comprehensive university, which has achieved good results in the procedure of Quality Assessment of Undergraduate Education (QAUE) and China Discipline Ranking (CDR) issued by Ministry of Education (MOE). The general undergraduate…

All undergraduate students at Saint Mary's College of California, a small, private institution, are required to complete an engaged learning (EL) course or experience for graduation. This graduation requirement was established to provide students with the opportunity to learn in and from the community; an important value from the principles of the…

The physical education teacher education (PETE) landscape is in need of adjusting the types of credit hours allocated within its programs. In doing so, preservice physical education teachers will be better equipped to take on the challenges of today's physical education milieu. PETE program credit hours have remained similar over the past 3…

During the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forever changed the lives of Americans. Being an educator, I experienced the school shutdowns of March 2020 and felt the impacts on our educational system on a personal level. More students than ever failed courses needed to be promoted and to graduate high school. This led to more students at my…

This article showcases an instructor-librarian collaborative model for teaching critical information literacy (CIL) skills in a higher education course by incorporating interactive workshops into a sequence of required course assignments. Using an asset-focused design, this assignment sequence allows students to first demonstrate their existing…

Following thirty-nine states, Illinois became the 40th state to make Civic Education a mandatory class for students to graduate high school in 2015. The mandated class is a semester long and usually occurs in the students Junior or Senior year of high school. The Illinois General Assembly then passed a separate bill that indicated that the 2016-17…

Nationally, credit recovery has been used as a strategy to encourage and enable students to re-take previously failed courses needed to graduate. The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) offers both in-person and online options for recovering failed or missing credits required for graduation. This study provides a snapshot of the district's…

Undergraduate research in Japan, called graduation research (GR), is comparable to that in other countries and is defined here as a final-year curricular activity that completes undergraduate study. This article aims to elucidate GR to contribute to the scholarship of undergraduate research from an international perspective. The main findings…