Kelly Gallagher writes that "wide swaths of students are not developing their writing skills--skills we know to be foundational to their literate lives." In this article, he explains how school districts can go about developing students' writing skills in all content-area classrooms. He highlights five reasons why students should write…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills are very valuable for economic growth. However, the number of young people pursuing STEM learning trajectories in the United Kingdom was lower than the predicted demand during the last decade. Several STEM enrichment and enhancement activities were thus funded by the government,…

Children living in poverty face challenges progressing through the educational system prepared adequately for college and/or career (ACT, 2015; Newell, 2013). With momentum gained through national movements, such as the First Lady Michele Obama's 2014 Reach Higher initiative, and state initiatives on college and career readiness, a call has been…

Community colleges, with their commitment to open access, admit millions of students each year who are unprepared for college-level work, even though they have earned a high-school diploma. For decades the schools had a built-in base of students attracted to their open doors and relative affordability. But enrollment at public two-year college has…

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was twofold: first, to explore the 6 exceptional systems of a culture of college readiness supported within 2 No Excuses University elementary schools and identify any patterns or trends that may exist across 4th- and 6th-grade levels, and second, to examine the relationship between these…

Like other major school districts throughout the country, the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) has shifted its focus over the last decade from holding high schools accountable for graduation rates to holding them accountable for rates of college and career readiness. There are two major challenges facing both research and policy…

Although about 77% of ACT-tested high school graduates express an intention of earning a bachelor's degree or higher (ACT, 2016a), the percentage of students who achieve academic success in their first-year courses, persist in college, and ultimately earn a bachelor's degree within six years is substantially lower. Approximately 60% of students…

In fulfillment of Ohio Revised Code and 3345.061 (H), the Chancellor of the Department of Higher Education and the Superintendent of Public Instruction have submitted this 2017 Ohio Remediation Report. The report provides an overview of Ohio's Remediation-Free Guarantee, a review of the data, and recommendations for future strategies to reduce the…

The majority of Tennessee ninth graders graduate from high school, but far fewer make the leap to postsecondary education. Recently launched statewide initiatives have fundamentally shifted the educational landscape, substantially reducing barriers to postsecondary access. The state now stands at the cusp of a historical transformation where it…

We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to examine the role of high schools in explaining students' initial college and major placements at 4-year public universities. To facilitate our investigation of postsecondary sorting, we develop a "preparation and persistence index" (PPI) for each university-by-major cell in the…

In 2014-15, the high school graduation rate reached a record high of 83 percent (U.S. Department of Education 2016). Despite the gains, over half a million students still drop out of high school each year (U.S. Department of Education 2015). High schools have adopted various strategies designed to keep students who are at risk of not graduating in…

Oregon students attend schools in a variety of geographic locations across the state and the sizes of the schools range from more than 3,000 students to fewer than five. This brief highlights schools in small and medium-sized towns, with a median 9th through 12th grade enrollment size of 92 for a school in a small town and 385 for a school in…

Research shows that cognitively demanding text-based writing assignments increase students' reading comprehension skills and analytic writing competencies. In this article, we describe the steps that upper-elementary grade teachers can take to develop cognitively demanding assignments that build these higher-level literacy skills and put students…

Citizens need to be college prepared in higher numbers and with greater urgency than in the past. This growing need for a college-prepared workforce places increased demand on schools to create college-ready students. The Career and College Readiness Standards for much of public education foster the skills and dispositions for academic excellence,…

California's Early Assessment Program is designed to notify students about their college readiness, encouraging them to take action to improve their skills during their senior year. The author uses qualitative methods and applies sense-making theory to examine how students attending majority Latino, low-income high schools make sense of the…