This paper, the second annual report by the Arizona Education Policy Initiative (AEPI), is a collection of policy briefs on key issues in Arizona education. The authors of these briefs are on the faculty of Arizona's three public universities: Arizona State University (ASU), Northern Arizona University (NAU), and the University of Arizona (UA).…

Graduating more students prepared to meet the social, civic, and economic challenges of coming decades is a national priority. Indeed, institutional graduation rates are being scrutinized by state legislatures and by those in Congress drafting the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Every college and university can improve its graduation…

This report examines trends in enrollment, degrees awarded, and other selected data from Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida (ICUF) accountability reports published between 1996 and 2001. Were data were available, comparisons were made for Nova Southeastern University (NSU) and the State University System of Florida (SUS). Information…

Texas has apparently achieved great success in closing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students, at least in the lower grades. Texas students in all grades have made substantial gains on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). The effect of TAAS-type accountability on student performance in the higher grades is important,…

The only way to ensure that all young people graduate from high school ready for college, work, and life is through the concerted, coordinated efforts of educators, students, policymakers, parents, and business and community leaders. People need to take stock of what they know about high schools--about what students need, what schools should be…

Closing the Gaps by 2015 was adopted in October 2000 by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board with strong support of the state's educational, business, and political communities. The plan, which is directed at closing educational gaps within Texas, as well as between Texas and other states, has four goals: (1) to close the gaps in student…

Ten-year trends in the retention, transfer, and graduation of first-time, full-time Maryland public community college students are presented in this report. Tables track students two, three, and four years after matriculation and are broken down by gender and ethnic categories. When considering this data, it must be remembered that retention,…

Although substantial attention has been given to federal strategies for improving college access, too little attention has been given to the impact of state finance strategies on academic preparation and access for prepared students. This report provides the following: (1) a review of prior access studies; (2) a new conceptual model for assessing…

Community colleges are a crucial point of access to higher education for low-income, minority, and other underserved students. These groups are overrepresented (with respect to their share of undergraduate enrollment) in two year and less than two year post secondary institutions. The community college access mission is built on low tuition, …

This 2004 annual report, continues to investigate the complexities of low achievement that evidently leads to the pernicious dropout problem that North Carolina?s American Indian students are experiencing. Although students in grades three through eight are showing gains on the End of Grade tests and high school students have continued to improve…

For too long, education in West Virginia has operated as a series of discrete silos: early childhood programs, elementary schools, middle grades, high schools, vocational and technical programs, two-year community and technical colleges, workforce training, four-year colleges and universities, and graduate education. As students move from one silo…

Asserting that graduation and stopout are "competing" or correlated events and that they often should be modeled as such, this study demonstrated that factors affecting timely graduation (e.g., financial aid) often have time-varying effects, and that ignoring these time-varying effects can lead to spurious conclusions that may result in…

"And so a lot of times I felt out of place, because you see all white faces. You know I'm the only fly in the buttermilk, so that took some getting used to ..." These words, shared by a black student during an interview for the present study, poignantly reflect the essence of the experience of being a minority student on a predominately white…

This article asserts low graduation rates, a lack of information for those who do graduate, and a perceived hostile environment on some campuses cut the college matriculation rates of African American students, making them an endangered species on some campuses. It discusses the root causes and effects of the low population of African American…

Across the country, official reports of high school students out of school do not always reflect the scope and extent of an urgent but neglected national education problem: The nation's graduation rate is in steady decline. An increasing percentage of adolescents are not graduating from school in four or even five years. A related cause for…