Great strides have been made by community school initiatives across the nation in their efforts to impact student achievement, attendance, student engagement, graduation rates, parent involvement and more. Data on community schools is growing and the authors encourage readers to review research reports and syntheses on results. The results…

This article explores the sociopolitical context of education policy, particularly as it relates to Latina/o education. The authors highlight the status of Latinas/os within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to examine the impact of education policy designed to benefit few and disenfranchise most. They draw attention to the injustices of Latinas/os…

In an effort to better understand the various economic benefits that a particular urban area could expect were it to reduce its number of high school dropouts, the Alliance for Excellent Education, has developed, with the generous support of State Farm[R], a sophisticated economic model in partnership with Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. The…

This article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether highstakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to acquire cultural capital. While students' performance on state or district tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several…

This study examines whether participating in competitive policy debate influences high school completion, academic achievement, and college readiness for African American male students. The analysis examines data from the Chicago Debate League from 1997 to 2006. Debate participants were 70% more likely to graduate and three times less likely to…

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…

This paper is organized around three central questions: (1) What should be the primary goals of high school reform and what is the critical set of outcomes that matter for students? (2)Shat do we know about the strategies schools could use to pursue those goals? and (3) What are the implications of these strategies for the development of high…

This report is one of nine detailed case studies of small urban high schools that served as the foundation for the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) report "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools." These nine schools were dubbed "Leading Edge Schools" because they stand apart from other high…

This report examines baccalaureate student graduation, time-to-degree, and retention at Illinois state universities and presents data on these issues in 21 tables. The analysis notes that a little more than half of all public university first-time freshmen earn a bachelor's degree and that less than 3 percent of freshmen complete their degrees in…

This publication provides descriptive information about the 100 largest school districts in the United States. Almost one in every four public school students in this nation is served by one of these large districts. They are distinguished from the average district by characteristics, in addition to sheer size, such as pupil-teacher ratios, high…