Back on Track, developed by Jobs for the Future, is a design for schools to not only re-engage off-track and out-of-school youths to graduate from high school, but also to put them on a clear, supported path to a college education. Two schools that have combined Back on Track with the early college model, in which students can earn both a high…

While the rates of teen childbearing have declined in the United States, adolescents who become pregnant and decide to bear and rear their babies are often from low-income, highly stressed families and communities. This article will describe the psychosocial problems of pregnant urban teens and how exposure to interpersonal trauma and current…

This article features four colleges and how they take on veterans' issues in research and real life. These colleges are (1) Syracuse University; (2) Purdue University; (3) University of Southern California; and (4) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Last year Syracuse established the Institute for Veterans and Military Families to focus…

Unlike predecessor Michelle Rhee, Chancellor Kaya Henderson of the District of Columbia Public Schools works to balance accountability with collegiality. Kaya Henderson's childhood in one of New York's most affluent areas, Westchester County, could not have been more different from that of the middle school students she taught at Lola Rodriguez…

Performance-based compensation systems have been under discussion for years and are now a required component of any state plan for Race to the Top funds. This article describes a system of performance-based compensation that has been in place at a K-12 school for the past four years. The system was developed by a team of teachers, union members,…

Despite some cuts to the nation's oldest Federal College Access Programs, known as the TRIO programs (e.g., Upward Bound), new education policies have emphasized college and career readiness. In 2010, Congress approved the College Access Challenge Grant Program, which aims to increase the number of low-income students who are ready for college.…

One of the most wideranging reforms in public education in the last decade has been the reorganization of large comprehensive high schools into small schools with roughly 100 students per grade. We use assignment lotteries embedded in New York City's high school match to estimate the effects of attendance at a new small high school on student…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an exploratory study of New York's Children First Networks (CFNs); to examine what is known about the CFNs thus far, drawing on new empirical research, as well as document review and analysis of secondary sources. Design/methodology/approach: Organizational learning theory guided this…

In this paper we provide the first rigorous evidence of the impact of a partnership between public middle schools and informal science institutions (ISIs), such as museums and zoos, on student outcomes. This study focuses on Urban Advantage (UA), a program in New York City (NYC) that explicitly draws upon the expertise and resources of the city's…

This two-part quantitative study expanded our understanding of school PR personnel in public school districts, particularly those who worked during the 2009-2012 budget years. Four cultural changes have redefined the paradigm of public education and served as a springboard for this study: technology-enhanced communications information retrieval,…

This article describes a nearly decade-long partnership between three institutions representing school, public, and academic settings in Westchester County, New York. The program, designed to improve the academic performance of local high school students, is unique due to the extensive contact students have with academic librarians during the…

The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) provides a framework for achieving positive outcomes for youth and families served in residential and community programs. Founded on core principles, an emerging evidence base, and acknowledged best practices, the BBI emphasizes collaboration and coordination between providers, families, youth, advocates, and…

The author spent his two superintendencies perfecting a collaborative leadership concept known as "the superintendency." This concept recognized that significant change and positive, continuous improvement required long-term, concentrated attention rather than a few years of frantic activity. While the "superintendency"…

A century after a New York banker donated $100,000 to help establish what would become the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, his hometown is reaping the benefits of his generosity. Last month the Technion, Israel's oldest university, and Cornell University won a closely watched competition to build an applied-sciences campus in New York…

The purpose of this research was to explore why some elementary ETS benefited from professional development in terms of increased students' outcomes, while other ETS did not produce the same gains. The aim of this research was to analyze the degree of satisfaction and effectiveness of professional development by interviewing coaches,…