California graduation requirements have been largely unchanged since 2003. Within the state of California, a public-school district has to meet state requirements to offer a high school diploma, but a district can implement additional requirements for students beyond the state minimum. Postsecondary educational eligibility is determined during a…

University administrators, boards of trustees, and state and federal legislators spend significant time and effort focused on retention and graduation rates at American colleges and universities. The California State University (CSU) is no exception with its systemwide focus on Graduation Initiative 2025 which includes a commitment to eliminate…

Recent research suggests that dual enrollment programs are a useful recruiting tool for colleges and universities as many high school students remain at their dual enrollment institution after high school graduation. Students staying enrolled at their dual enrollment institution for college may be beneficial for institutions, but is it beneficial…

Objective: Dual enrollment has become a significant portion of community college enrollment throughout the country. Some scholars have argued that dual enrollment implementation can be used as a viable policy lever to achieve the certificate and associate degree obtainment outcomes identified in "Reclaiming the American Dream," a…

The Maine Community College System is providing this letter in accordance with 20-A MRSA §10013. This law requires the Maine Community College System (MCCS), University of Maine System (UMS), and Maine Maritime Academy (MMA) to provide the following information about first-generation college students by January 15th of each year: (1) data…

The Kansas Graduate and Dropout Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of how the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) calculates and reports the Adjusted Cohort Graduation and Annual Dropout Rates. Sections include: (1) Introduction; (2) Terminology; (3) Data Sources; (4) Graduation Calculations; (5) Dropout Calculation; and (6)…

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney-Vento Act) provides students who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence with the right to the same free, appropriate, public education that other students receive. Each year, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) collects demographic and academic data on students eligible for…

School threat assessment is a violence prevention strategy that has become widely used over the past 20 years; however, the procedures for a threat assessment are not well-known in education and it has received relatively little research attention. This article describes the rationale, procedures, and empirical support for the Comprehensive School…

The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to evaluate the relationships between completion of high school dual enrollment courses and subsequent success of first-time, full-time community college students as measured by completion of an associate degree and time to completion of the degree. In addition to comparing dual and…

The problem addressed in this study is how a College Success course might reverse the trend of lower graduation rates for students with learning disabilities (LDs) who attend a Colorado institution of higher education. Students with LDs graduate at lower rates than the general population, but it is unclear how a College Success course contributes…

Acting on data about both part-time and full-time students is essential to moving the needle on college completion. It also is an equity issue. Part-time student attainment rates severely lag behind those of their full-time counterparts, regardless of sector or timeframe. And part-time students are disproportionately BILPOC (Black, Indigenous,…

This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of nine African American men who graduated from predominantly White institutions (PWIs) in the United States. Prior researchers have indicated that African American men enrolled in predominantly White colleges and universities exhibit lower graduation rates than other ethnic and gender…

Many states use high-school exit examinations to assess students' career and college readiness in core subjects. We find meaningful consequences of barely passing the mathematics examination in Massachusetts, as opposed to just failing it. However, these impacts operate at different educational attainment margins for low-income and higher-income…

The English as a second language (ESL) student population is one of the fastest growing demographics in U.S. public schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). ESL students who attend post-secondary schools are more likely to choose community colleges (David & Kanno, 2020). Despite this, a dearth of research on immigrant ESL…

The problem that was addressed through this study is that the credential completion rate for transfer-in students (TIS) is lower than for first-time, full-time students (FTFT) at Peninsula Community College (PCC, a pseudonym). The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if the completion input (gender, race/ethnicity, age) and…