Increasingly, student success in college is gauged by retention and graduation rates. Understanding the factors that influence student success can assist practitioners in terms of programming and institutional investments. This study evaluated factors such as residential living, attendance programs, demographic attributes, average class size, and…

A broader understanding of the importance of student behaviors and school climate as drivers of academic performance and the wider acceptance that schools have a role in nurturing the "whole child" have increased attention to indicators that go beyond traditional metrics focused on proficiency in math and reading. The 2015 passage of the…

We measure the relationship between travel time to school and students' likelihood of transfer (and where they transfer to), attendance, and test scores in Washington, DC. Travel time to school is especially salient in DC, where roughly three-quarters of students attend a school other than the one tied to their neighborhood. A longer commute is…

Driven by a combination of concern for historically high suspension rates and substantial disproportionalities in suspension use, a recent wave of education reforms encourages schools to reduce their use of suspensions for student behavior management. Both academic and political discourse has focused on the extensive use of suspension for…

Driven by a combination of concern for historically high suspension rates and substantial disproportionalities in suspension use, a recent wave of education reforms encourages schools to reduce their use of suspensions for student behavior management. Both academic and political discourse has focused on the extensive use of suspension for…

This study is an examination of the relationship between participation in precollege outreach programs and students' college access patterns (i.e., enrollment patterns and timing in postsecondary institutions), comparing different racial/ ethnic groups. The study included a series of logistic regression models to investigate relationships between…

The goal of this practice guide is to offer educators specific, evidence-based recommendations that address the challenges of preventing dropout in secondary schools. This guide synthesizes the best publicly available research and shares practices that are supported by evidence. It is intended to be practical and easy for teachers and school…

The purpose of this paper is to open the methods, construction and assumptions of a new performance benchmark to examination, critique, and improvement by technical experts. The paper begins with known technical questions about this new benchmark. In includes suggestions made by technical advisors. It then details the construction of the…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers state leaders the opportunity to refocus their education systems on improving opportunity and outcomes for young people who have been underserved for far too long. The law includes a number of important requirements to focus on equity in school accountability, but it also leaves many key decisions up to…

School attendance is a rising issue in public schools. Students regularly absent from school can end up involved in destructive behaviors and dropout of school. Family characteristics are strong determining factors in students' school attendance. This presents the question, "Can family involvement improve public school students'…

Truancy laws have an interesting history in America. In the past, truancy laws were rarely enforced and resulted in the student's removal from school rather than troubleshooting the bigger issues that led to their absenteeism. Today, legislators are holding the families of truant students accountable and requiring school districts to keep a close…

This dissertation consists of three separate essays on the economics of education. In the first chapter, co-authored with Esteban Aucejo, studies the relative effectiveness of reducing absences to extending the school calendar on test score performance. Using administrative data for North Carolina public schools, we exploit a state policy that…

Using nationally representative data from the Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009 Cohort (n = 2,842), this study examined the implications of 3- and 4-year-old's absences from Head Start for their early academic learning. The findings from this study revealed that children who missed more days of school, and especially those who were…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among New York State's APPR teacher evaluation system, poverty, attendance rates, per pupil spending, and academic achievement. The data from this study included reports on 110 school districts, over 30,000 educators and over 60,000 students from Nassau and Suffolk counties posted on the…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a nonprofit organization that grants college scholarships to all Pittsburgh Public Schools students meeting the academic requirements. Thanks to the Pittsburgh Promise, the children of Pittsburgh have an opportunity that few other children in the country do: to attend college without the additional, often insurmountable…