Instruction

This report, jointly released by ACT, Inc., and the Education Trust, presents the results of a study looking at how schools prepare minority and low-income students for success in college and subsequently, the workforce. This study identifies the following four components as key to the schools' success in preparing students: 1) high-level college-oriented content, 2) well qualified teachers, 3) flexible pedagogical styles, and 4) tutorial support students.

This report from MDRC looks at how three different high school reform models--Career Academies, First Things First, and Talent Development--addressed five challenges found to be obstacles to successful reform implementation in low-performing high schools. According to this report, the pillars of high school reform are structural changes to improve personalization and instructional improvement. The report offers tangible solutions as well as supporting evidence and various resources.

This paper from the Center for American Progress examines high schools that implement an extended learning day as part of a required educational program for all students, explores issues related to implementing such a program, presents examples of how schools accomplish this, and analyzes the implications for school design, capacity, and financing.

This research brief from the National High School Center outlines existing barriers regarding teacher expectations, tracking, and placement of English language learners (ELLs) and offers key policies and useful strategies in building capacity and developing learning environments conducive for all students in obtaining academic success.

The National High School Center released methods for improving low-performing high schools based on some of the most rigorous research currently available in the school reform arena. This research brief identifies lessons learned as well as key practices used to strengthen high schools and is based on evaluations of four widely used high school improvement programs - Career Academies, First Things First, Project GRAD, and Talent Development.

The Alliance for Excellent Education conducted a meta-analysis on 11 research-based practices aimed at improving the writing skills of fourth to 12th graders. The practices are: (1) writing strategies, (2) summarization, (3) collaborative writing, (4) specific product goals, (5) word processing, (6) sentence combining, (7) prewriting, (8) inquiry activities, (9) process writing approach, (10) study of models, and (11) writing for content learning. The results of the meta-analyses indicate that the practices examined had a large to medium effect size on students’ writing skills.

This study investigated the characteristics of instruction that accompany student achievement in reading, writing, and English. It focused on English language arts programs in schools that have been trying to increase student performance, comparing those whose students perform higher than demographically comparable schools with schools whose scores are more typical. The study took place in four states and included 25 schools, 44 teachers, and 88 classes studied over a 2-year period each.

This report presented a meta-analysis of writing interventions for students with learning disabilities. Interventions focused on writing expository or narrative texts. Thirteen studies were found that fit the authors’ criteria. Results indicated that interventions had a positive effect on students' writing and understanding of the writing process.

This book offers an alternative to current reform efforts, the Talent Development approach, detailing organizational, curricular, and instructional strategies that provide practitioners with a blueprint for whole school reform. The book presents the story of what happened in urban high schools when this approach was implemented. There are eight chapters in three parts.