"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Beyond the Gap: What Educators and Researchers Are Learning from High-Achieving African American and Latino Students (Michael Sadowski); (2) Aiming for AYP:…

Literacy is a term that has been defined many ways, with definitions ranging from those that are very narrow to those that are very broad. Among the more wide sweeping was that of the 1991 National Literacy Act, which defined literacy as a wide range of language tasks associated with everyday life, including those "necessary to function on…

In March 2003, the Education Commission of the States, the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education established a collaborative project to help states improve higher education performance by assisting with examination of state higher education policies and with…

Increasingly, researchers, policymakers, school leaders, and concerned citizens are recognizing that high schools in the United States are in need of major reform. Current research shows that high schools are not preparing students for college, work, or life, and that they are leading to increased alienation among students. In a much-noted speech…

This report examines the efficacy of the Boston Pilot Schools, a model of urban schools created in 1994 to promote innovation and increased choice options within the Boston Public Schools (BPS). Unlike most urban public schools, the Boston Pilot Schools have control over budget, staffing, curriculum, governance, and time, all critical conditions…

By the year 2025, 25 percent of school-age children in the United States and 22 percent of the college-age population will be Hispanic. Yet even with the growth of the population there remain significant achievement gaps between Hispanic students and other racial and ethnic groups, leading to fewer Latino high school and college graduates.…

This report card, third in a series of biennial report cards on higher education, consists of a national report card and 50 state report cards. Measuring Up 2004 evaluates state performance in six categories, and for the first time, compares each state's current results with its own performance a decade ago. Contents include: (1) Foreword (James…

This study was conducted to better understand the relative affordability of public university education in Canada and the United States. The report was written to answer two key questions: (1) How does access to university education in Canada compare to access in the US? and (2) How affordable is the Canadian university system compared to the…

This volume is an extension of earlier efforts by the National Center for Education Statistics to present and explain some patterns and relationships in education data. The report includes 34 educational indicators, which were selected in order to take advantage of state-level data available and national data sources and to present a fairly…

This is the seventh report in a series prepared in response to a legislative mandate that directed the California Postsecondary Education Commission to publish a report each year on significant indicators of performance. The report contains background information on the development and recent review of these performance indicators and describes…

This document reports the results of the Kansas Assessment Program for reading and mathematics for 1999. The mathematics assessment is given in grades 4, 7, and 10. Over 30% of the 4th graders met the individual student standard for excellence in mathematics, with 8% of 7th graders and only 4% of 10th graders meeting the standard. Five-year trend…

This executive summary describes a study that finds nearly every school in the Great Lakes states is threatened to fail the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements mandated by the federal "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) Act. NCLB holds schools and districts accountable for student achievement on state standardized tests and schools…

The present study builds on the earlier work of Thurlow et al. (1995) and Guy et al. (1999). These earlier studies examined state graduation policies and diploma options across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The purposes of these earlier studies were to: (1) provide policy makers and state education agency personnel information on the…

The federal No Child Left Behind Act and its mandate for adequate yearly progress has placed unprecedented demands on districts to use evidence to support their school improvement efforts. Research has not yet determined if data-driven decision making leads to improvements in teaching and learning since most outcomes reported to date are based on…

In Fall 2004, the Pell Institute released the first "Indicators of Opportunity in Higher Education." The inaugural report was well-received, including praise from the higher education community, press coverage, and policymaker discussions of the issues and data presented in the report. We present this second report with the goal of…