The big clock in Dowan McNair-Lee's 8th grade classroom in the Stuart-Hobson Middle School is silent, but she can hear the minutes ticking away nonetheless. On this day, like any other, the clock is a constant reminder of how little time she has to prepare her students--for spring tests, and for high school and all that lies beyond it. The…

Instructors of entry-level college courses consider the common standards in mathematics and English/language arts good reflections of the skills students must master to be successful in courses in a range of disciplines, according to a survey released last week. The study, "Reaching the Goal," aims to verify a key premise of the academic standards…

Stubbornly high college remediation rates have revealed a painful equation: High school completion does not equal college readiness. That disconnection has prompted national leaders to focus like never before on figuring out how to ensure that high school graduates are truly ready to succeed in college. In that quest, a California program is often…

The latest administration of the assessment provides state-by-state results for 12th graders for the first time. Twelfth graders' reading and mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have improved only modestly in the past four years, according to results from the latest administration, prompting renewed recognition…

The author reports a federal competition that has opened for $350 million in federal money to design new ways of assessing what students learn. Rules for the contest make clear that the government wants to leave behind multiple-choice testing more often in favor of essays, multidisciplinary projects, and other more nuanced measures of achievement.…

When Superintendent Anthony Amato arrived in Stockton, California's 38,000-student district, he knew that three of its four comprehensive high schools had been labeled "dropout factories." Mr. Amato, who has led the Hartford, Connecticut, Kansas City, Missouri, and New Orleans districts, studied Stockton's data to form his plan. Then he…

A lot of hope is riding on a little document in the big state of Texas. Educators and policymakers who have long agonized over how the Lone Star State's low college-going rate and its high remediation rate are charting a course they hope will lead to better outcomes. This article discusses the Texas College and Career Readiness Standards as a key…

Texas, which has helped shape key tenets of the standards and accountability movement, is on the brink of revamping the way it assesses high school students for graduation. Instead of testing knowledge that students accumulate over several years, the state would test what students learn in each course. A bill passed by the Texas Senate last month…

The impending closure of the Manual Education Complex in Denver is sparking a conversation about what can be learned from the experience at a time when the nation has pinned high hopes on improving secondary schools by turning them into smaller, more personalized environments. The Denver high school, which subdivided into three schools in 2001,…

High school dropouts interviewed for a study released in early March, 2006, were far more likely to say they left school because they were unmotivated, not challenged enough, or overwhelmed by troubles outside of school than because they were failing academically. This article discusses this study, which consisted of four focus groups with…

This article discusses an instructional development system called "holistic" approach, a strategy to improve high school education in Chicago. The initiative includes new curriculum materials, aligned to district standards, as well as assessments and ongoing teacher coaching and training that are designed for the curriculum. The design…

Chicago is embarking on a major initiative to convert at least 10 percent of its schools into small schools, most of which will be run by private operators. Mayor Richard M. Daley portrayed his plan, called Renaissance 2010, as a way to "shake up the system," introduce fresh ideas that could save its lowest-performing schools, and…