For more than a century, urban public schools have provided economic opportunities through education to some of the nation's largest, most diverse, and neediest populations. By embracing these challenges, our nation's urban schools have provided the know-how and backbone upon which our cities have grown and thrived. In this report, the Council of…

Students who are in foster care--compared to all other student groups in California--drop out of school at much higher rates and graduate at much lower rates, with only about 58 percent of 12th-grade students earning a high school diploma. These and other findings on California students in foster care are documented in "The Invisible…

Over the past 20 years, gaps in students' educational aspirations have shrunk considerably (Roderick et al., 2008; Roderick, Nagaoka, & Coca, 2011; Kao & Tienda, 1998; Avery & Kane, 2004; Turner, 2007; Deil-Amen & Tevis, 2010). Similarly, racial and ethnic gaps in college enrollment have shrunk. The one area in which postsecondary…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

Background/Context: Relying largely on high school measures of home language use, the literature examining immigrant incorporation in schools provides contradictory evidence of home language effects on educational outcomes. More recent research has demonstrated that home language use is dynamic and thus it is important to examine the implications…

What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reviews in this topic area focus on dropout prevention interventions designed for use in secondary school (middle school, junior high school, and high school) or community-based settings to help students stay in school, progress in school, and/or complete school. Systematic reviews of evidence in this topic area…

The Colorado Graduates Initiative demonstrates seven factors that must be present to build an effective statewide collaborative effort to increase high school graduation rates. These include: 1) Leadership to unite diverse stakeholders on specific, common goals and catalyze them into action; 2) A focus on data, particularly on actionable, early…

In the nearly fifty years since the adoption of the Higher Education Act of 1965, financial aid programs have grown in scale, expanded in scope, and multiplied in form. As a result, financial aid has become the norm among college enrollees. Aid now flows not only to traditional college students but also to part-time students, older students, and…

The LaGuardia Community College Student Technology Mentor (STM) program demonstrates how a college's own students can become resources for the technology development of faculty, the improvement of teaching tools, and the expansion of library services. The program also illustrates how the Student Technology Mentors themselves benefit from campus…

Between 1970 and 2000, the U.S. high-school graduation stagnated while in many other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries it rose markedly. By 2000, the high school graduation rate in the United States ranked 13th among the 19 OECD countries for which comparable data are available. Evidence from two independent…

This study indicates that the state-mandated high-stakes social studies assessments in four states do not require students to demonstrate that they have met the cognitive demands articulated in the state-mandated learning standards. Further, the assessments do not allow students to demonstrate the critical thinking skills required by the…

This study examined the relationship between student perceptions of school efforts to facilitate student involvement, school commitment, self-determination skills, and on track indicators for graduation in 10th grade and actual graduation outcomes two years later. The participants were 154 primarily minority students in a large, urban school…

This study uses the Survey of Income and Program Participation to infer the legal status of Mexican and Central American immigrant youth and to investigate its relationship with educational attainment. We assess differences by legal status in high school graduation and college enrollment, decompose differences in college enrollment into the…

In July 2012, the executive doctoral class of 2013 from the University of Pennsylvania's Higher Education Management Program in the Graduate School of Education conducted a study of higher education in Ireland. The international study, an important component of the executive doctoral program, mirrored and built on research completed by Joni Finney…

The goal of Carnegie "Challenge" papers is to lift up ideas and issues in a way that elevates them to the nation's agenda. This paper is a "Challenge" paper, and serves as a call to realize the full power of the Common Core by redesigning and reshaping schools to support teachers and maximize key resources, rather than…