A wide body of research shows that consistent participation in high-quality afterschool and summer programs, also called out-of-school time or OST, provides substantial benefits to children and youth and their communities. Youth are more prone to engage in juvenile delinquency, substance abuse and other risky behaviors after 3:00 p.m. if there are…

From Washington to Connecticut, Arkansas to Indiana, state policymakers and community college leaders are focused on building completion pathways to ensure that more students succeed in postsecondary education and make smooth transitions to careers. Financial aid is both an effective and a necessary policy lever to promote this goal. Not only do…

Examining the efficacy of literacy improvement, general education development (GED) completion, and GED completers' perceptions of college readiness and social capital was the purpose of this study. The participant sample (n = 321), derived from the target population (N = 1050), consisted of former participants of Adult Literacy Education…

How can an understanding of adolescent development inform strategies and practices for supporting first-generation college goers? In "Ready, Willing, and Able," Mandy Savitz-Romer and Suzanne Bouffard focus on the developmental tasks and competencies that young people need to develop in order to plan for and succeed in higher education. These…

Multiple catalysts are fueling states' increased urgency to establish a definition of "college readiness". Some states are creating a "college readiness" definition that describes what a student will know and be able to do in such core academic courses as English language arts and math, and that identifies items or benchmarks on state assessments…

This research examined the effects of the new English/Language Arts standards, brought about by the Tennessee Diploma Project, on the ACT Reading test scores of high school seniors. The effects on student achievement, perceptions of secondary and postsecondary educators, as well as the effects on the test scores of at-risk students were measured.…

Building on their work through Achieving the Dream, six states and 15 community colleges joined the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) in 2009 to take on one of higher education's most daunting challenges: improving the success of students who enter community college academically underprepared. The states and Jobs for the Future, which…

This brief studies California's introduction of the Early Assessment Program to bridge the gap between K-12 educational standards and postsecondary education requirements, similar to the Common Core State Standards movement.

A promising strategy for promoting successful college transition and increasing college completion rates is to help students avoid developmental coursework by preparing them for placement exams before they enroll in college. A lack of content alignment between high school exit exams and college entrance exams is one of many troubling disconnects…

The role of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards in grades K-5 literacy instruction is the focus of the article. The authors begin by raising four questions: (1) What is the essential philosophy of the Common Core State Standards?; (2) What do educators need to know to use the College and Career Readiness Standards and Common Core State…

Education policymakers and leaders often say that the opinions and observations of teachers are among the most important information to help explain and understand what is happening in schools. Teachers' voices can inject a sense of classroom and school-level realism into those discussions and add clarity and credibility to issues that are often…

The 2016 Nebraska Higher Education Progress Report is the 12th annual progress report designed to provide the Nebraska Legislature with comparative statistics to monitor and evaluate progress toward achieving three key priorities for Nebraska's postsecondary education system. These priorities were developed by the 2003 LR 174 Higher Education Task…

Urban Alliance serves at-risk youth through its high school internship program, which provides training, mentoring, and work experience to high school seniors from distressed communities. The program aims to help youth move on to higher education or employment after graduation. The Urban Institute is conducting a six-year, randomized controlled…

Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife, has been teaching in community colleges for the past 18 years. Dr. Biden believes that community colleges are "…uniquely American institutions where anyone who walks through the door is one step closer to realizing the American dream." This is an inspiring sentiment. However, of all the…

In the later part of the twentieth century, the continued growth in high school and college dropout rates led to the development of educational reform measures that would address an education model that was seen as applicable to a disproportionate percentage of the nation's students, thereby leaving the majority of schools and their students…