When does a community create and sustain a truly innovative "next generation" high school that not only remains innovative, but also relevant? According to the Carnegie Corporation, this means seizing the opportunity to redesign schools to promote personalized learning. So far, much work has gone into retooling many of these (reform)…

The "Seventh Annual Report Card" provides the most up-to-date information available on Boston's education pipeline, from kindergarten through college graduation, including measures for school readiness, 3rd-grade reading proficiency, 6th-grade mathematics proficiency, 10th-grade academic proficiency, high school completion, dropout…

Despite the fact that computer science (CS) is the driver of technological innovations across all disciplines and aspects of our lives, including participatory media, high school CS too commonly fails to incorporate the perspectives and concerns of low-income students of color. This article describes a partnership program -- Exploring Computer…

What do we know about the impact and implementation of Career Academies? This paper provides answers to this question. Career Academies have been around for over 30 years. Their original design stressed facilitating the school-to-work transition. In the early 1990's the focus began to shift to preparing participating students for both college and…

Little research is available specifically about grading practices in mathematics classrooms. However, there is research about grading practices in high schools, across content areas. Since their first use students, parents and others have assumed that grades are reliable measures of student achievement. "In short, most Americans have a basic trust…

What roles can colleges and universities play in serving the many young adults whom our public school systems fail? This article sheds light on how one university was able to make a literacy connection with students attending an Alternative High School (AHS). This connection enabled AHS students and teacher candidates to effectively carry out a…

While the promotion of literacy is a fundamental mission for all librarians, over the past decades the definition has expanded and, paradoxically, fragmented into various multiliteracies, such as computer literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, and so forth. From these, a broader concept of student competencies, one that includes both…

A growing number of school districts around the country are using small school development as a central strategy for improving high schools and overhauling the way the district itself does business. Driven by an increasing sense of urgency and frustration with reforms that fail to fundamentally change the quality of instruction or the nature of…