What do we know about the impact and implementation of Career Academies? This paper provides answers to this question. Career Academies have been around for over 30 years. Their original design stressed facilitating the school-to-work transition. In the early 1990's the focus began to shift to preparing participating students for both college and…

Postsecondary educators have expressed concerns for many years about how prepared high school students are for college. As a result, states and organizations have launched a variety of initiatives designed to increase high school students' readiness for college, including increased access to college-level courses. One of the most promising…

A collaborative at several sites across the state of California will offer evidence of how successful linked learning, which connects academics to real-world work, can be. This article presents examples that illustrate the powerful connections and linkages that are generated by combining academic rigor with the relevance of applying learning to…

Increasing numbers of immigrant youth are coming of age within global cities that are characterized by growing inequalities and few opportunities for social mobility. These youth face numerous educational obstacles that complicate college and labor market access. This article draws from an ethnographic study of public high schools serving…

This paper reports a design experiment that attempted to strike a balance between coverage and learning in an exam-oriented, college-preparatory, high school course--Advanced Placement (AP) US Government and Politics. Theoretically, the study provides a conceptual framework for penetrating the depth/breadth tension in such courses, which are known…

The inclusion of college preparation programs promote and forecast academic success in postsecondary studies among individual at-risk, African American urban high school students. Past research has shown ongoing, college acceptance, performance, and graduation gaps between at-risk, African American urban high school students when compared to…

Among ethnic groups in California, Latinos continue to have the lowest high school graduation rates and the lowest college completion rates. This study focused on understanding the role parents can play and ways schools and educators can support immigrant Latino parents to improve these rates. Framed with a "funds of knowledge" approach…

Recent studies have revealed how large shares of college-ready students "undermatch", or enroll in colleges with less competitive admissions processes than they are eligible to attend. Undermatch sits at the nexus of both college access and completion agendas, as undermatching to a less selective institution results in a decreased…

American public education is in a constant state of experimentation, with new waves of reforms and education initiatives unveiled routinely--many recycled and some reinvented. Yet few are truly innovative. The newest and most promising reform thus far are the Common Core State Standards, which are rigorous standards in English language arts and…

Everyone acknowledges the importance of leadership in good schools, but sometimes a leader's influence extends into unexpected areas. Getting admitted to and succeeding in college is certainly the result of hard work on the part of individual students and their families, but for many kids, particularly those from impoverished backgrounds or from…

Between January and October of 2013, nearly 3 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 graduated from high school. By October of that year, just two-thirds had enrolled in college. This report uses recently released nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) data from Spring 2012 to examine American high…

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…

Successful early college high schools (ECHSs) are formed through partnerships between high schools and colleges (usually community colleges). Think of it as preparation through acceleration. ECHSs enroll disadvantaged students who have not excelled with ordinary grade-level academic content and have them take college courses while still in high…

The Gates Foundation has given more than US$100 million to establish approximately 160 early college high schools (ECHSs) across the nation. The ECHS goal, to send traditionally low-performing students to college early and graduate them with 2 years of college credit, has been widely recognized for its constructive potential. However, not all EHCS…

Students who struggle in pursuit of postsecondary education tend to be Latino, Black, low-income, or first-generation college students. This article presents the case of a small public school serving students grades 6-12 from these traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in a large urban school district. Observations revealed that the school…