The 4-year graduation rate for Colorado students in foster care decreased substantially from the 2015-2016 school year to the 2016-2017 school year, from 33.2% to 23.6%. This study examines trends in state-level child welfare and education data to uncover possible explanations for this decline. Students in the 2017 foster care cohort tended to…

In the fall of 2013, Fountain-Fort Carson High School implemented a new "Advisory Period" for all students at all grade levels. Incoming ninth-grade students were randomly assigned a faculty advisor and stayed with the advisor over the course of their 4 years of high school. School counselors wrote the Advisory programming which included…

Charter school Alternative Education Campuses (AECs) leverage the nimbleness of the charter school model to create unique learning opportunities nationwide for students who experience challenges that make it difficult to excel academically. Some of the challenges include homelessness, pregnancy, parenting while in school, or interaction with the…

Over the past decade, national initiatives have shifted States' attention to the challenge of turning around low-performing schools. The lack of consistent, dramatic improvements in the lowest-performing schools reflects the severity of the school turnaround challenge, but also suggests the need to continuously evaluate and refine turnaround…

Colorado is in the middle of the dropout epidemic facing the nation--in fact its dropout rate is significantly higher than most states. For the sake of the students and the state, it is a crisis Colorado cannot afford to ignore. A combined total of 48,526 students dropped out of Colorado's public school system during the three school years between…

Few people realize the impact that high school dropouts have on a community's economic, social, and civic health. Business owners and residents--in particular, those without school-aged children--may not be aware that they have much at stake in the success of their local high schools. Indeed, everyone--from car dealers and realtors to bank…

This annual report provides a review of Colorado Children's Campaign's accomplishments in 2010. The report is comprised of the following sections: (1) Letter from President and CEO; (2) About Us: 2010 in Review; (3) Child Health; (4) Early Childhood Development; (5) K-12 Education; (6) Fiscal Policy and Budget Analysis; (7) 2010 Legislative…

The ambitious goal set by Colorado's governor to address the state's dropout problem is a model for the nation. Helping thousands of young people to receive their high school diplomas instead of leaving school without them is a crucial step in improving the quality of life for all Colorado residents. Accomplishing this goal will require focused…

Graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of whether or not the nation's public school system is doing what it is intended to do: enroll, engage, and educate youth to be productive members of society. Since almost 90 percent of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs require some postsecondary education, having a high school diploma and the…

Dropping out of school--and the concomitant failure to graduate with a high school diploma--form a "silent epidemic" in the United States today. "Nationally, research puts the graduation rate between 68 and 71 percent, which means that almost one-third of all public high school students in America fail to graduate" or drop out…

According to the 2000 census, high school dropouts had a 52% employment rate, compared to 71% for high school graduates and 83% for college graduates. According to NCSE, the national dropout rate is 30% of which 80% had been chronically absent from school ("School attendance tracking: Challenges and effective practices"), which puts the…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Secretary Spellings Defends Bush Budget on Capitol Hill: Congress Expresses Concern over Education Cuts, Proposal to…