Most colleges and universities in the United States require students to take the SAT or ACT as part of the college application process. These tests are high stakes in at least three ways. First, most universities factor scores on these tests into admissions decisions. Second, higher scores can increase a student's chances of being admitted to…

This study surveyed 289 alumni of a specialized Title IV-E program that prepares undergraduate social work students for careers in public child welfare, examining factors such as turnover rates, adherence to strengths-based practice principles, perceptions of work conditions, and intent to stay. Findings indicate that graduates of this program…

This longitudinal study assesses the impact of the University of Arizona's New Start Summer Program (NSSP) on participants' first year GPA and retention, controlling for incoming student characteristics. While programmatic participation significantly predicted first-year GPA and retention, this relationship became insignificant when controlling…

Background/Context: Existing evaluations of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) charter school programs suggest that these programs may potentially be very effective in closing the academic achievement gap. Purpose/Objective: The purpose of the current study is to investigate the possibility of an internal…

According to Sparks (2011),"the cost of college is increasing faster than inflation with the government funding over 19 million student loans....Congress is demanding answers from colleges and universities about the quality of their education and the return on the government's investment"(p. 1). According to Bruffee (1999), the current…

First-generation college students and students from low-income families face financial, social, informational, and academic barriers to college completion because of the high cost of postsecondary education, the complexity of navigating college life, misalignment between high school and college academic expectations, and a general lack of guidance…

With two decades of implementation in urban, suburban, rural, remote, tribal, public, private, and charter schools, the TAP System is impacting educators and students across the country. This document summarizes results from prior selected studies of TAP's impact and spotlights several new studies showcasing improved student achievement in…

In this article, we show that the retention and graduation rate of Black male students at institutions of higher education is dismal when compared to other groups. Approximately, 30% of Black college males who enroll in a four-year institution earn a college degree compared to 57% of White male students (Bohrnstedt et al., 2015). Black men find it…

Community colleges play a vital role in postsecondary education, enrolling more than one in every three postsecondary students. While their importance has grown over the past 50 years, their students' success rates remain low. Consequently, community college stakeholders are searching with mounting urgency for approaches that increase students'…

"An overview of contemporary curriculum discourse shows a worrying drift to the technical; in current curriculum debates, technique is winning out over substance, procedure over principles" (Looney 2001, p.149). As a project worker in the School Completion Programme in Ireland I ask what and who education is for and look at to whom and…

Annmarie Guzy, an expert with almost three decades of experience in post-secondary honors education, responds to Jerry Herron's essay, "Notes toward an Excellent Marxist-Elitist Honors Admissions Policy," which argues that "a well-conceived admissions policy tells us much more than whom to recruit; it becomes the basis for a…

Teachers need career pathways that provide new challenges and sustained opportunities for leadership without leaving the classroom. Better opportunities for leadership and innovative pathways help to increase the retention of strong teachers. Although few such programs existed several years ago, a growing number of states, districts, charter…

This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of a combined tutoring and mentoring intervention for urban, low-income Black youth during the transition to high school. Participants were 118 ninth-grade students (experimental n = 69; comparison n = 49). After 7 months in the intervention program, students in the experimental group showed…

The attainment in national examinations and progress of pupils to the age of 16 in London is the highest in England. Nevertheless, there is still a significant number of 16- to 19-year-olds who are not in employment, education, or training (NEET). Those who are the most vulnerable to becoming NEET are the young people who have disengaged from…

States, programs, and schools have long focused on the inputs of teacher preparation--the rules for candidates and the preparation programs they attend--because inputs were thought to predict teacher effectiveness, and because they were often the best option available. But in the early 2000s, policymakers began trying to evaluate preparation…