Twenty-nine states and districts will receive $46.6 million under the High School Graduation Initiative (HSGI) program. The HSGI targets high schools with high dropout rates and middle schools that feed into schools with high dropout rates. The grants support activities such as early warning systems designed to identify students at risk of dropping out, rigorous academic programs and support services to engage students and implement dropout prevention, credit recovery…

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Recent initiatives from the U.S. Department of Education, including Race to the Top, the School Improvement Grants (SIG) and the High School Graduation Initiative (HSGI), recommend early warning systems (EWS) as an important component of high school improvement efforts.

Early warning systems rely on readily available data housed at the school and are used to: (1) identify students are at-risk for dropping out of high school, (2) help educators…

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) is suing the state of California over high school fees for courses and materials.  According to the ACLU, public schools across the state have been charging students fees for activities ranging from joining sports teams to enrolling in required classes. As school districts across the nation seek creative solutions to budget deficits, students and their families have also seen the introduction…

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On September 21, 2010, the U.S. Department of Education announced a total of $10 million in awards to 21 Promise Neighborhoods Communities. The winning communities were selected from over 300 community applicants from 48 states and the District of Columbia.  Eighteen of the 21 grantees included one or more high schools as partners.

Promise Neighborhoods is the cornerstone of a broader White House Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative that focuses and…

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We’ve recently posted on the importance of data for better educating students and improving schools and school systems more broadly. Calls for differentiating instruction and student supports have led to an uptick of linking and using individual student information for instructional decision making. For example, significant federal and state resources are being used to build comprehensive State Longitudinal Data Systems that link education data with workforce, postsecondary, and increasingly health,…

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The Obama administration has placed a high priority on increasing high school graduation rates, creating new programs, such as the High School Graduation Initiative[1], to support states, districts, and schools graduate students college and career ready. Research suggests that key strategies for keeping students in high school involves challenging them with rigorous content, engaging them in real-world learning experiences, and providing them significant, tailored supports.

One recent tool for…

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By Julie Edmunds, Ph.D. (guest blogger)

The SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro is conducting a longitudinal experimental study to examine the impact of North Carolina’s Early College High School (ECHS) model on student outcomes. Funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, the study uses a lottery to assign students to the ECHS and then tracks outcomes for the students who got in and the students…

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