Meeting Five Critical Challenges of High School Reform
Organization: MDRC
This report offers research-based lessons to help low-performing high schools. The report draws on lessons from studies that MDRC recently completed on three high school reform models: Career Academies, First Things First, and Talent Development.

The Link between High School Reform and College Access and Success for Low-Income and Minority Youth - November 2005
Organizations: American Youth Policy Forum, Pathways to College Network
This paper examines school reform models through the lens of how well they address known predictors of college-going behavior. Models reviewed in the study include: America’s Choice, AVID, Coalition of Essential Schools, First Things First, High Schools That Work, Talent Development High Schools, GE Foundation College Bound, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, Project GRAD, early college high schools, and small learning environments.

 

Career Academies: Impacts on Labor Market Outcomes and Educational Attainment - March 2004
Organization: MDRC
Since 1993, MDRC has been conducting a uniquely rigorous evaluation of the Career Academy approach that uses a random assignment research design in a diverse group of nine high schools across the United States. Located in medium- and large-sized school districts, the schools confront many of the educational challenges found in low-income urban settings. The participating Career Academies were able to implement and sustain the core features of the approach, and they served a cross-section of the student populations in their host schools. This report describes how Career Academies influenced students’ capacity to improve their labor market prospects and sustain their engagement in post-secondary education programs in the four years following their expected graduation. The results are based on the experiences of more than 1,400 young people, approximately 85 percent of whom are Hispanic or African-American.

School Size and Returns to Education: Evidence from the Consolidation Movement, 1930-1970 - October 2004
Organization: American Enterprise Institute
A new paper, "School Size and Returns to Education: Evidence from the Consolidation Movement, 1930-1970," was the focus of discussion last week at a forum sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. The authors of the study sought to understand the consequences of school consolidation, focusing on the effects of changing school size on student outcomes.

High School Conference Series - January 2004
Organization: MDRC
This colloquium offered researchers, policymakers, and practitioners a unique opportunity to meet and discuss the use of rigorous, evidence-based research as a tool for answering questions about how to improve low-performing high schools. During the day and a half of sessions on January 23 and 24, 2004, participants discussed issues and challenges that affect evaluation studies and research activities related to high school reform. In true colloquium format, it was the involvement of all participants that helped shape the agenda, moved the conversation forward, and laid a foundation for ongoing exploration of the issues.

Locating the Dropout Crisis: Which High Schools Produce the Nation's Dropouts? Where are they Located? Who Attends Them? - June 2004
Organization: Center for the Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University
Graduation is hardly a given for freshmen in 2,000 of America's public high schools, according to a new study by researchers at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at The Johns Hopkins University. Using data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, researchers Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters measured the "promoting power" of 10,000 regular and vocational high schools that enroll more than 300 students. They compared the number of freshmen in each school to the number of seniors there four years later.

Pushing Out At-Risk Students: An Analysis of High School Discharge Figures - November 2002
Organization: The Public Advocate for the City of New York & Advocates for Children
An alarming number of high schools students are leaving New York City public schools without graduating. It appears that in some cases school officials are encouraging students to leave regular high school programs even though they are of school age or have a right to receive appropriate literacy, support, and educational services through the public school system. This report explores data documenting students in New York City, who have been designated as “discharged” from the school system, an indicator that has received little public attention.

Talent Development High School Model - June 2004
Organization: MDRC
The Talent Development High School model is an education reform initiative that aims to improve the academic achievement of students in large, nonselective, comprehensive high schools. In operation at 33 high schools in 12 states across the country, the approach encompasses five main features: small learning communities, organized around interdisciplinary teacher teams that share the same students and have common daily planning time; curricula leading to advanced English and mathematics coursework; academic extra-help sessions; staff professional development strategies; and parent- and community-involvement in activities that foster students’ career and college development.

The Dropout Crisis: Promising Approaches in Prevention and Recovery - June 2004
Organization: Jobs For the Future
The number of high school age students who do not complete high school is a serious challenge facing our educational system. The very scope of the problem--and the economic consequences for those who stop their education in high school or at graduation--calls attention to the need to become more systemic and more intentional in addressing the needs of this group of young people. The Dropout Crisis describes current practice in both prevention and recovery, highlighting promising approaches that can help reduce stubbornly high dropout rates. It concludes with recommendations for state policymakers seeking to promote a more systemic approach to the dropout crisis: count dropouts accurately in accountability measures; provide adequate financing for programming that meets the needs of dropouts; and make connections to postsecondary education, particularly community colleges.

Pushed Out or Pulled Up? Exit Exams and Dropout Rates in Public High Schools - May 2004
Organization: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
This report looks at the issue of exit exams and whether they actually drive graduation rates down even further. They also focus specifically on the effect exit exams have on minority students. To illustrate their point, Greene and Winters establish a formula to determine the exact effect on high schools that adopt these exams.

