Located in southwestern Pennsylvania near the borders of Maryland and West Virginia, the district has 1,483 students, with 21% minority enrollment. The district and its students have experienced many of the problems related to the opioid epidemic, including many students being raised by grandparents due to parental drug use. The district has three…

With the national spotlight on community colleges, the sector has a unique opportunity to seize the moment and collaborate with K-12 to increase student success. Efforts to increase community college access and open doors to more students must include a complementary focus on improving readiness. Otherwise, remediation rates will remain…

Several systemic factors contribute to the lack of stability and educational opportunities for students in foster care, including lack of transportation to the school of origin (or the schools they enrolled in when they first entered foster care), difficulty enrolling in new schools and transferring credits between school districts, gaps in…

The "Closing the Achievement Gap" series explores the Casey Foundation's education investments and presents stories, results, and lessons learned. This publication presents an in-depth look at the Foundation's multi-year investment in a school district feeder pattern in Atlanta, and stories about Casey contributions to district…

Due to the changes in disability legislation that protect persons with disabilities from discrimination, and allow for free, appropriate public education along with equal access to education, more and more students with disabilities are choosing to attend postsecondary educational settings. The transition planning process as outlined in the…

The transition into high school is a critical point in the educational pipeline, and ninth-grade can be characterized as one of its leakiest junctures. This policy brief examines how some states and districts are currently easing the transition into high school for students. It focuses on five key challenges that states, districts and schools…

The Communities of Practice approach offers state agency personnel a lens for exploring the human aspects of problems. They can be used as a technical assistance approach for bringing together multiple stakeholders to address complex issues facing special education. The IDEA Partnership has pioneered the use of a website for its national…

Several schools that eschewed the middle school model and remained K-8 discovered anecdotally that their students showed fewer behavioral problems and higher academic achievement than many students enrolled in middle schools. On the basis of studies that verified these observations, school district leaders in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Philadelphia…