Colleges can gain a better understanding of their students' progress by comparing themselves to peers. Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community College Count, this issue of "Data Notes" focuses on Achieving the Dream colleges that serve high percentages of Hispanic, black, and low-income students. This analysis reveals the noteworthy result…

A major challenge facing the prekindergarten-12 education system in the United States is the fact that as the population changes, the particular needs of children change with it. One of the largest demographic shifts over the last ten years is the sharp increase in the number of students in public schools who speak English as their second language…

As any teacher or parent knows, adolescence is a time when youth grapple with the question, "Who am I?" Issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability can complicate this question for young people, affecting their schoolwork and their relationships with teachers, family, and peers. This new edition of "Adolescents at…

Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community College Count, this issue of "Data Notes" is the first of a two-part series investigating the characteristics of late stop-outs--students who accumulate at least 30 credits within the first two years, only to stop out without completing credentials or transferring. Seventy-five percent of…

The Strategic Management of Human Capital in Education Project was founded in 2008 with one goal: to improve student achievement dramatically in the 100 largest urban school districts. Unless teaching quality and principal leadership improve significantly, lasting education improvement is impossible. In policy terms, without "strategic management"…

This report on the state's early education system offers a dark assessment, but not a fatalistic one, especially if leaders can seize and build on reform efforts that have already started in patches throughout the state. There's much more that policymakers, advocates and the state can--and should--be doing to work toward a day when all California…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is a federal education law that was passed in 2001 with the laudable but challenging goal of closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and improving academic achievement among all students. To that end, NCLB has held states, school districts, and individual schools to impossibly high standards of…

Through several decades of research, a great deal has been written about trends in black-white test scores and the factors that may explain the gaps in different subject areas. Only a few studies have examined the changing relationships between gaps in students' test scores and family and school measures in nationally representative data over…

The United States no longer leads the world in college completion rates. Inequality in college access rates by income have barely narrowed over the last 25 to 30 years and inequality in college completion rates have narrowed even less. The groups in the population that are growing the most rapidly are those that have historically been…

The "Brown v. Board of Education" decision of 1954 legally authorized equitable academic conditions and access for African-American students in the United States' public school systems. However, in actuality, Brown did not lead to substantial "de facto" changes in equity and access. The American public education system…

The achievement gap between minority youth and the majority population in the United States is well documented (Johnston & Viadero, 2000). In order to reduce this gap and avail children of poverty of the most effective educational techniques, Project Follow Through was conducted in the 1960's. The research that compared a variety of…

The Council of the Great City Schools has prepared this eighth edition of "Beating the Odds" to give the nation another look at how inner-city schools are performing on the academic goals and standards set by the states. This analysis examines student achievement in math and reading through spring 2007. It also measures achievement gaps between…

This Report Card is the first full assessment of the educational performance as a state, from birth through higher education. It compares performance to other states, looks at recent trends, and shows whether Illinois is meeting their obligations to all students or just a limited few. The scope of the report runs from birth through higher…

This report summarizes AISD's 2007-2008 evaluation of year one implementation of the First Things First initiative at 3 high schools.

Since 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has spurred far-reaching changes in elementary and secondary education, all aimed at accomplishing the same fundamental goal--to improve students' academic achievement. As the Congress prepares to reauthorize the Act, two related questions matter most: (1) Has student achievement in reading and…