According to the United States Department of Education (2012, 2016), degree completions are a vital measure of overall institution success. Significantly, declining student persistence rates and low degree completions are consistent problems in public colleges throughout the United States. Not only are diminishing retention and incomplete degrees…

In this article, industry-based certification attainment rates were compared by student ethnicity/race as reported by the Texas Education Agency for the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school years. Through analyses of Texas statewide data, statistically significant differences were revealed in industry-based certification attainment rates…

Philanthropists, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners are increasingly focused on a college completion crisis in the United States. Collectively and independently, they have called for increasing the number of adults with postsecondary certificates and degrees as a national imperative. Using the 2007 administration of the Community College…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Senate Committee Passes Education Appropriations Bill; (2) Upside Down: New Alliance Brief Says Federal Education…

In today's economy, employers increasingly demand that workers have a high school diploma, yet America's graduation rates are unacceptably low, particularly among poor and minority students. Nationally, only about 70 percent of students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma; for African American and Hispanic students, this…

Graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of whether or not the nation's public school system is doing what it is intended to do: enroll, engage, and educate youth to be productive members of society. Since almost 90 percent of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs require some postsecondary education, having a high school diploma and the…

Now that all 50 states and the District of Columbia are building statewide longitudinal data systems, the next step is to ensure that the information in these systems is used to improve student learning. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has identified 10 actions that states can take to ensure that the right data are available and accessible and…