Secondary School Improvement
Title I and High Schools: Addressing the Needs of Disadvantaged Students at All Grade Levels Authored by Wayne Riddle, a veteran of the Congressional Research Service and one of the nation's foremost experts on Title I, this paper explains in detail the process in which states, districts, and schools receive Title I funding, and discusses the low level of support that high schools receive from Title I. New data in this report includes a state-by-state analysis of the number of high-poverty high schools that are not eligible for Title I. Additionally, recommendations for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are provided in order to strengthen support of high schools through Title I. __________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________ Meeting the Challenge: The Role of School Leaders in Turning Around the Lowest-Performing High Schools As the national policy community has coalesced around the priority of graduating all students ready for college and careers, the challenge of improving the lowest-performing high schools serving the most challenged populations remains. This policy brief examines the limitations of previous high school reforms and describes new approaches showing promise in producing substantive changes in secondary level teaching and learning. It highlights the central role of school leaders and districts in creating high school learning environments that can engage and support students with widely divergent learning needs. The brief concludes with a set of policy recommendations for the design of coherent systems to build human capital and foster the conditions for high school transformation. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Prioritizing the Nation’s Lowest-Performing Schools Noting that the nation is in the midst of a dropout crisis that will cost more than $3 trillion in lost wages over the lifetime of the 12 million students projected to drop out over the next decade, Prioritizing the Nation's Lowest-Performing High Schools calls on federal policymakers to perform "legislative triage" by devoting attention to the lowest-performing high schools and immediately improving or replacing the most severely "injured" schools. It points out that the nation’s lowest-performing high schools may be diverse in size and geographic location, but most all of these schools disproportionally serve low-income students and students of color. __________________________________________________________________________________________
Policy Brief (PDF)
June 23, 2011Policy Brief (PDF)
January 18, 2011Issue Brief
April 12, 2010Report (PDF)
February 5, 2010
On February 5, the Alliance released Current Challenges and Opportunities in Preparing Rural High School Students for Success in College and Careers, a new report that is intended to give federal policymakers a detailed understanding of the challenges facing rural high schools as well as the inherent assets that rural schools bring to the national education reform debate.The report notes that current federal education policies and research tend to favor urban and suburban high schools with the largest student populations and pay too little attention to the unique needs and circumstances of rural high schools. As a result, high schools-and high school students-in too many rural communities are in trouble.
Press Release ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Is Your Local High School Making the Grade? 10 Elements of Successful High Schools: A Guide for Rural Communities Is your rural high school making the grade? The Alliance for Excellent Education understands that the first step in improving any rural high school is to encourage and support the active engagement of students, parents, teachers, the community, and business leaders. This guide is designed to give parents and community members some suggested ways to begin thinking about whether their local high school is adequately preparing all of its students for a successful future and what they can do to help turn that vision into reality. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ New York City's Strategy for Improving High Schools: An Overview
February 5 Release EventFact Sheet /Brochure (PDF)
February 5, 2010Issue Brief (PDF)
January 25, 2010
As the nation has embraced the need to graduate every student ready for college and careers, high school reform has emerged at the top of the education agenda. Many local and state leaders are implementing strategies to address low performance and close achievement gaps. As federal policymakers look ahead to opportunities to support this work—including through the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—they are eagerly looking to districts that have been engaged in major reform to understand the implications for supporting and encouraging these reforms at scale. One extremely relevant case study is New York City—the nation’s largest and most diverse school district—where Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have prioritized redesigning high schools and improving outcomes as part of a districtwide reform effort. This brief, the first in a series, will set the stage, describing the theory of action underlying the efforts of the New York City Department of Education and some of the specific strategies it has employed to improve high schools.
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Reinventing the Federal Role in Education: Supporting the Goal of College and Career Readiness for All Students Policy Brief (PDF)
July 10, 2009
It is a unique moment in education policy. From the highest levels of leadership--the president and the U.S. secretary of education--there is a call to action to address the high school crisis, focus on the lowest-performing schools, and graduate students college and career ready. Over the last few years, congressional leaders have developed legislative proposals based on research and best practice that demonstrate possible ways forward for federal policy. The recent infusion of new funds from the federal stimulus program has opened the nation’s eyes to new opportunities and reinvigorated efforts to improve education. And the state-led movement to develop common standards and assessments offers the nation an opportunity to trade incremental changes for collaborative efforts with the power to truly transform American education. It is time to harness this progress and momentum, and convert commitment and proposals into a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) strategically designed to address the high school crisis and move the nation toward the goal of all students graduating from high school ready for college and careers. This brief provides recommendations for an ESEA reauthorization that would help ensure federal policy not only maintains pace with the common standards initiative, but also serves as a leader and partner in helping bring the potential of this and other efforts to fruition.
