Preparing students for postsecondary life is among the most important roles that a high school plays. And yet, how schools approach this work, what schools should be preparing students for, and who should be responsible for this work have long been contested. Jeremy Greenfield draws on an emerging body of psychological literature exploring purpose…

While many high schools reproduce social inequalities in college access, little is known about the schools that successfully reduce them. To this end, Gorana Ilic and James E. Rosenbaum studied an urban high school that expressed a strong commitment to supporting all students' college applications. In this article, they describe the organizational…

As students compete for college admission, some are tempted by invitations to join honor societies that promise learning opportunities, scholarships, and a leg up in the college admission process. Yvonne Vissing explains how these organization target millions of students each year, encouraging them to purchase "opportunities" that fail…

This article is a cross-section of stories of three young men navigating the expectations of a school with a 100% college admissions goal. Similar to their classmates, none of these male teens had a parent who had attended college. In addition, each of them had at one point in their high school lives declared that they would be dropping out of…

There is growing evidence of successful strategies to help keep students from disadvantaged backgrounds motivated to persist in school and succeed in college. These strategies draw from scientifically validated theory and research and they typically involve simple, yet careful, implementation techniques and so educators can expect them to be more…

The challenges for increasing opportunities and college access for black students typically focus on the traditional barriers related to academic preparation, the racial gap in standardized test scores, and dropping out of high school. While these challenges remain, new and emerging challenges to college access are also important to discuss. They…

The Kalamazoo Promise provides a scholarship for full tuition for any high school graduate from the district who's been accepted to attend a Michigan postsecondary institution. The Promise has changed the attitudes of the students, their parents, and the community and has combined with other efforts to promote successful reform and systemic change…

The author of this article contends that current efforts at school reform--ostensibly designed to increase equality of outcomes--may actually be undermining democracy by undervaluing the wide range of talents required in 21st-century America. Many policy makers today argue that all students should have a standard curriculum that will prepare them…

High school teachers and administrators are often shocked to learn that universities consider their graduates unprepared for college work. They're especially chagrined when their most successful students seem ill prepared for college work. Author Kevin St. Jarre proposes that secondary schools spend more effort on ensuring that students know how…

The career exploratory program includes six career clusters that provide strong academic background as well as practical experience. The six career areas are business administration and management, communication arts, engineering and mathematics, medicine and health, performing arts, and social sciences. (Author/IRT)

Project 60 is a daily, three-hour college preparatory program at Ohio's Sidney High School that provides accelerated instruction in mathematics, science, English, and social studies to high school juniors and seniors and teaches them to cope effectively with free time. (Author/PGD)

Concerned about increasing numbers of working college-prep students, an Iowa City high school teacher surveyed students about their jobs. The new "adolescent workplace" requires no school skills and provides little experience leading to adult employment. Afterschool work often works against students, the school, and our society. Includes…

A partnership between Texas Tech University and the Lubbock, Texas, schools has 141 of the university faculty members volunteering in the classrooms. They serve as resources, exchange teachers, and role models and mentors for the students. (MD)

In this article, the author argues that traditional college entrance requirements exercise a detrimental effect on other elements of the educational system. She begins by looking at the way that the entire K-12 system is skewed toward meeting the needs of those students headed for selective colleges and universities and the way less successful…

Rather than showing the growing inadequacy of schools, about half of the Scholastic Aptitude Test score decline is attributed to significant changes in the composition of the test-taking group; about one-fourth of the decline to school-related factors; and one-fourth to broader social factors. (MLF)