From the Prison Track to the College Track: Pathways to Post-Secondary Success for Out-of-School Youth - April 2004
Organization: Jobs For the Future
The aim of this report is to help high school dropouts to get off the streets and back in school. The JFF report examines separate types of programs that will help students from the age of 16-24 move through high school and help to establish a path all the way to employment. According to the report, for every 100 students who enter 9th grade, 67 graduate and only 38 of them will attend college. The report also looks at four case studies of identify the "best practices" to show how out-of-schools youth can succeed.

Focus on the Wonder Years: Challenges Facing the American Middle School - March 2004
Organization: The RAND Corporation
According to the report, dropping out of high school is often the effect of problems that start during the middle school years. RAND examines the many factors that can result in drop-outs including social alienation and lack of parent and teacher support.

Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis - February 2004
Organizations: Harvard Civil Rights Project, Urban Institute, Civil Society Institute's Results for America Project, Advocates for Children of New York
Half or more of the nation's minority students are failing to graduate from high school. The report found that while only 75 percent of white students graduate on time, the graduation rates for minority students are much lower. The national "graduation rate gap" (defined by the report as the difference in graduation rates between whites and minorities) for blacks is 25 percent, 22 percent for Hispanics, and 24 percent for Native Americans.

Labor Actions Can Help States Improve Quality of Performance Outcome Data and Delivery of Youth Services - February 2004
Organization: United States General Accounting Office
This report recommends that the government work to find ways to connect the workforce with high school dropouts. The Workforce Investment Act(WIA) was established in 1998 and was aimed to help the emerging workforce. The report looks at how the WIA can help at-risk drop-outs. The GAO examines the difficulty drop outs have and the importance of having a quality training program and caring mentor to help them.

The Education Pipeline in the United States 1970-2000 - January 2004
Organization: The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy
This report concludes that despite a significant increase in kindergarten attendance, there is a growing bulge of students in the 9th grade, significantly fewer students reaching 10th grade, and major declines in high school graduation rates, especially in some of the nation’s largest states. The study analyzes educational statistics collected by the federal government to examine the education pipeline and identify key transition points through which students progress, or fail to progress, from kindergarten through the grades to high school graduation.

Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About High School Graduation Rates - December 2003
Organization: The Education Trust
This report highlights the need for states to better report their high school graduation data. Ultimately, this data should result in greater awareness of how many students, particularly low-income and minority students make it through high school.

Rethinking Scale: Moving Beyond Numbers to Deep - September  2003
Organization: American Educational Research Association
The issue of “scale” is a key challenge for school reform, yet it remains undertheorized in the literature. Definitions of scale have traditionally restricted its scope, focusing on the expanding number of schools reached by a reform. Such definitions mask the complex challenges of reaching out broadly while simultaneously cultivating the depth of change necessary to support and sustain consequential change. This article draws on a review of theoretical and empirical literature on scale, relevant research on reform implementation, and original research to synthesize and articulate a more multidimensional conceptualization.

Understanding University Success - May 2003
Organization: Center for Educational Policy Research
Understanding University Success describes foundational skills and content standards (elsewhere referred to as Knowledge and Skills for University Success) in English, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, second languages and the arts. The 80-page booklet addresses each discipline in a separate chapter. Each chapter comprises two sections: foundations and standards. The foundations section describes the skills, behaviors and attitudes expected of incoming students. The standards section lists the content knowledge that helps maximize the probability of success in entry-level university courses.

Reforming Chicago's High Schools: Research Perspectives on School and System Level Change - November 2002
Organization: Consortium on Chicago School Research
To establish a viable research agenda and prepare for a program of research on Chicago public high schools, the Consortium organized a conference, "Research on High School Reform Efforts in Chicago," at the University of Chicago's Gleacher Center in March 2001. The conference brought together a group of scholars and educators who, mostly independent of one another, were studying Chicago's public high schools, including the Design's efforts to improve them. The volume presents these authors' papers, which document the results of reforms during the late 1990s at the district, school, and departmental levels.

How Many Central City High Schools Have a Severe Dropout Problem, Where Are They Located, and Who Attends Them? - January 2001
Organizations: Achieve, Inc. and Civil Rights Project at Harvard University
The nation's dropout problem is most severe in a few hundred schools in the 35 largest cities. Nearly half of these schools graduate less than half of their freshman class. Additional research commissioned by the two groups reveals that federally reported data on dropouts is inaccurate and underestimates the dropout problem nationally, particularly among minority students. The groups also commissioned analyses of successful intervention programs and socioeconomic factors that affect graduation rates.