What We Are Reading: College and Career Development, RTI, Credit Beyond School Hours

Looking for new high school-related resources?  Here are some pieces that the National High School Center and other organizations have recently released:*

College and Career Development Organizer (National High School Center, March 2012). This college and career development organizer was created to synthesize and organize an increasingly complicated and crowded field of college and career readiness initiatives. The organizer, composed of three strands, can be used to map the efforts of SEAs and LEAs as well as the many organizations devoted to researching and providing support for college and career readiness. The organizer can also be used as a set of building blocks to help SEA, LEAs, schools, and other organizations develop college and career readiness strategies and initiatives to address student needs. Stakeholders can use the components of the organizer to ensure that they are designing comprehensive college and career readiness definitions and strategies that address all aspects of the field that are essential to their context.

Learn Anytime, Anywhere: Rethinking How Students Earn Credit Beyond School Hours (The After-School Corporation, March, 2012). In this policy brief, TASC offers policy recommendations to bring down bureaucratic barriers and encourage schools to collaborate on off-campus learning with community partners, such as art and science institutions.

Survey on Students and Tablets 2012 (Pearson Foundation, March 2012). The Pearson Foundation’s Second Annual Survey on Students and Tablets seeks to understand the ways that high school seniors and college students are using mobile technology, and their perceptions about the latest mobile devices available to them. The first annual survey was conducted in March 2011. This year’s survey reveals dramatic changes in tablet ownership, usage, and attitudes.

Building a Grad Nation Report: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic (America’s Promise Alliance, March 19, 2012). The 2012 report update shows that the nation continues to make progress, with more than half of states increasing graduation rates. The report also reveals that the number of "dropout factory" high schools—those graduating 60 percent or fewer students on time—decreased by 457 between 2002 and 2010, with the rate of decline accelerating since 2008.

State Implementation and Perceptions of Title I School Improvement Grants under the Recovery Act: One Year Later (Center on Education Policy, March 20, 2012). Based on a winter 2011-12 survey of state directors of the federal Title I program, this report examines the first year of state implementation of the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. 

Opportunities and Obstacles: Implementing Stimulus-Funded School Improvement Grants in Maryland, Michigan, and Idaho (Center on Education Policy, March 20, 2012). This report examines the implementation of the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program by drawing on research conducted in three states, seven school districts, and 11 schools -- including schools that were eligible for but did not receive a SIG award.

*Resource descriptions provided by the sponsoring organization.

Note: This blog post was originally authored under the auspices of the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The National High School Center’s blog, High School Matters, which ran until March 2013, provided an objective perspective on the latest research, issues, and events that affected high school improvement. The CCRS Center plans to continue relevant work originally developed under the National High School Center grant. National High School Center blog posts that pertain to CCRS Center issues are included on this website as a resource to our stakeholders.