New Report: Transforming the High School Experience

Posted by on October 17, 2010

A scalable model

In a recent commentary in Education Week, Michelle Cahill of the Carnegie Corporation and Robert Hughes of local education fund New Visions in New York City write that a June study on small high schools by MDRC “brings encouraging news for those seeking to produce rapid progress at scale in high school reform.” The analysis of NYC’s small-high-schools initiative found that students in the new schools performed better and had higher graduation rates than their peers in other schools across the city. Small schools boosted performance in particular for students of color and under prepared students. Cahill and Hughes write that, “all elements of New York City’s small-schools strategy can be replicated in other districts by strong leaders and smart practitioners of secondary reform.” The model is germane to discussions across the states about how to implement reform for the lowest-performing schools: New York’s is the only high-school strategy that has produced significant graduation-rate gains at scale. “As a nation, we are late to enact meaningful high school reform; we lose students every day,” the authors say. “The challenges remain difficult, but not insuperable. New York City has done it. There’s no reason it can’t happen with disadvantaged students in cities and states across the country.”

Read more: http://www.mdrc.org/announcement_hp_254.html