Between 2011 and 2015, K-12 education experienced an infusion of funds by the U.S. Department of Education going directly to school districts that implemented reforms in key areas to address truancy, dropout and achievement in our nation's most severely underperforming schools. There is limited research studying truancy reduction, relationship…

Communities face powerful challenges that require powerful solutions: a high-school dropout epidemic, youth unemployment, teen pregnancy. In an era of limited resources, those solutions must help communities to achieve more with less. A new kind of community collaborative--an approach that aspires to significant community-wide progress by…

Boosting high school graduation rates is a growing concern to educators and policymakers. Researchers stress that, although graduation rates have varied little in recent years, "[w]hat makes current graduation rates alarming is a reality of the new U.S. economy: It is practically impossible for individuals lacking a high school diploma to…

In 2010-11, the School District of Philadelphia (the District) operated thirteen accelerated high schools that served approximately 2,000 under-credited, over-age students. Each of the accelerated schools was managed by one of seven external providers, each with its own educational approach, and each with a contractual agreement with the…

Career academies, after more than four decades of development and three decades of evaluation, have been found by a conclusive random assignment study to be effective in improving outcomes for students during and after high school. Career academies have therefore become the most durable and best-tested component of a high school reform strategy to…

The merits of a public campaign can rarely be gauged fully in its early months or even in its initial year. Rather, the true measures of a campaign's successes are revealed over time: in its ongoing impacts on opinion or policy, and on the tangible results it achieves. On both accounts, Philadelphia's Project U-Turn campaign continues to make…

Each year, more than 8,200 young Philadelphians drop out of school. The first step to a solution, taken in 2005, was the gathering and examination of data to truly understand the dimensions of the problem and the characteristics of struggling students and out-of-school Philadelphia youth. These studies, conducted by researchers at the University…

The high school dropout problem has been called a national crisis. Educators, researchers, and policymakers continue to work to identify effective dropout prevention approaches. One important element of such prevention efforts is the identification of students at highest risk for dropping out and then the targeting of resources to keep them in…

We study a set of programs implemented in Philadelphia high schools that focus on boosting high school graduation, and especially college attendance, using data from the Philadelphia Educational Longitudinal Study (PELS). We examine the effects of these programs on a set of schooling-related outcomes during and after high school. The PELS data-set…

The transition into high school is a critical point in the educational pipeline, and ninth-grade can be characterized as one of its leakiest junctures. This policy brief examines how some states and districts are currently easing the transition into high school for students. It focuses on five key challenges that states, districts and schools…

In 1984 the Pennsylvania Department of Education notified school districts that they could not deny pregnant or parenting students an education; could not put them on homebound instruction in the absence of medical conditions; and could not place them involuntarily in segregated alternative programs. The state supplied additional funds to start…

The central message of this report is that while some students drop out because of significant academic challenges, most dropouts are students who could have, and believe they could have, succeeded in school. This survey of young people who left high school without graduating suggests that, despite career aspirations that require education beyond…

Recent studies showing the need for improvements in the educational system in the United States have resulted in strengthening of academic requirements, upgrading of standards for promotion, and increased course loads in high schools throughout the country. Pennsylvania is no exception to this trend; the passage of Chapter 5 legislation, which…