In education and workforce-training circles, a frequent mantra is that students must graduate from high school prepared for both college and work. This article reports that amid the calls for "college for all" and the clamor for more rigorous academics, the "work" part of that imperative may be muffled to the point that…

When Superintendent Anthony Amato arrived in Stockton, California's 38,000-student district, he knew that three of its four comprehensive high schools had been labeled "dropout factories." Mr. Amato, who has led the Hartford, Connecticut, Kansas City, Missouri, and New Orleans districts, studied Stockton's data to form his plan. Then he…

This article reports on a Texas charter school network which aims to expand the ranks of disadvantaged students who graduate, not just from high school, but from college as well. To earn a high school diploma, each student at YES (short for Youth Engaged in Service) Prep Public Schools, a growing Houston-area network of charters that predominantly…

This article describes the Buffalo Prep program. Housed at University of Buffalo, the program identifies disadvantaged but talented minority children, places them in academic-enrichment classes, and then finds them spots at private schools and a more selective public high school in the area to complete their precollegiate careers. In addition to…

A coalition of small high schools in New York state is challenging the notion that using standardized tests and curricula is the best way to prepare all students for college-level work. The New York Performance Standards Consortium is a network of 40 schools that have agreed to use common performance assessments as a requirement for graduation,…

Responding to demands by parents and a concern that high school was just too easy, the San Jose Unified School District (California) did away with a two-track high school system, demanded that all of its students take a college-prep course of study, and adopted some of the most rigorous graduation requirements in California. In the two-tiered high…

This article describes an academic choice program in Texas public schools where 8th graders are being given a choice of three different academic plans to follow through graduation, two of which are distinctively tougher than the third. Policymakers in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana are opting to raise academic standards by making a college-prep…

Even before the nation's governors convened in Washington in March 2005 for a national summit on high schools, many already had proposed plans to make secondary education more rigorous. In this article, the author discusses how governors and legislators in 12 states take steps to put more rigor into high schools. Noting that current state…

This article reports how Kaplan K12 Learning Services Group, a division of Kaplan Inc., has developed a new, standardized college-preparatory curriculum for the Philadelphia school district. The curriculum, which made its debut in the Philadelphia district in 2005, was a critical element in the district leadership's plan to improve secondary…

This article presents different views by various professors on the issue of college readiness. Also discussed are the problems encountered by students as a part of college readiness. The discussion stems from a set of alarming statistics about college-completion rates. While nearly three-fourths of recent high school graduates enter some form of…

When the US' governors gather in Washington this February 2005 for what is billed as a national education summit on high schools, many will come prepared to talk about initiatives already under way back home. The summit's organizers hope that an "action agenda"--coupled with intensive planning leading up to the meeting--will encourage state…

Two national studies paint a portrait of the bumpy road that many students face after high school and suggest that better academic preparation and guidance could have smoothed the way. The studies, each based primarily on separate surveys of 1,300 or more 18- to 25-year-olds, come from Public Agenda, a nonprofit opinion-research group in New York…

College-based programs that motivate underachieving teenagers to graduate and pursue further education is part of a menu of initiatives Guilford County, North Carolina, has introduced to meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of students in its middle and high schools, where racial and ethnic diversity and poverty have been on the rise. As…

Learning what interests college-admissions committees drew this Homestead High School junior and 18 other teenagers to a 10-day College Admission Prep Camp run by Education Unlimited (EU) on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts last July 2005. The program is among many such camps offered across the country this summer, by both…