Graduating sufficient numbers of healthcare providers to fill the needs of an aging population in the United States is a major social concern. To address this problem physical therapist assistant (PTA) programs need to improve their graduation rates to keep up with the demand for qualified personnel. Applying Senge's theory of effective systems, 1 medium-sized community college with an average pass rate of over 90% on the National Physical Therapist Assistant Examination (NPTAE) was selected to address the research question: What are the systems factors and how do they operate together to support student success in an associate degree PTA program? The method was a descriptive case study consisting of interviews, classroom observations, and document review using member checking and triangulation of data, with analysis by topic in order to yield Geertz's 'thick description' of efforts toward student success. A significant array of strategies and cooperative practices within the department were identified that may contribute to success on the NPTAE. Student success might be further enhanced if PTA faculty were even better connected to other College departments, and all successful retention strategies were disseminated throughout the College. While this case study cannot definitively establish a causal link between college-wide student success efforts and the high pass rate on the NPTAE, it is possible to conclude that it provides a context in which the success rate can be understood. The results of this study would suggest that other colleges that want to improve the NPTAE pass rate might consider this model to effect social change by meeting the growing health care needs and challenges in society of all people, especially an aging population.

The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent community college trustees understand student success and the processes they used to prioritize student success practices at their institutions. This study used qualitative and quantitative methods that included several analyses. / text

Public education in the United States is currently enveloped in an era of intense accountability. At the national level the No Child Left Behind Act, demands accountability in any district or school receiving federal funds One of the goals of the No Child Left Behind legislation had its roots in the Texas education accountability statute of 1999, when former governor George W. Bush signed into law a mandate that became known as the Student Success Initiative. That law required students in the 3rd grade to pass the state reading assessment in order to be promoted to the 4th grade, beginning in the year 2003. The same group of students would be required to pass their 5th and 8th grade reading and math exams to be promoted to the next grade level. The initiative continued for all students. In opposition to the those policies, the body of research regarding grade-level retention concludes that the practice of grade retention is ineffective in increasingstudent achievement (Jimerson, 2001, Harness, 1984, McCoy, 1999). This study examined the Student Success Initiative in Texas. The goal was to determine whether retention in 3rd, 5th, or 8th grade made a signification difference in subsequent TAKS scores in comparison with students who were placed in the next grade level by the official Grade Placement Committee. Data was analyzed from three large urban school districts in Texas. Results were consistent across the three school districts. Students who were retained in third grade performed better the subsequent year in third grade, but those successes did not continue consistently through the 5th and 8th grade years. Students retained in 5th grade for math performed poorly on subsequent tests, as did students retained in the 8th grade for reading or math. However, the group of students that was retained in 5th grade due to failure of the TAKS Reading test exhibited success in the subsequent year as well as the 8th grade year. Overall, TAKS students who were retained did not perform better than students who were placed in the next grade level as they progressed through 8th grade. / text

Student Success continues to be a topic of great interest in the Higher Education Literature. Fifty percent of those students who enter a four-year institution actually graduate and 25 % of first year students do not persist into their second year in college. First-year success courses and peer mentoring along with other programming strategies have been developed to improve retention and success for college students during their first-year of college. This study explored how college students from nine different institutions defined college student success. In addition, students from these institutions were surveyed to find out how and if first-year success courses and/or peer mentoring contribute to college student success. Follow-up interviews allowed for a deeper understanding of how first-year success courses and peer mentoring contribute to college student success. The study found a new comprehensive definition for college student success. Also, first-year success courses and peer mentoring do have positive relationships with college student success however, they also have some shortcomings that were identified in this study.

AbstractStudents come to community colleges with different levels of personal development, academic preparedness, and learning needs. Success programs that focus on the holistic development of nontraditional students provide an important pathway into college for students who might not otherwise attend or succeed. These programs face increased accountability to demonstrate student outcomes. In assessing outcomes, are the successes experienced by these students fully captured with traditional student success measures?Constituent groups may differ with regard to expected outcomes and conceptualizations of success. To examine this possibility, a community college program designed to promote goal attainment for at-risk, nontraditional re-entry students was chosen for a case study to determine what success means to the students who participate in the program, the instructional counselors who teach the course for the program, and the administrators who make resource allocation decisions that impact the viability of the program.The case study was organized around four propositions that hypothesize how different participants construct their perceptions of success:1) Students who complete the program course will come to search for and define success in terms of finding their voice and developing cultural capital;2) Instructors who teach the course will conceive of success outcomes in differing ways depending on the extent of their professionalization - locals will support a more traditional, academic oriented preparation whereas cosmopolitans and intermediates, to varying degrees, will embrace a more holistically developmental approach to the course;3) Administrators will evaluate and allocate resources to the program primarily in terms of traditional institutional measures of student success - student credit production and student completion; and3a) Perspectives of success based on students finding their voice, cultural capital, and holistic developmental outcomes are not considered nor valued independently by administrators in their decision-making.Knowing the differing perspectives of what is valued by those involved allows for strategically informed decisions about what to assess and how to present data that best supports the benefits of this program to the students, the college, and the community. The importance of aligning various participant perspectives of success for ultimate program efficiency and effectiveness is demonstrated.

