How can teachers and administrators steer students toward graduation and away from dropping out? What determining factors contribute to a student's choice to drop out? Why is high school graduation such an important issue in society today? Effective prevention and intervention programs for the most vulnerable students are key to improving…

The Miami Valley Tech Prep Consortium, headquartered at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, engages a wide range of students in Tech Prep pathways that span high school and college. Students are offered a blend of technical and academic coursework, as well as extensive supports enhanced by a sophisticated professional development system.…

Upward Bound is a federally funded program designed to prepare economically and educationally disadvantaged high school students for postsecondary education. Each year, approximately thirty-three thousand students are served by the more than four hundred Upward Bound programs. Several studies have documented the success of Upward Bound programs in…

This report describes the effects of Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD) on student progress at three high schools in Houston (the initiative's original site) and at high schools in two other school districts (Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia). MDRC--a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization--conducted a third-party…

This report describes the best practices described by national experts, some of the actions that are currently being taken by Colorado institutions of higher education and recommendations for improving programs to retain and graduate minority and low-income students. Over the course of the taskforce's meetings, it became clear that Colorado's…

This is a study of high schools and their districts receiving Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) grants that have used those grants to support implementation of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) model. Over a 4-year period 10 such high schools in 5 districts have been examined to determine if schoolwide or district-wide…

The purpose of the study was to explore the academic careers of students who took AP Exams and to compare their careers with those who did not take AP Exams. For most AP Exams, students with AP grades of 3 or better had higher grade averages in intermediate college courses than did non-AP students who first took an introductory course. Two…

The Biology Intensive Orientation for Students (BIOS) Program was designed to assess the impact of a 5-d intensive prefreshman program on success and retention of biological science majors at Louisiana State University. The 2005 pilot program combined content lectures and examinations for BIOL 1201, Introductory Biology for Science Majors, as well…

Part of the third-largest school district in the nation, 77 percent of Chicago's nearly 427,000 public school students are poor, as defined by eligibility for participation in free or reduced-cost lunch programs. Many are members of minorities; many have limited proficiency in English. To make a successful transition to college--even to graduate…

Institutional accountability for performance and quality is an evolving topic with immeasurable appeal. Data and sources are abundant, but validated measures and meaningful information are scarce. While pursuing an approach centered on construct validity, this study transforms complex data into useful information. Correlation analysis reveals…

This Opportunity 08 position paper advises that the next President of the United States should focus on lifting the achievement levels of our nation's schoolchildren. It recommends that the new President should mount a determined effort, together with states and local school districts, to boost the academic performance of low achievers by: (1)…

From July 1995 through September 2001, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Ford Foundation (Ford) operated a demonstration of the Quantum Opportunity Program (QOP). QOP offered intensive and comprehensive services to help at-risk youth graduate from high school and enroll in postsecondary education or training. QOP was mainly an…

In this paper the authors illustrate the use of a strict standard for evaluating evidence on programs and strategies designed to improve outcomes for high school students. They explain what they mean by solid evidence, and present examples from multi-site evaluations of three programs. After that they examine some of the evidence on high school…

The consequences of not graduating from high school are increasingly serious for both individuals and society as a whole. As a result, policymakers and the federal requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have placed a new focus on increasing graduation rates and reducing dropout rates. While the dropout problem has generated research and new…

Recognizing the challenges rural districts face in providing broad curricular offerings and supplemental educational services to students, in 2007, the 80th Texas Legislature authorized the creation of a pilot program designed to provide technology-based supplemental educational services to rural school districts that show an overall academic need…