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Whole-School Reform: Transforming the Nation’s Low-Performing High Schools Policy Brief (PDF)
July 10, 2009
The problem is clear: an unacceptable number of America’s students are not graduating from high school, and many who do are still not adequately prepared for success in college and career. Past efforts to address this problem have only been able to achieve incremental results. Now, there is increasing recognition that in order to meaningfully solve this problem, efforts should shift from those that are narrow and often yield very slight results to those that can fully transform high schools that are failing to graduate and prepare students. Whole-school reform, a school improvement approach implemented by schools and districts for almost two decades, can bring about that change through the use of a comprehensive, unified school design that transforms all aspects of a school. As federal policymakers look ahead to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization, they should seek to encourage increased and effective implementation of whole school reform as part of a systemic approach to school improvement. This brief will describe whole-school reform, how it has been supported by federal policy in the past, what lessons have been learned from those policies, and recommendations for how federal policy can encourage and support whole-school reform in more schools facing significant challenges.
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Preparing Students for College and Career: California Multiple Pathways Issue Brief (PDF)
June 30, 2009
To prepare students for success in life, the twenty-first-century American high school needs to shift its focus from preparing for college or career to achieving college and career readiness for every student. One of the most comprehensive efforts towards this goal is the “multiple pathways” initiative in California, which is a reform model aimed at improving high schools by pairing a rigorous college preparatory curriculum with an industry theme while offering the supports and workplace exposure that can be critical to students’ success. The initiative provides multiyear programs of study that are rigorous, relevant, and directly connected to regional and state economic needs. This brief details the multiple pathways movement in California, developed in response to poor and inequitable student outcomes, as it continues to garner interest and develop a growing base of evidence. The discussion lays out the rationale for the approach and the implications of this California-based effort for stakeholders seeking to address the national dropout crisis.
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Moving Beyond AYP: High School Performance Indicators Policy Brief
June 29, 2009
As education stakeholders look ahead to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization, there is near-universal consensus that the current federal accountability and school improvement systems need to be reinvented, infused with more and better data, and tailored to meet the individual needs of schools and students. Now, educators, policymakers, and the public are eager for indicators that both better reflect the national goal of graduating all students ready for college and careers and help educators plan and implement strategies for getting them there. Fortunately, a number of high school performance indicators have emerged as being predictive of high school graduation and college and career readiness. These factors include attendance, course success, on-track-to-graduation status, course-taking patterns, success on college- and career-ready assessments, postsecondary success rates, and school climate. This brief, Moving Beyond AYP: High School Performance Indicators, describes the research behind these indicators, measurement options and challenges, and current use across the nation. It also offers recommendations to federal policymakers for supporting the use of multiple, actionable high school performance indicators.
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The chapters below are from Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century Report
June 23, 2009
Reframing Accountability: Using Performance Assessments to Focus Learning on Higher-Order Skills Chapter 2
Linda Darling-Hammond and Ray Pecheone of the School Redesign Network at Stanford University discuss how performance assessments can help evaluate students’ ability to apply their knowledge and encourage teaching and learning of higher-order skills. They describe what performance assessments are and how they can benefit instruction, how they are being used to support policy goals in the United States and abroad, the major challenges and considerations that must be addressed to use performance assessments well, and how federal policy can support the development and implementation of high-quality assessments that both support and evaluate more complex knowledge and skills.
Formative Assessment and Assessment for Learning Chapter 3
Jan Chappuis, Stephen Chappuis, and Richard Stiggins of the ETS Assessment Training Institute describe the characteristics of formative assessment, with a particular focus on those formative assessment practices that engage and empower students in their own learning, or assessments for learning. They also describe challenges related to the effective use of formative assessment and recommended actions for policymakers.
The Role of Interim Assessments in a Comprehensive Assessment System Chapter 4
Judy Wurtzel, formerly of the Aspen Institute, and Marianne Perie, Scott Marion, and Brian Gong of the National Center for the Improvement of Education Assessment, differentiate between true classroom formative assessment and the interim assessments currently in the marketplace. They then provide a framework for considering the appropriate role of interim assessments.
