Background: Education plays a pivotal role in empowering individuals with the knowledge and skills needed for careers, economic progress, and societal engagement. Dropping out of school before achieving a qualification undermines these opportunities and has an impact on individuals and society (Audit Commission, 2010; OECD, 2023). International…

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program that serves young people ages 16 to 18 who are struggling to complete their high school credential. This is the ninth report in an annual series that RAND researchers have issued. The prior annual reports cover 2015 through 2022. Each annual report documents the…

Students who have dropped out of high school--and those at risk of doing so--are at greater risk of lifelong poverty, involvement with the criminal justice system, dependence on government welfare programs, and even premature death. In the last few years, however, the problems at high schools have compounded, as pandemic-era school closures led to…

Most students who begin at a community college do not complete their desired credential. Many students fail to graduate due to various barriers other than their academic performance. To encourage previously successful non-completers to re-enroll and eventually graduate, a growing number of community colleges have implemented re-enrollment…

Despite the substantial efforts made by higher education institutions to reduce dropout rates, a considerable proportion of students still discontinues their initial study program. In view of this situation, the present study aims to investigate whether participation in first-year courses for personal and academic support goes along with a…

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program for youth ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. This report covers the program years 2018-2019 and is the fourth in a series of annual reports that RAND Corporation researchers have issued over the course of a research project…

Many youth in America are not on track for labor market success. One factor that increases the risk of poor labor market outcomes among these youth is dropping out of school (Rumberger 2020). Youth who drop out of school are at greater risk for job instability and for lower longterm earnings (Hair et al. 2009). They are also more likely to…

Background: The principal destinations for school leavers with intellectual disabilities from special schools in Ireland are further education (FE) through providers such as the National Learning Network or training and employment (TE) within adult day services and rehabilitation centres. In 2015, a number of inherent barriers to participation in…

In this paper, we present an extended evaluation of a course recommender system designed to support students who struggle in the first semesters of their studies and are at risk of dropping out. The system, which was developed in earlier work using a student-centered design and which is based on the explainable k-nearest neighbor algorithm,…

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program for youth ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. The program provides classroom instruction and other structured activities to young people at 40 different sites. The focus of this report is on determining how sites can measure…

Context: Vocational education and training (VET) plays a key role in reducing early leaving from education and training, and integrating youth at risk in upper secondary education. To ensure that more young people complete upper secondary education, the OECD suggests designing interventions that address the specific needs of youth at risk such as…

Regular participation in afterschool programs by elementary students in low income communities may lead to improved college and career readiness. This study found that students who had high levels of participation in the LA's BEST afterschool program over three years were five percent less likely to dropout and six percent more likely to complete…

School closures from COVID-19 have resulted in large learning losses, from 0.05 to 0.17 standard deviations in high income countries, equivalent to two to six months of lost learning. However, the extent of primary-level learning loss in low-income countries remains unclear, studies lack information on individual students' learning trajectories,…

The study presented in this article gathered and examined the views of key stakeholders in rural South African secondary schools on strategies for curbing learner dropout. The investigation, which employed a qualitative case study research model, sampled 20 secondary school learners aged 17-20 (11 female, 9 male), 20 youth aged 17-22 (11 female, 9…

Contribution: A peer-mentoring plan designed to support engineering students during their transition from high school to university. This article addresses the adaptation challenges faced by first-year students in engineering programs. Background: The transition to university is a critical period for students, marked by significant lifestyle…