Degree/Diploma/Certificate

This policy brief sponsored by Jobs For The Future discusses early high school graduation policies. The author examines the effects of early high school graduation policies including brief discussions on the purpose of early graduation policies, the costs and benefits of early graduation policies and designs of state policies.

Freshman year course performance—more than background characteristics such as race, gender, socioeconomic status or prior achievement—predict which students with disabilities are most at risk for dropping out of high school, according to a this report from the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research and the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. The report found that absences, course failures, course credits and GPA all can be used to accurately predict whether ninth-graders with disabilities will graduate from high school.

This 2011 National Center for Education Statistics Congressionally-mandated report covers all aspects of education in America, with 50 indicators that include findings on enrollment trends, demographics, and outcomes. This report also features a closer look at postsecondary education by institution level and status (public, private not-for-profit, or private for-profit), describes the current state of postsecondary education, and how it has been changing in recent decades.

This report from the Alliance for Excellent Education discusses possible reforms to ESEA using New York City’s Multiple Pathways to Graduation initiative as an example of how to create flexible policy to help high school students graduate college and career ready. The author examines the effects of federal policy on off-track students and provides recommendations that include increased focus on policies that address the needs of off track students and new metrics for school performance that take into account improvements among at risk students.

This report from Jobs for the Future examines the GED as a pathway to postsecondary success. Authors John Garvey and Terry Grobe note that although 60 percent of GED test takers express a desire to further their education beyond the GED and nearly half of all GED holders go on to postsecondary education, only 4 percent earn a degree. They argue that GED test takers are poorly prepared for college, partly because the GED narrowly focuses on passing the minimum standards of the exam, rather than building comprehensive literacy and numeracy skills.

This issue brief, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, discusses using multiple pathways to prepare students for college and career. The author examines the effects of California’s multiple pathways programs on high school students, concluding that multiple pathways can increase high school graduation rates, engagement, achievement, and college and career readiness. The author also provides recommendations that include addressing federal laws, funding stream structures, and policies that inhibit multiple pathway programs.

This issue brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education addresses the need to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to help improve the college and career readiness of all high school students, especially those at the lowest-performing high schools.

This sixth annual 50-state progress report from Achieve, Inc., on the alignment of high school policies and practices with the demands of college and careers as part of the American Diploma Project. The report finds that 20 states and the District of Columbia have established requirements that all high school graduates must complete a college- and career-ready curriculum that includes at least mathematics at the level of an Algebra II course (or its equivalent) and four years of grade-level English to earn a high school diploma.

This report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) builds upon a series of NCES reports on high school dropout and completion rates that began in 1988. It presents estimates of rates in 2008, provides data about trends in dropout and completion rates over the last three and a half decades (1972–2008), and examines the characteristics of high school dropouts and completers in 2008.