On April 14, Greg Darnieder, Senior Advisor to the Secretary on the College Access Initiative at the U.S. Department of Education, received the National Office for School Counselor Advocacy National Advocacy (NOSCA) Award for Creating College Pathways for Underserved Students. The award was given during the NOSCA fifth annual conference in Washington, DC.

Darnieder has been instrumental in the implementation of the U.S. Department of Education’s Free Application for…

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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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The National High School Center recently released a new research brief, A Systemic Approach to Implementing Response to Intervention in Three Colorado High Schools.  This brief, written by Helen Duffy and Jenny Scala, describes implementation of response to intervention (RTI) in three high schools in Colorado District 189, as well as how district and state policy and support affected their implementation. The brief provides a description of how Colorado District…

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At the recent High School Redesign in Action conference, sponsored by the New England Secondary School Consortium (NESSC), I heard a very interesting story about how a small high school was able to turnaround with limited external help. 

Deer Isle-Stonington High School is a small high school on a bridged island in Maine. It serves 142 students in grades nine through 12, with 17 teachers and one principal. In…

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Looking for new high school-related resources?  Here are some pieces that the National High School Center and other organizations have recently released:*

College and Career Development Organizer (National High School Center, March 2012). This college and career development organizer was created to synthesize and organize an increasingly complicated and crowded field of college and career readiness initiatives. The organizer, composed of three strands, can be used to map the efforts…

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When you are working in a high school, district or even a state education agency, sometimes it can be challenging to take a step back and look at the big picture. Busy schedules and the structure of education systems often means that educators, principals, and district and state administrators don’t always have ample opportunity to learn from, collaborate, and develop connections with each other.

In March I attended the

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On Wednesday, March 28^th, The College Board held a Webinar, “School Leaders for Common Core Standards: Changing School Culture and Climate,” where panelists Dick Flanary, Senior Director of Leadership Programs and Services and Mel Riddile, Associate Director for High School Services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) joined moderator Natasha Vasavada, Executive Director of Research and Development at The College Board, to discuss the cultural…

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