Does Prison-Based Adult Basic Education Improve Postrelease Outcomes for Male Prisoners in Florida?

The authors use administrative data from Florida to determine the extent to which prison-based adult basic education (ABE) improves inmate's postrelease labor market outcomes, such as earnings and employment. Using two nonexperimental comparison groups, the authors find evidence that ABE participation is associated with higher postrelease earnings and employment rates, especially for minorities. The authors find that the relationship is the largest for ABE participants who had uninterrupted ABE instruction and for those who received other education services. However, the results do not find any positive effects of ABE participation on reducing recidivism.

IF YOU BUILD IT WILL THEY COME? TEACHERS' ONLINE USE OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE DATA.

Testing of students and computer systems to store, manage, analyze, and report the resulting test data have grown hand-in-hand. Extant research on teacher use of electronically stored data are largely qualitative and focused on the conditions necessary (but not sufficient) for effective teacher data use. Absent from the research is objective information on how much and in what ways teachers use computer-based student test data, even when supposed precursors of usage are in place. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by analyzing the online activities of teachers in one mid-size urban district. Utilizing Web logs collected between 2008 and 2010, I find low teacher interaction with Web-based pages that contain student test information that could potentially inform practice. I also find no evidence that teacher usage of Web-based student data are related to student achievement gains, but there is reason to believe these estimates are downwardly biased.

Finishing high school: alternative pathways and dropout recovery.

John Tyler and Magnus Lofstrom take a close look at the problems posed when students do not complete high school. The authors begin by discussing the ongoing, sometimes heated, debate over how prevalent the dropout problem is. They note that one important reason for discrepancies in reported dropout rates is whether holders of the General Educational Development (GED) credential are counted as high school graduates. The authors also consider the availability of appropriate student data. The overall national dropout rate appears to be between 22 and 25 percent, but the rate is higher among black and Hispanic students, and it has not changed much in recent decades. Tyler and Lofstrom conclude that schools are apparently doing about as well now as they were forty years ago in terms of graduating students. But the increasingly competitive pressures associated with a global economy make education ever more important in determining personal and national well-being. A student's decision to drop out of school, say the authors, is affected by a number of complex factors and is often the culmination of a long process of disengagement from school. That decision, not surprisingly, carries great cost to both the student and society. Individual costs include lower earnings, higher likelihood of unemployment, and greater likelihood of health problems. Because minority and low-income students are significantly more likely than well-to-do white students to drop out of school, the individual costs fall unevenly across groups. Societal costs include loss of tax revenue, higher spending on public assistance, and higher crime rates. Tyler and Lofstrom go on to survey research on programs designed to reduce the chances of students' dropping out. Although the research base on this question is not strong, they say, close mentoring and monitoring of students appear to be critical components of successful programs. Other dropout-prevention approaches associated with success are family outreach and attention to students' out-of-school problems, as well as curricular reforms. The authors close with a discussion of second-chance programs, including the largest such program, the GED credential.