This article utilizes mixed methods--a lottery-based experimental design supplemented by qualitative data--to examine college readiness within an innovative high school setting: early college high schools. Early colleges are small schools that merge the high school and college experiences and are targeted at students underrepresented in college.…

Positive youth development is a strengths-based, positive psychology approach to fostering adolescents' educational engagement and achievement. It focuses not just on students' academic development but also on their vocational, social, and emotional development. The positive youth development philosophy is at the heart of Cynthia Hazel's unique…

For excellent teachers and those aspiring to excellence, and for administrative or education policy leaders, this brief provides an overview of how an Opportunity Culture can help teachers have the well-paid, empowered profession they deserve--while helping many more students succeed. [For the full report, see ED560179; for the summary, see…

This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores…

Principal Alison Harris is blunt in describing what she confronted on her arrival to Ranson IB Middle School in 2011. "I was placed in what many people would call an impossible situation," she says. During her initial visit to the school in 2009-10, she watched as students changed classes--while teachers pressed against the lockers to…

When Rocketship Education, a pioneering, rapidly expanding charter school network, looked at its results, it could have rested on its laurels. With seven schools in California together ranking as the top public school system for low-income elementary students, Rocketship had proof that its blended-learning model--combining online learning with…

In this webinar, Dr. Joyce Epstein, Director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships and the National Network of Partnership Schools, discussed what the research says about effective family engagement. The webinar and PowerPoint presentation are also available. A brief list of resources is included.

What does it take to improve a school? What kinds of programs, systems, and people need to be in place for educational outcomes to improve overall? These and other questions continue to vex policymakers who--along with researchers, reformers, and advocates--pour over data and case studies looking for tools to transform schools into places where…

There is a clear conscience today that one of the dimensions of the crisis of education systems has to do with the crisis of the hegemonic models of how to teach and, above all, with the classic hegemonic definition of what to teach. There is also agreement about the fact that the great novelty of the times is that the nation is facing an…

The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics, core beliefs, and activities of successful middle grades programs. Schools in Florida are held to standards of accountability under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Florida System of School Improvement and Accountability, and the Florida Secondary Schools Redesign Act.…

The authors discuss the development of a diagnostic-prescriptive teaching and learning program in the Youngstown public school system; give background material; describe organizational form and implementation; and conclude with a series of "points to ponder" for educators contemplating a similar venture. (MB)

At a time when college degrees are increasingly a prerequisite for middle-class wages, less than 40 percent of college students are able to demonstrate proficiency on literacy tests, barely half of college students graduate on time, and many do not graduate at all. At the same time. the price of college continues to increase quickly and…