Assessments and Technology: A Powerful Combination for Improving Teaching and Learning Chapter 9
Erin Martin Gohl, Daniel Gohl, and Mary Ann Wolf of the State Educational Technology Directors Association describe how the use of technology to assess students and to record and analyze performance can result in timely, appropriate, and individualized instruction for all students. They highlight some of the innovative approaches in using technology to assess student progress, address current challenges in the use of technology, and provide recommendations to federal policymakers to overcome those challenges.
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Sustaining Whole School Reform Efforts: A Profile of Granger High School Case Study
May 20, 2009
Research has shown that strong leadership support for whole school reform is critical to the successful turnaround of low-performing schools.[i] Yet there is little discussion of how to successfully maintain changes in teaching, learning, and student outcomes when there is a changeover in school leadership. This profile highlights the efforts of Granger High School to sustain and build upon reform efforts throughout such a leadership transition.
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Action Required: Addressing the Nation’s Lowest-Performing High Schools Policy Briefs
May 4, 2009
In an age where a postsecondary education, let alone a high school diploma, is increasingly necessary to succeed in the global economy, the growing recognition of a graduation crisis that disproportionately affects poor and minority students has helped galvanize the demand to improve the lowest-performing high schools. Education leaders have a responsibility to provide better options to the students served by such high schools. Addressing the nation’s lowest-performing high schools with effective options for all students—either by transforming them, closing them, or replacing them with multiple other schools—will require a systemic strategy that involves stakeholders and policymakers at all levels, establishes the necessary conditions for success, and promotes organizational practices and instructional strategies within a school that lead to improved teaching, learning, and outcomes. This brief examines the current federal approach to addressing the lowest-performing high schools; explores lessons learned from emerging strategies at the state and local level; and provides related recommendations for federal policy.
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From No Child Left Behind to Every Child a Graduate: Defining a Federal Role in Improving America’s Secondary Schools Report (PDF)
August 28, 2008
This report outlines the Alliance for Excellent Education’s Framework for Action to Improve Secondary Schools, which reflects the consensus among educators, researchers, policymakers, and other authorities on the specific problems of secondary schools, as well as on the research- and best-practice-supported solutions to those problems. Taken together, the seven policy areas contained within the framework offer a comprehensive and systemic approach to secondary school reform.
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Using Early-Warning Data to Improve Graduation Rates: Closing Cracks in the Education System Policy Briefs (PDF)
August 26, 2008
This brief explores the power of early-warning data in predicting whether a student will drop out, offers examples of current efforts to use such data to guide secondary school interventions across the country, and discusses the policies that can support these efforts.
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Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement Report (PDF)
June 12, 2007
Today, more than six million of the nation’s secondary school students fall well short of grade-level expectations in reading and writing. Recognizing the urgency of this literacy crisis among middle and high school students, policymakers in all parts of the country have begun to implement a wide range of new programs and services designed to help struggling adolescent readers catch up in essential literacy skills, particularly reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. However—and as this report argues—if students are to be truly prepared for the sophisticated intellectual demands of college, work, and citizenship, then these reforms will not be enough. Even as their schools help them to catch up in the basics, students also must be taught the advanced literacy skills that will enable them to succeed in the academic content areas—particularly the core content areas of math, science, English, and history.
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How to Know a Good Adolescent Literacy Program When You See One Issue Briefs (PDF)
May 1, 2004
While more research needs to be done in the area of adolescent literacy, there is growing agreement about some of the characteristics successful literacy intervention programs share. The purpose of this brief is to provide information to help policymakers, educators, parents, and others concerned with adolescent literacy make informed decisions about literacy programs for struggling readers and the programs' suitability for specific groups of students. The brief is not intended for an audience of literacy experts, and does not pretend to offer a comprehensive program evaluation guide; rather, it is designed to help decisionmakers ask the right questions when assessing literacy programs for selection for federal, state, and local funding.
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Every Child a Graduate: A Framework for an Excellent Education for all Middle and High School Students
September 13, 2002
Out of Print (Please see: From No Child Left Behind to Every Child a Graduate)
In 2002, the Alliance for Excellent Education published Every Child a Graduate, one of the first nationally focused efforts to draw attention to the problems in many of the country’s middle and high schools, and to encourage federal—as well as state and local—policy reform designed to improve student achievement and attainment. Since that report’s release, the knowledge base that informs what is known about both the problems and the ways to solve them has grown dramatically, thanks to the efforts of researchers and educators across the country.
In August 2008, the Alliance released From No Child Left Behind to Every Child a Graduate, which attempts to lay out a new framework for action to improve secondary schools that is based on this expanded pool of research and predicated on the recognition that, to be effective, reform must be comprehensive and systemic.
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