This study evaluated the effectiveness of a solution-focused, alternative school in preventing students from dropping out of high school. A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest group design was used with 85 students to examine differences in credits earned, attendance, and graduation rates. Follow-up data on students in the experimental group were…

After more than five decades of racial integration and four decades of affirmative action, most of the nation's colleges and universities have not come close to eliminating the performance gap that separates many black, Hispanic, and Native American students from their white and Asian-American counterparts. Although some colleges say they are…

The purpose of this publication is to provide basic descriptive information about the 100 largest school districts (ranked by student membership) in the United States (50 states and the District of Columbia) and other jurisdictions (Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Defense schools, Puerto Rico, and four outlying areas: American Samoa, Guam,…

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…