Last month, the Alliance for Excellent Education held a Webinar about the lessons learned from the New York City (NYC) “small schools of choice” (SSCs) initiative.  As part of this initiative, New York City closed more than 20 underperforming public high schools and in their place opened new small nonselective schools of choice. The new schools served on average 100 students per grade level and were personalized not only…

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A recent National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) report, America’s Youth: Transitions to Adulthood, provides an in-depth perspective on the lives of young adults ages 14 to 24 years old who are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. What makes the statistical comparisons included in the report particularly interesting is the fact that as the report’s introduction notes, the transition to adulthood in the U.S. has changed in the last…

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On Tuesday, November 29^th, the Alliance for Excellent Education held a Webinar, “Personalizing High School: Breaking Barriers to High Achievement,” where presenters Julie Evans, Chief Executive Officer of Project Tomorrow; Mariana Haynes, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education; Yvette Jackson, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education; and Michael Wotorson, Executive Director of the Campaign for High…

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Last week, NCES released Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972–2009, a report which identifies trends in dropout and school completion data. The report tracks four different measures of dropout: Event Dropout Rates, Status Dropout Rates, Status Completion Rates, and Average Freshman Graduation Rates (AFGR). Each measure is calculated differently and can be used to inform different educational questions.

For instance, the Event…

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We don’t come across rigorous research on teacher professional development at the high school level as often as we’d like. So, when we read the positive findings from a randomized control trial of the web-mediated professional development strategy, My Teaching Partner—Secondary (MTP-S), we thought it would be interesting to blog about it.[1]

MTP-S is a program that targets the motivational and instructional qualities of teachers’ interactions with…

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In a previous post, Doing What Works: Helping Students Navigate the Path to College, Marlene Darwin of the Doing What Works (DWW) Initiative introduced their new online resource, Helping Students Navigate the Path to College.  This is one in a series of follow up posts describing the content of that resource.

In order for high school students to successfully transition to college, they need to be given support in preparing…

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In a previous post, Doing What Works: Helping Students Navigate the Path to College, Marlene Darwin of the Doing What Works Initiative introduced their new online resource, Helping Students Navigate the Path to College.  This is one in a series of follow up posts describing the content of that resource.

Although many students may have an initial desire to attend college or enroll in postsecondary education programs, unless the desire…

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