Despite high aspirations, many students do not complete postsecondary education. Some scholars advocate for providing more college information to increase enrollment and reduce attainment gaps but this approach overlooks what school counselors and students do with information. Based on interviews and participant observations drawn from 20 urban…

An increasing number of high schools have adopted Tier 1 PBIS; however, implementation of advanced tiers of PBIS in high schools is less common and specific guidance is scarce. To address this need and better understand the level of support needed to successfully implement advanced tiers of PBIS at the high school level, the National Center on…

Despite decades of research that points to the importance of family and staff engagement, the average school district in the United States is not designed to empower families and teachers to shape school improvement. The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to change that. Pandemic-fueled disruption helped seed ideas with families and educators…

Between 2015 and 2019, Holyoke Public Schools in Massachusetts cut its dropout rate nearly in half and increased its graduation rate by 10 percentage points, with notable gains among historically marginalized student groups. The district cites Opportunity Academy (OA), an alternative education program within the district's high school, as a key…

This paper outlines current trends, progress, and possibilities for fostering more authentic ways to assess students' competencies and mastery of skills needed for college, work, and civic life in the 21st century. It provides an introduction to performance assessments and their value. The authors highlight efforts to develop such assessments in…

The report on which this brief is based describes performance assessments and their value for guiding and evaluating high school students' learning, as well as informing colleges and universities about what students know and can do. It explores state and local policies that support the use of such assessments, along with emerging higher education…

Research increasingly points to the importance of parental engagement in children's education. Yet, little research has investigated whether prompting parents to be more involved in college processes improves student outcomes. We investigate experimentally whether providing both students and their parents with personalized outreach about tasks…

The authors report on a study of eight inclusive STEM high schools that are designed to increase the numbers of students in demographic groups underrepresented in STEM. As STEM schools, they have had broader and deeper STEM coursework (taken by all students) than required by their respective states and school districts; they also had outcome…

The purpose of this guide is to provide information on how to use early warning data, including the Massachusetts Early Warning Indicator System (EWIS), to identify, diagnose, support and monitor students in grades 1-12. It offers educators an overview of EWIS and how to effectively use these data in conjunction with local data by following a…

Although prior research has suggested that some students may be averse to taking out loans to finance their college education, there is little empirical evidence showing the extent to which loan aversion exists or how it affects different populations of students. This study provides the first large-scale quantitative evidence of levels of loan…

This dissertation focuses on the growing role of private, for-profit Independent Educational Consultants (IECs) in the college application process. Over the past two decades, an "admission industrial complex" of commercial enterprises designed to help students strategize about admissions and give them information about colleges has…

This report focuses on three questions: 1) What are the college readiness and completion experiences of young Latino men in urban Massachusetts (namely, Boston, Holyoke, Lawrence, Springfield, and Worcester); 2) What helps or prevents young Latino men from successfully obtaining a post-secondary credential; and 3) What influences young Latino…

This study is about access for low-income students at an elite boarding school. As "feeder schools" to elite colleges and universities, elite boarding schools play a significant role in determining which students will be in the upper class in America; however, little is known about the history of low-income students at these schools. The…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

Student loans are a crucial aspect of financing a college education for millions of Americans, yet we have surprisingly little empirical evidence concerning individuals' unwillingness to borrow money for educational purposes. This study provides the first large-scale quantitative evidence of levels of loan aversion in the United States. Using…