Following several years of negative trends in achievement and attendance in the middle grades, the Cleveland Municipal School District began phasing out middle schools by restructuring 21 of its 80 K-5 elementary schools into K-8 schools. This study examined Cleveland's restructuring initiative in light of 2 theories on early adolescent…

Foundations for Success, a study conducted by MDRC for the Council of the Great City Schools, examined the reform efforts of 3 large urban school districts and a portion of a 4th that had been successful in improving student achievement and reducing racial achievement gaps. This article summarizes the key findings of the study and discusses the…

This article uses survey data on 15,800 high school students from 3 urban school districts to investigate the impact of school-level support for higher educational attainment and school racial composition on students' actual educational aspirations. We examine students' perceptions of school support for postsecondary participation and test…

A number of studies have shown that low-income and minority students undergo larger summer reading losses than their middle-class and White classmates, and that reading is the only activity that is consistently related to summer learning. The purpose of this study was to explore whether reading books during summer vacation improved fall reading…

This article reports on 3 years of mathematics reform that took place in 4 high-poverty minority schools in a large, demographically mixed public school system in the South. Comparisons were made with 2 demographically similar sets of schools on project-constructed interviews, items taken from the Third International Math/Science Study (TIMSS)…

Dutch schools have to deal with policy programs that generally are aimed at the improvement of the cognitive and social functioning of 3 groups of disadvantaged students. These are (a) pupils with special educational needs, (b) pupils at risk, and (c) non-Dutch pupils. The Dutch Integrated School Policy Project examines the implementation and…

This is a study of 10 high schools that implemented Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) during the 1999-2000 academic year as a Comprehensive School Reform model. Student performance data were collected on 1,291 AVID students in these Texas schools. Researchers examined test scores, attendance rates, advanced course enrollment…

Schools across the nation are implementing reform models intended to enable all children to meet state-established academic standards. One of the nation's comprehensive school reform models is Success for All (SFA). This study assessed the impact of the program on elementary school students in standardized reading scores as well as attendance and…

Students who are at risk of dropping out of school can be identified retrospectively as early as third grade on the basis of attendance patterns, academic performance, and behavior. Check & Connect is a model designed to promote student engagement, support regular attendance, and improve the likelihood of school completion. The program has been…

This case study describes how an urban school system evolved to support an externally developed and externally introduced whole-school reform (WSR) effort. Based on interview data with school district staff and external partners, it analyzes a central office reorganization that placed all schools implementing a combination of Direct Instruction…

Children with limited English proficiency are known to be at higher risk of school failure than their peers. Risk starts early, and the achievement lag of these children often widens with age and progression in the educational system. This study attempted to determine the effects of a 2-way bilingual education program on the literacy development…

Many attempts at educational reform, among them No Child Left Behind and a recent Philadelphia effort, assume that the quality of the educational programs being offered by schools can be inferred from the achievements of the children who attend them. This article explores the reasonableness of this assumption for Philadelphia public schools by…

This study presents a rare opportunity to systematically examine the relationship between teachers' implementation of the America's Choice comprehensive school reform model and gains in student learning in an urban, at-risk school district. The results provide empirical evidence of relationships between student learning gains and variation in…

Children in foster care represent one of the most vulnerable, academically at risk populations in the United States. Aside from lower standardized achievement test scores, higher grade retention numbers, and a greater dropout rate than non-foster youth, between 30% to 50% of children in foster care are placed in special education programs,…

This research examined the effectiveness in an urban school district of 2 of the most widely used Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) programs-Direct Instruction (DI), implemented in 9 district elementary schools, and Success for All (SFA), implemented in 2 elementary schools. In examining impacts on student achievement and school change outcomes…