Starting with the high school graduating Class of 2009, Success Boston has provided transition coaching to Boston Public Schools (BPS) high school graduates, many of whom are from groups traditionally underrepresented in college. In the first few years of Success Boston Coaching (SBC), the program served approximately 300 students per year. In…

In 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched a new program--Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE)--aimed at improving college graduation rates. A randomized-control evaluation of the program found a nearly 12 percentage point increase in graduation five years after college entry. Using this impact estimate and national data on…

Low completion rates of math courses pose a major challenge for community college students' educational progress and outcomes. Contextualized instruction has been identified as a promising approach to removing some of the longstanding barriers within math teaching and learning. Still, the empirical base on this topic remains small, with…

According to the National Alliance for Equity (NAPE) (2019), out of a total of 3,168 students enrolled in Career and Technical Education courses at William Penn High School, there are 532 Students with Disabilities (SWD). In 2017 and 2018, NAPE reported that only 66% of students with disabilities left William Penn High School with no post…

Over two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies provide a formal mentorship program to their employees. Mentorship programs in any organization have been identified with increased retention, improvement of human capital formation and leader development. Mentoring, whether formal or informal, has been shown to be equally important in institutions of…

The Campaign for Emergency Student Aid (CESA) is a unique United Negro College Fund (UNCF) scholarship program that provides "just-in-time" financial aid to historically black college and university (HBCU) students poised to graduate, but short of funding. In 2018, the Kresge Foundation provided UNCF with funding to better understand how…

Recent studies of charter school effectiveness have questioned whether charter school networks can produce a lasting impact on students' long-term outcomes. Our study is the first to examine this issue at the network of Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, which primarily serve disadvantaged students of color and constitute the nation's…

Placement policies are intended to match students with appropriate courses in order to improve student success, but how do you evaluate these policies? In this article, we evaluate four placement policies at Towson University by considering three categories of outcomes: long-term outcomes such as graduation and retention rates, short-term or…

This research examines the dual credit and early college program options for school districts planning high school and college collaborations. It utilizes a quasi-experimental design from existing data at a community college that has a well-established dual credit and early college program that offers the students the option of Pell in high school…

Basic needs insecurity -- including housing and food insecurity, as well as lack of access to healthcare, childcare, transportation, and other basic needs -- is a critical barrier that can undermine persistence and completion rates for postsecondary students. The gaps in covering critical costs such as housing and food are pervasive among students…

Objective: Although most community college students intend to transfer to a 4-year college, few ultimately do. We sought to assess how student experiences of the Exploring Transfer (ET) program influenced transfer rates. The ET program was offered by a private, 4-year liberal arts college. Methods: We used data from a cross-sectional survey of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) on academic performance of non-traditional students and perceived experiences of its recent graduates at a public state college in Georgia. A mixed-methods design was employed for data collection including (1) year-to-year retention rates of 480 SSS and…

The Texas Education Code (§ 29.051) requires school districts to provide every language minority student with the opportunity to participate in either a bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) program. This evaluation report summarizes the performance of students who participated in the district's bilingual and ESL programs during the…

This professional practice dissertation is an action research study that examined the impact alternative high school programs (AHSPs) have on the graduation rates of Black students who attend these programs. Data were gathered through the use of surveys, interviews, a focus group, and an expert panel that incorporated feedback from students,…

Due to its emphasis on academics and exclusion of athletic scholarships, the NCAA's Division III (DIII) is often praised by coaches, media, and higher education leaders for offering the purest form of collegiate athletics. However, the academics-first philosophy and higher graduation rates the NCAA celebrates for most of its sports are not…