New Secondary Schools Group in ED’s Online Community

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education (ED)-sponsored School Turnaround Learning Community (STLC) launched a “Secondary Schools” group within their online community for district and state staff implementing Smaller Learning Communities (SLC), the High School Graduation Initiative (HSGI), and School Improvement Grant (SIG) projects.  According to the group’s homepage, “The chief purpose of this group is to disseminate information about effective or promising practices in high school reform, and to support the implementation of these practices by participants through ‘collective inquiry,’ a process through which participants share and learn from peers facing similar challenges.” Participants are encouraged to download resources, create and engage in online discussions, and attend Webinars with national experts. Over 80 resources have already been uploaded by the administrator on high school-related issues, including college and career readiness, early warning systems, and adolescent literacy. The community is free and available to the public.  To sign up, go to http://www.schoolturnaroundsupport.org/user/register and create a username and password.  Under the dropdown for “User role,” indicate “secondary” if you work on middle or high school-related issues, and select “Join Secondary Schools” under Groups.

Note: This blog post was originally authored under the auspices of the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The National High School Center’s blog, High School Matters, which ran until March 2013, provided an objective perspective on the latest research, issues, and events that affected high school improvement. The CCRS Center plans to continue relevant work originally developed under the National High School Center grant. National High School Center blog posts that pertain to CCRS Center issues are included on this website as a resource to our stakeholders.