Capacity
New & Featured Projects
Imagine a nation in which all students routinely graduate from high school ready and prepared to succeed in college, career and civic life.
Imagine being able to say to any child, in any part of the United States, “your high school will educate you, challenge you, care for you, support you, and graduate you ready to succeed in the world.”
The image of public high schools providing all America’s young people with a high-quality education is inspiring and compelling. Reality, however, offers a much more troubled picture.
The following highlights are featured and new projects of the Everyone Graduates Center, working to make that image a reality.
Adolescent Literacy Teacher Supports Study
“Supporting Teachers to Close Adolescent Literacy Gaps” is a large, randomized field experiment that compares the relative impact of three different ways of assisting ninth grade teachers with implementing recommended instructional practices for struggling readers:
Condition 1: Single Workshop on Innovative Literacy Practices
Condition 2: Workshop plus Curriculum Materials
Condition 3: Workshop, Curriculum Materials, plus Expert Peer-Coaching
Data from more than 3500 students taught by 134 teachers in 64 high schools showed that coaching by an expert peer teacher significantly strengthened implementation of recommended instructional practices compared to a workshop alone and to a workshop plus curriculum materials. Recommended instructional practices included:
- Teacher modeling
- Preparation for reading with vocabulary & background knowledge
- Student team discussions of shared reading
- Opportunities for self-selected silent reading
The study also finds that use of the recommended practices resulted in significantly higher student reading achievement gains, compared to more traditional classrooms using worksheet-driven drill and teacher-centered instruction.
Current Work
Projects are underway on “Content Literacy” to develop lessons on reading comprehension strategies for textbooks in the core academic subjects of history, mathematics, science and literature. A variety of teacher support approaches are being examined, including use of interdisciplinary teacher teams to coordinate and reinforce lessons on common strategic reading themes with particular application in each subject.
Schools across the country also are implementing the Talent Development High Schools Literacy Curriculum, supported by start-up training and classroom-based coaching. For more information, see TDHS or download this PDF brochure for Strategic Reading.
Findings
Supporting High School Teachers with Instructional Approaches for Adolescent Struggling Readers
Marcia Davis and James McPartland
This paper details findings from the first two years of the study.
Download the full paper (69pp PDF) here.
Lost Days: Chronic Absenteeism in Urban School Districts
In urban school districts that educate primarily low income students, chronic absenteeism (missing a month or more schooling) is a serious issue in the elementary grades and can reach epidemic levels in middle and high school. In a recent analysis EGC researchers found that over a five year period in one city 40% of students who were in the sixth grade in 1999 missed a year or more of schooling.
Learn more here.
CSOS is participating in an initiative aimed at cutting Colorado's dropout rate over the next decade, spearheaded by the Colorado Children's Campaign, the Colorado Foundation for Families and Children, Colorado Youth for a Change and other Colorado organizations. As a first step in designing and implementing district initiatives, CSOS is leading an analytical process to provide useful information for data-informed decision making on the part of districts.
Using de-identified longitudinal student level data provided by several Colorado school districts, CSOS researchers are constructing profiles of the dropout student population in these districts to provide useful data for district decision-making regarding initiatives to prevent dropout outcomes and provide recovery opportunities for overage students who need additional credits for high school graduation. These profiles provide such information as how far away dropouts were from graduation in terms of credits earned, what percentage of dropouts began high school significantly behind grade level (indicating the need for interventions and reform efforts in middle schools), what percentage of the dropout problem is primarily related to attendance problems, etc. In addition, the district analyses provide information on how many current middle school students are at risk of dropping out because of attendance, behavior, or course failure problems, and where these students are concentrated, so that early warning systems and effective interventions can be implemented in those schools.
To increase the percentage of students who graduate, educators need to know the “warning signs” that will alert them to students who are falling off the pathway to graduation. Interventions can be tailored to address the particular problem that is keeping students from staying on-track.
The idea behind early indicators analytics work is simple but powerful. Years before dropouts actually leave high school, most of them send strong “signals” that they are having some sort of trouble in school. Further, these signals are observable in standard types of data that school districts keep on their students.
Evidence from a study in one large school district suggests that almost half of the eventual dropouts sent “warning signals” as early as sixth grade.
Researchers from the Everyone Graduates Center work with school districts and states to identify the “warning signs” that students send when they are on the pathway to dropping out of high school. In pilot projects supported by the Center, educators have been using real-time data to intervene with students who exhibit one or more early indicators of dropping out.
Our analytics work on early indicators focuses on:
- Basic research on early indicators, including how the indicators vary across different types of districts, and
- Providing data tools and technical assistance to school districts and states that are trying to develop their own early indicator systems
Building Bridges Toward Excellence:
Community Involvement in High Schools
Despite clear obstacles, there are high schools that have successfully incorporated community involvement in their efforts to achieve school-wide excellence. Practitioners at the three demographically different high schools in this study can offer practitioners, as well as policy makers and researchers, answers to significant questions about school-community partnerships. Educational leaders at these schools chose to dedicate time, energy and resources to integrate community involvement into their school improvement efforts because such involvement was perceived as a way to support student success, enhance school quality and support community development.
Building Bridges Toward Excellence: Community Involvement in High Schools Study by Mavis Sanders and Karla Lewis, 2005
The High School Journal, Jan/Feb 2005
The University of North Carolina Press.
Full article can be purchased from the Journal or viewed online here.
Talent Development High Schools
The Talent Development High Schools Model is a comprehensive reform model for large high schools facing serious problems with student attendance, discipline, achievement scores, and dropout rates. The model includes organizational and management changes to establish a positive school climate; curricular and instructional innovations to prepare all students for high-level courses in math and English; parent and community involvement to encourage college awareness; and professional development to support the recommended reforms.
For more information about TDHS results, see TDHS Results brief.
For more information about Talent Development High Schools, see their website.
Talent Development Middle Grades
The Talent Development Middle Grades Program offers comprehensive and customized solutions to middle grades reform. In keeping all students on the graduation path, the program offers literacy instruction and extra help courses for struggling readers; Algebra for all and extra help mathematics; extensive materials, in-classroom support, a school climate program based on positive behavior systems; and building capacity through training of locally based coaches and emergent leaders. The program helps schools establish early warning and intervention systems and offers customization to state and district standards.
For more information about TDMG and graduation results, see this article.
For more information about Talent Development Middle Grades, see their website