After being identified as a school in need of improvement, one struggling inner city high school implemented an evening school alternative program to reduce their suspension, failure, and dropout rates. In its first year, the program graduated 100% of the student participants, all of whom were in danger of dropping out, or being kicked out of high…

The Optional Flexible School Day Program (OFSDP) is approved by the Texas Commissioner of Education and is offered by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) to provide students with flexible school hours and days of attendance. The goal of the program is to improve the graduation rates for students who are in danger of dropping out of…

The Optional Flexible School Day Program (OFSDP) is approved by the Texas Commissioner of Education and is offered by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) to provide students with flexible school hours and days of attendance. The goal of the program is to improve the graduation rates for students who are in danger of dropping out of…

Research confirms that when students disengage from learning, there is a greatly increased risk of them dropping out of school and not completing secondary education (Year 12). In an Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) report on Equity in Education [OECD. 2012. "Investing in Equity in Education Pays off", in…

In this article, we perform cost-effectiveness analysis on interventions that improve the rate of high school completion. Using the What Works Clearinghouse to select effective interventions, we calculate cost-effectiveness ratios for five youth interventions. We document wide variation in cost-effectiveness ratios between programs and between…

The Optional Flexible School Day Program (OFSDP) is approved by the Texas Commissioner of Education and is offered by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) to provide students with flexible school hours and days of attendance. The program offers opportunities for students to make progress toward completing high school if they are unable…

Project GOAL is a systematic dropout prevention model including individual and peer-mediated group interventions for at-risk students. This article provides an overview of the Project GOAL model and describes a 2-year experimental pilot study of Project GOAL with a cohort of eighth-and ninth-grade students in a low-income school district in the…

The transition to undergraduate study is often a challenging step for students as they progress from relatively smaller school/college classes with a high degree of contact time with familiar staff to a university department where one-on-one interaction with staff members is significantly reduced. The first year tutorials module offers one of the…

This paper describes a development project aimed at reducing the large number of dropouts in online degree project courses. The idea was that the introduction of group tutorials in virtual seminars, combined with extensive support materials, would reduce dropout rates. Among the students who participated, the dropout rate was reduced by 50%…

In 2010-11, the School District of Philadelphia (the District) operated thirteen accelerated high schools that served approximately 2,000 under-credited, over-age students. Each of the accelerated schools was managed by one of seven external providers, each with its own educational approach, and each with a contractual agreement with the…

Concerned about the persistently high dropout rates from big-city secondary schools, education leaders are trying a new approach to increasing the graduation rate--multiple pathways to graduation. Multiple pathways initiatives are relatively new and far from proven. Even the most advanced examples face significant issues, i.e., the need to…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

This paper contains a study of student attendance problems in the New York City school system. The goals of the study were to determine the degree to which the chancellor's attendance program had been implemented at the school level, to explore some attendance-related issues, and to make recommendations for action by the board of education.…

The Virginia Education Association and the Appalachia Educational Laboratory jointly sponsored a group of six educators to study descriptions of over 100 programs for at-risk students in Virginia public schools. The group developed a Survey of Programs for At-Risk Students that called for an extensive program description and mailed the survey to…