School Improvement

This Alliance for Excellent Education policy brief, targeted toward federal and state policymakers, argues that remedial college courses are economically inefficient. Costs associated with remedial courses include the cost of the course which is often federally funded through grants, and, because students who enroll in remedial courses are much less likely to graduate, loss of lifetime earnings. The brief argues that reforming high school curriculum and teaching and ensuring vertical alignment through college- and career-readiness are essential and much more cost effective.

This policy brief by the National Education Policy Center discusses the characteristics, benefits, and challenges of Linked Learning, a school framework in which academic content is integrated with career and technical education (CTE), and the two content areas are contextualized in real-world situations.

This resource offers strategies to help make small learning communities effective. Though the brief acknowledges that the structural framework of small learning communities in not in and of itself enough to catalyze school improvement, it describes strategies for rigorous instruction and support that can be paired with small learning communities to help improve high schools.

This issue brief, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, discusses using multiple pathways to prepare students for college and career. The author examines the effects of California’s multiple pathways programs on high school students, concluding that multiple pathways can increase high school graduation rates, engagement, achievement, and college and career readiness. The author also provides recommendations that include addressing federal laws, funding stream structures, and policies that inhibit multiple pathway programs.

This issue brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education addresses the need to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to help improve the college and career readiness of all high school students, especially those at the lowest-performing high schools.

This National High School Center bibliography is a summary of resources available that support the National High School Center’s Eight Elements of High School Improvement: A Mapping Framework. This framework is based on eight common elements of systemic school reform and provides a structure for understanding, aligning, and prioritizing reform initiatives to develop coherent and contextually appropriate approaches to high school improvement at the state and local levels.

This handbook provides practical and useful guidance on the models and strategies required and recommended for use in applying for Title I School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds, and includes references to the underlying research and connections to useful resources. Developed by the Center on Innovation and Improvement at the request of the U.S.

This sixth annual 50-state progress report from Achieve, Inc., on the alignment of high school policies and practices with the demands of college and careers as part of the American Diploma Project. The report finds that 20 states and the District of Columbia have established requirements that all high school graduates must complete a college- and career-ready curriculum that includes at least mathematics at the level of an Algebra II course (or its equivalent) and four years of grade-level English to earn a high school diploma.

This report, sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Safe Schools Coalition, discusses the use of excessive suspension in New York City Schools. The authors examine the effects of suspensions and police involvement in schools on all students, and specifically on African American and special education students. They provide recommendations that include ending the zero tolerance policy, mandating positive alternatives to suspension when appropriate, and increasing transparency around discipline and safety practices.

This is a paper and pencil version of the online self-assessment tool.