National Governors Association
Implementing Graduation Counts: State Progress to Date, 2006
This report details progress in implementing a common graduation rate calculation methodology across all 50 states. The report's release comes on the heels of an impressive NGA effort to standardize methodologies through the signing of the Graduation Counts Compact by all 50 governors. Universal usage of the Compact's formula is a crucial step towards ensuring accurate and comparable student graduation, completion and dropout statistics across states.

Allen, Lili, Cheryl A. Almeida, Lucretia Murphy and Adria Steinberg
Jobs for the Future
Building a Portfolio of High Schools: A Strategic Investment Toolkit, 2006
This toolkit is designed to help district reform leaders and their partners in the community plan a design of an excellent school, think through the relationship of their district to other potential partners, and develop strategies for launching and sustaining a new school.

Almeida, Cheryl, Cassius Johnson and Adria Steinberg
Jobs for the Future
Making Good on a Promise: What Policymakers Can Do to Support the Educational Persistence of Dropouts, 2006
In this report, researchers look at which students are dropping out and why. Their results show that the problem is not confined to low-income students — about one out of 10 young people from families in the two highest socioeconomic levels drop out. Also, many dropouts eventually earn a GED and then attempt to complete their postsecondary education, but few succeed. The report includes recommendations for policymakers, such as refocusing K–12 accountability systems to emphasize raising both high school graduation rates and academic standards.

Barth, Patte and Kati Haycock
In Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth, edited by Richard Kazis, Joel Vargas and Nancy Hoffman, Harvard Education Press, May 2004
“Core Curriculum for All Students”
The authors of this report argue that the only way to ensure that all high school students graduate ready to succeed in college and careers is to require the same high-quality college-preparatory curriculum for all students. Although this strategy may hinder the development of creative-learning programs, Patte Barth and Kati Haycock say that the benefits of a common, high-standards curriculum, particularly for low-achieving students in poorly performing schools, outweigh the risks of reducing program options.

Barton, P.E.
Educational Testing Service
One-Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities, 2005
This report documents high and rising high school dropout rates, declining investments in second-chance programs, and deteriorating opportunities for dropouts in the job market.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
High Schools for the New Millennium: Imagine the Possibilities
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation presents the case for remaking U.S. high schools into institutions that encourage all students to learn challenging, academically focused material; give students the support they need to learn it; and send a much larger percentage of students to postsecondary education.

Bottoms, Gene
Southern Regional Education Board
Raising the Achievement of Low-Performing Students: What High Schools Can Do, 2002
This report provides data on the High Schools That Work initiative, which offers a challenging curriculum to students who do not plan to pursue a four-year degree after high school. The report found that schools that adopted the program’s curriculum and stayed with the program for several years saw gains in the numbers of those students who completed the higher-level requirements. It calls for policies based on those programs to expand and extend achievement gains among low-performing students and schools.

Civic Enterprises
The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts, March 2006
Released in March 2006, this poll conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found that while some students drop out because of significant academic challenges, most dropouts are students who could have, and believe they could have, succeeded in school. This survey of young people who left high school without graduating suggests that despite career aspirations that require education beyond high school and a majority of the students' having grades of C or better, circumstances in students’ lives and an inadequate response to those circumstances from the schools led to dropping out. Visit the website.

Conklin, Kristin and Stephen Smith
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices
Stronger Fiscal Incentives Can Improve Secondary and Postsecondary Outcomes, 2004
This report looks at a variety of strategies governors and state legislators have used to offer fiscal incentives for high schools and colleges to improve students’ college readiness, high school and postsecondary completion rates, and other outcomes.

The Education Trust
Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About High School Graduation, 2003
This report reveals that while some states made good-faith efforts to report honest data, others fell far short. A considerable number of states reported no teacher quality data at all, some states reported data that appear inconsistent, and many others failed to apply their own definitions of teacher quality before submitting their baseline data. Consequently, the data provide a distorted picture of where states stand now and what progress needs to be made.

The Education Trust
Youth at the Crossroads: Facing High School and Beyond, 2001
Are today’s students better educated than their predecessors when they leave high school? This report takes an in-depth look and provides an overview of the available data related to student achievement and high school completion rates over time.

Guthrie, Larry F. and Grace Pung Guthrie
Center for Research, Evaluation and Training in Education
Longitudinal Research on AVID, 1999–2000; 2000–2001, June 2001 and July 2001
Advancement Via Individual Determination — also known as AVID — is a program for grades 5–12 that places disadvantaged students and students with average grades in advanced-level classes and gives them additional academic supports. These studies assess the impact of AVID on high school students and high school graduates. They find that students who participated in AVID middle school programs were prepared for college-level work and that the vast majority of them enrolled in four-year programs.

Hammond, C. and M. Reimer
National Dropout Prevention Center/Network, College of Health, Education and Human Development
Essential Elements of Quality After-School Programs, 2006
This report showcases after-school programs that have been deemed effective by National Dropout Prevention Center research, and it explains the core characteristics that made those programs effective. Communities in Schools, an advocacy group, says its research found that more data and information on after-school programs are needed to determine how those programs can be most effectively designed and held accountable.

Hoffman, Nancy
Jobs for the Future
Challenge, Not Remediation: The Early College High School Initiative
This report describes early college high schools, discusses partnerships that are creating these schools and explains the policy implications.

Martin, Nancy and Samuel Halperin
American Youth Policy Forum
Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-of-School Youth, 2006
This report documents strategies that educators, policymakers and community leaders across the country are using to reconnect out-of-school youth to the social and economic mainstream. It focuses on 12 communities that are providing education and employment training for dropouts. It also provides background on the high school dropout issues and describes major national program models serving youth who are no longer enrolled in schools.

National Association of Secondary School Principals
Supporting Principals Who Break Ranks, 2004
This document offers recommendations for systems that support successful high schools, based on findings from the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform report. It addresses challenges faced by school administrators and policymakers in their efforts to make outstanding high schools the norm, not the exception.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices
Getting It Done: Ten Steps to a State Action Agenda, A Guidebook of Promising State and Local Practices, 2005
This report identifies 10 steps governors can take to quickly put states on the path to redesign their high schools. These short-term strategies are relatively inexpensive but can have a long-term impact on the number of students that graduate from high school and continue their education.

Rumberger, R.W.
In Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Crisis, edited by G. Orfield, Harvard Education Press, 2004
“Why Students Drop Out of School”
This chapter of Dropouts in America examines the factors behind students’ decisions to drop out. The Civil Rights Project’s groundbreaking report reveals the scope of this hidden crisis, reviewing the most recent data on graduation and dropout rates, exploring the reasons that young people drop out of school, and presenting the most promising models for helping high school students graduate with their peers. The report is a call to action for educators, advocates and policymakers alike, and it's a resource for those concerned with equal rights and the quality of American education.

Watt, Karen M., Charles A. Powell and Irma Doris Mendiola
Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, September 9, 2004, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 241–259
“Implications of One Comprehensive School Reform Model for Secondary School Students Underrepresented in Higher Education”
This study looked at 10 Texas high schools that offered Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) programs, which place disadvantaged students and students with average grades in advanced-level middle and high school classes. It found that students who participated in AVID had better attendance and standardized test scores than their peers.