Social reproduction is well established in educational literature. Diminished outcomes for students marked by class and race persist despite analysis and educational policy. Teachers articulate discourse to explain student success and failure and satisfy personal and professional investments (Miles, 1989; Popkewitz, 1998). Interviews with teachers in urban secondary schools point to the operation of discourse in the reproduction of inequality with profound effects on students on the margin. Meritocratic, individualist discourses privilege white, middle-class students, excluding others. Constructing students as Other and beyond reason (Popkewitz, 1998), teachers articulate discourses of motivation as explanatory of student success and failure and posit a neoliberal normative subjectivity as explanatory of success. Social, historical and economic factors are silenced. The instability and arbitrary closure of discursive articulation offer possibility for a progressive, ethical pedagogy.

The problem of this study was to investigate the relationships that exist among individual short-term counseling, academic achievement, personality factors, and college persistence of students on the junior college level.

There remains limited research on the gap between the participation and persistence to graduation rates for American Indian students in higher education. It is pertinent to explore the experiences of these students who did not persist to graduation to be able to gain a better understanding of the factors involved in this gap. The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to gain a greater understanding of why twenty American Indian college students who were high-achieving and received the Gates Millennium scholarship (AIGMS) did not persist to graduation. To achieve this greater understanding from an Indigenous perspective, it was important to utilize existing theoretical frameworks developed by Native scholars that employed critical, culturally sensitive lenses for the analysis. Through the lenses of Tribal Critical Race Theory, Cultural Models of Education and the Family Education Model, the research questions were developed with a critical focus on the institutional influence of the participants' experiences. This study employed a phenomenological qualitative approach guided by an Indigenous research paradigm. The findings of this research inquiry were broken down into five main sections. The first section discussed the pre-collegiate experiences of AIGMS. This set of findings emerged throughout the interviews as participants shared their experiences in college, they often referred back to influential moments with their families and tribal communities leading up to college. The second section highlighted the conditions that impeded AIGMS' success in institutions of higher education. What emerged as the major factors of AIGMS' non persistence within higher education was GMSP's inflexible deferment policy and missing structures on campus to represent participants’ Native and Gates scholar identities, such as space for AIGMS to practice their cultural spirituality and direct support on campus for being a Gates scholar. The third section reveals the push-pull factors influential to AIGMS' experiences on campus and back home in their tribal communities. The main push factor from the institution was the lack of support they felt from key institutional agents, such as from a multicultural center director, financial aid officer or academic advisor. The fourth section describes the impact of the campus racial climate on AIGMS' experiences on their respective campuses. Some AIGMS assumed that being awarded this prestigious scholarship would be acknowledged either through their faculty or staff on campus. Instead they described examples of exclusion, lack of belonging, marginalization, isolation and invisibility on campus. The final section described the experiences of AIGMS who returned to higher education, including those who have found success in tribal colleges as well as those who have since completed their degrees without funding from GSMP. This finding is of particular importance because it demonstrates that the loss of financial aid affected the type of institution AIGMS' returned. Principally, AIGMS were thoughtful and rational about their decision to defer from higher education, taking into account the factors pulling them from outside the institution – such as family/medical/health issues. They were also impacted by their experiences within their institutions that pushed them out from within – such as experiences with invisibility and marginalization on campus. Faculty, institutional agents and their peers played into these experiences. The Gates Millennium Scholarship Program and institutions’ lack of cultural understanding of how to serve these AIGMS led to a disconnection with these students. These AIGMS’ experiences with push and pull factors places more responsibility on the institution and the scholarship program for their non-persistence.

Academic writing programs are one way universities seek to increase the academic achievement of first-year students and decrease attrition. This paper examines data from an evaluation of a first-year academic writing program at Canadian Mennonite University. The original program evaluation was conducted to determine student attitudes toward the program and whether the academic writing lab program increased students’ writing abilities. This thesis goes further by examining relationships between affective outcomes (motivation, self-regulatory ability, perceived writing ability), writing ability, and cumulative grade point average. Data was collected using student surveys and writing samples. The results indicated that academic attainment was positively correlated with: writing ability, motivation, and self-regulation. Motivation and self-regulation, but not perceived writing ability, correlated with actual writing ability. Participation in the Academic Writing Lab did not affect student affective characteristics. However, student writing ability did improve which indicates that even a small program can improve students’ writing skills. / October 2016

This study was designed to identify and examine certain individual factors that contribute to Louisiana Technical College (LTC) student success in Web-based developmental education (DE) courses among the academically underprepared students. The independent variables (IV) selected for this study included students' prior academic preparation (PAP), comfort with technology (CWT), interaction with faculty (IWF), and motivation (MOT). The dependent variable (DV) was students’ course success measured by their mid-term scores (MTSCORE). Research methodologies included correlational statistics using multiple and logistic regression, and t-test for group comparisons. Data were gathered through an online survey using SurveyMonkey.com from the DE students at LTC that use PLATO Web Learning Network using a survey instrument (WBLSS) designed by the researcher for this study. The study found two predictor variables, IWF and PAP, to be statistically significant and two variables, MOT and CWT, statistically not significant. Based on the IVs' combined identified relationship with the DV, the researcher designed a predictive model of LTC students' course success in Web-based DE courses. The model employed in this study explained 17% of the variance in the MTSCORE. For many academically underprepared students at LTC, college and career success first depend on their success in the DE courses. Therefore, identifying individual characteristics related to course success is the key to building academic success models for underprepared students at two-year colleges like the LTC.