Our study adds to prior work on Indiana's Twenty-first Century Scholars(TFCS) program by focusing on whether participating in--rather than completing--the program affects the likelihood of students going to college and where they initially enrolled. We first employ binary and multinomial logistic regression to obtain estimates of the impact of the…

The explorative study reported here describes youth participants in three animal science-related career development events from 2010. Variables included students' self-efficacy, task value motivation, career interests, and to what extent they utilized resources in preparation. It was concluded that all three groups were self-efficacious,…

The study featured in this What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Quick Review examined the effect of charter school attendance on annual student achievement growth in math and reading. The study analyzed data from a large sample of students in grades 4 through 9 in Indiana from 2004 to 2008. The study found that charter school students' annual math score…

The purpose of this study was two-fold in nature. First, this study sought to identify whether extracurricular participation for students in a rural, Grades 7-12 building created significant differences when examining academic performance, attendance, gender, lunch status, and student discipline compared to their non-participant peers. Secondly,…

A "train-the-trainer" workshop was developed to evaluate and enhance presentational skills and offered to 14 youth in grades 6-12 and 9 administrators from youth-focused community agencies in Indiana. Upon workshop completion, 7 youth and 6 adults functioned as presenters of a 1 1/2-hour module on refusal and resistance skills to 95…

The transition from middle school to high school represents a significant event in the lives of adolescents, one that necessitates support from and collaboration among teachers, parents, counselors, and administrators at both educational levels. Successful transitions place particular emphasis on ninth-grade initiatives and can create one of…

The transition into high school is a critical point in the educational pipeline, and ninth-grade can be characterized as one of its leakiest junctures. This policy brief examines how some states and districts are currently easing the transition into high school for students. It focuses on five key challenges that states, districts and schools…

Personalized learning: Everyone knows it needs to happen, but how? It is one thing to believe in the importance of high school reform. It is quite another to embrace a system that helps every student leave high school with a diploma and plans for postsecondary education or training that lead to productive and self-sufficient adulthoods. This…