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.

After years of debate, the nation is now taking a bold step toward ensuring that all students graduate ready for college and careers. Under the leadership of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, a panel has drafted a set of Common Core State Standards for college and career readiness. These standards will raise expectations for all students and will be the same no matter where students happen to live. That would represent a sea change in American education, one that is sorely needed. The wide variations that currently exist are unacceptable and are especially harmful to low-income students and students of color. All states and schools should expect every student to graduate from high school ready for college and careers. This brief outlines the need for common standards that are rigorous, clear, and focused and suggests ways that common standards will help lay the foundation for a stronger education system that will prepare all students for college and careers.

It is well established that teacher quality is one of the most significant school influences on student achievement. Unfortunately, it is less clear how teacher preparation programs can prepare and recruit effective educators for every classroom. As the global economy demands that all students are college and career ready after high school, teachers must be educated and supported to instruct to this higher standard. Despite pockets of excellence across the country in the ways teachers are prepared in both traditional and alternative routes, there is a need for a new, comprehensive vision. This brief offers a new conception for secondary teacher preparation that ensures candidates are able to prepare students for college and career success after high school, encourages a shift to the skills, knowledge, and competencies candidates should have once they become classroom teachers of record, highlights the need for improved teacher performance assessments and data systems, and contemplates how federal policy can support the realization of these goals.

If the high school students who dropped out of the Class of 2009 had graduated, the nation’s economy would have benefited from nearly $335 billion in additional income over the course of their lifetimes, so says a new issue brief, The High Cost of High School Dropouts: What the Nation Pays for Inadequate High Schools, from the Alliance for Excellent Education.

The nation’s dropout factories, nearly two thousand high schools which together produce over half of the nation’s dropouts, are considered by many to be the lowest-performing high schools in the nation. As such, they should be a clear focus for federal policymakers who are looking to improve the nation‘s low-performing schools and ease the dropout crisis. This brief discusses the role that dropout factories play in the nation’s dropout crisis and outlines three key opportunities federal policymakers currently have before them to create a consistent, coherent, and focused commitment to improving or replacing these schools.

It is clear that throughout the nation, teaching and learning must be transformed to ensure all students are graduating from high school ready for college and careers. While many policy discussions focus on data-driven decisionmaking as the answer, too often these conversations do not include how classroom teachers can and should use data to improve instruction, the kinds of data that would be most useful to teachers, and the challenges inherent in teachers’ use of data. Ensuring that teachers are rich in data, information, and skills that enable them to improve student achievement requires focused attention from leaders at all levels, including federal policymakers. This brief addresses why using data represents a significant shift for most teachers in how they perform their jobs; explains the importance of using multiple types of data to affect learning; details the infrastructure necessary to encourage teachers’ use of data; and provides federal policy recommendations.

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.

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.

Although a growing body of research points to the critical need to foster reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills for students in order to ensure their success in college, careers, and life, these efforts have tended to focus more on developing literacy skills in the early years, often ignoring secondary students. The outcome has been undeniable: While the literacy skills of students in the primary grades have improved, achievement for middle and secondary students has remained virtually unchanged. The Striving Readers program is the main federal effort aimed at reversing these trends at the secondary school level. After the first year of implementation, the Alliance for Excellent Education convened representatives of seven of the Striving Readers projects. This policy brief takes a look their experiences as well as other research and strategies that have been successful in the field in order to assist in shaping the next phase of the federal effort in adolescent literacy. Recommendations are made for both program and policy in an attempt to promote a more cohesive and comprehensive adolescent literacy effort for secondary students.

Although Congress has dedicated substantial funds over the past decade to improve reading skills for struggling students in kindergarten through grade three, this targeted investment has not resulted in the final goal—ensuring students leave high school prepared for college and careers. In fact, six out of twenty-two million of America’s middle and high school students are struggling readers. Educators are now beginning to recognize that the teaching of reading and writing cannot end at third grade; children need intensive, high-quality literacy instruction before they enter kindergarten until the time they graduate after twelfth grade. This brief examines the adolescent literacy crisis and why literacy really does matter, especially at the secondary level. Student needs are outlined to inform the implementation of quality literacy programs and federal policy recommendations are made to encourage the federal government to advocate for a comprehensive, national, schoolwide focus on adolescent literacy.