Kennett High School faces an attendance problem with a portion of its Mexican student population. These students vacation for a period of time beyond the winter break established by the district's school calendar. A practice was implemented when staff members noticed that students "disappeared" mostly in December and January. This project took a…

It is generally agreed upon that in order to be an effective, contributing member of society one must work. The current axiom in education today revolves around preparing students to be college and career ready, with the ultimate goal of preparing students for the workforce but very little research has gone in to identifying the most effective way…

Relations among a set of cognitive-motivational variables were examined with the intent being to assess and clarify the nature of their interconnections within a middle school sample. Student perception of hope, which includes perceptions of agency and pathways, was investigated, along with personal achievement goal orientation, as predictors of…

This study compares the college freshman grade point averages of public and private high school graduates attending a "more selective" private university. Though graduates of public high schools had slightly lower SAT scores than graduates of private high schools, their end-of-freshman-year grade point averages were somewhat higher…

Academic achievement in higher education is an important current policy issue because institutions are under public pressure to justify state subsidies and rising tuitions with demonstrable gains in student learning. This article uses data from three flagship public universities to examine the effects of financial aid on first-through fourth-year…

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the College Sports Project (CSP) in 2003 to focus on academics and athletics within Division III. The CSP includes a longitudinal data collection effort comparing athletes to nonathletes at over 80 Division III institutions in the United States. This chapter draws on the CSP to highlight the challenges small…

International graduate students experience a number of unique challenges as they transition through their training programs. Surprisingly, relatively little research has been conducted on perhaps one of the most crucial predictors of international students' retention and success within their graduate programs: the advising relationship. Using a…

Proponents of positive psychology have argued for more comprehensive assessments incorporating positive measures (e.g., student strengths) as well as negative measures (e.g., psychological symptoms). However, few variable-centered studies have addressed the incremental validity of positive assessment data. The authors investigated the incremental…

Purpose: To examine the predictive ability of preadmission variables on United States Medical Licensing Examinations (USMLE) step 1 and step 2 performance, incorporating the use of a neural network model. Method: Preadmission data were collected on matriculants from 1998 to 2004. Linear regression analysis was first used to identify predictors of…

A longitudinal daily diary method was employed to examine the implications of family assistance for the academic achievement of 563 adolescents (53% female) from Mexican (n = 217), Chinese (n = 206), and European (n = 140) backgrounds during the high school years (mean age 14.9 years in 9th grade to 17.8 years in 12th grade). Although changes in…

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the degree to which teachers' test scores and their performance in preparation programs as measured by their collegiate grade point average (GPA) predicted their teaching competence. Results from 123 studies that yielded 715 effect sizes were analyzed, and the mediating effects of test and GPA type,…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the relationship between school-year employment and academic performance of young adolescents under age 16. Ordinary least squares estimates show a significant positive relationship between modest hours of school-year employment and grade point average.…

Community colleges currently enroll about 44% of the undergraduate students in the United States and are rapidly expanding. It is of critical importance to obtain direct evidence of student learning to see if students receive adequate training at community colleges. This study investigated the 10-year trends of community college students' (n =…

Prior research has demonstrated gaps in the academic success of college student subgroups defined by race/ethnicity, income, and gender. We studied trends over time in the success of students in these subgroups in particular first-year college courses: English Composition I, College Algebra, social science courses, and Biology. The study is based…

This study examined the relationship of community college programs and services to retention of students in four community colleges, with an emphasis on determining whether outcomes vary for students in occupational programs and how student characteristics moderate these effects, with the goal of determining what is correlated with success.…