For decades, college tuition costs have been skyrocketing, yet state financial aid has failed to meet the increasing economic needs of college students -- leaving many young people with the choice of bridging the financial gap by taking out student loans or not attending college at all. This pressing issue of rising college tuition is not just a…

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…

Community colleges, with their commitment to open access, admit millions of students each year who are unprepared for college-level work, even though they have earned a high-school diploma. For decades the schools had a built-in base of students attracted to their open doors and relative affordability. But enrollment at public two-year college has…

New York City's specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous, college preparatory, public education to some of NYC's highest-achieving students. Despite enrolling only a small fraction of the City's high school students, the specialized schools have become a powerful symbol in a larger public debate about educational equity.…

This document presents the technical appendices that accompany the full report, "High School Choice in New York City: A Report on the School Choices and Placements of Low-Achieving Students." The appendices include: (1) The Shrinking Pool of Level 1 and Level 2 Students; and (2) Supplemental Tables and Figures. [For the full report, see…

School choice policies, a fixture of efforts to improve public education in many cities, aim to enable families to choose a school that they believe will best meet their child's needs. In New York City, choice and the development of a diverse portfolio of options have played central roles in the Department of Education's high school reform…

New York City's elite public specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous college preparatory education to the City's most academically talented students. Though immensely popular and highly selective, their policy of admitting students on the basis of a single entrance exam has been heavily criticized. Many argue, for…

Elite public schools must use some method of selecting their students. Given the desirability of this scarce resource, these methods are closely scrutinized. Demographic and other changes in the school districts may make unstable procedures that were deemed successful at one point. This "recurring problem" is the subject of this article,…

In this study, the authors examined the demographic characteristics of students entering the new small high schools in New York City and contrasted them with the characteristics of students entering the large high schools that closed. They also determined whether these high school reforms altered how different types of students are distributed…

No study has comprehensively examined what types of students are attending new small schools in New York City and whether these students have different characteristics, on average, than students at the schools they replaced. This study fills this gap by comparing the characteristics of entering new small high school students with those of all…

A correlational study was conducted to determine which of a number of variables derived from the admissions material were predictive of student success in the graduate program at Lehman College of the City University of New York. An objective measure of student success, graduate grade point average (GPA) was significantly correlated with GPA for…

This report provides an in-depth look at five different programs, all of which currently, or are making efforts to, include a broad range of students. The five Credit-Based Transition Programs (CBTPs) studied are located in five states--California, Iowa, Minnesota, New York and Texas--and included two dual enrollment programs (one with a career…

Increasing numbers of high school students across the United States are enrolled in college courses while still attending high school, partly attributed to the explosion of dual credit or dual enrollment programs. It is the difference in location for the delivery of the course and the status of the faculty member that often elicits the question,…