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Adolescent Literacy and Older Students with Learning Disabilities
This report describes the adolescent literacy problem (grades 4 to 12), its consequences, and contributing factors. Guiding principles for assessment, instruction, and professional development, as well as recommendations for short-term and future consideration, are also addressed.
The High Cost of High School Dropouts: What the Nation Pays for Inadequate High Schools
The social and economic implications of America's high dropout rate are staggering. In addition to the waste of human potential, the costs of dropouts include lower tax revenues from lower paying jobs, higher crime rates, higher demand for social services, and the loss of global economic competitiveness.
What Are the Key Components of Dropout Prevention Programs?
Dropout prevention research shows that most programs use more than one type of intervention (family outreach, academic tutoring, personalization and vocational training, for example). While there is no one right way to intervene, research has identified several key components to intervention success.
What Do We Know About Who Drops Out and Why?
Students decide to drop out for many reasons. This overview classifies the reasons as either status (e.g., age, socioeconomic status, geographic region or mobility) or alterable (e.g., grades, disruptive behaviors, school climate, attitude toward school). Recognizing the difference between variables is critical to designing effective interventions.
Dropout Risk Factors and Exemplary Programs
Dropout decisions may involve up to 25 significant factors, ranging from parenthood to learning disabilities. The most effective interventions address the various factors and employ multiple strategies, including personal asset building, academic support, and family outreach. A list of 50 exemplary programs is included.
What Does Research Tell Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners?
In this article, a seasoned ELL teacher synthesizes her own classroom experience and the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth to make recommendations for effective literacy instruction of ELL students.
African-American Students and U.S. High Schools
This fact sheet, prepared by the Alliance for Excellent Education, looks at statistics related to the graduation rates and college readiness of African-American students, as well as the quality of the teachers and schools that serve them.
A Conceptual Model of Adolescent Literacy
A graphic representation of four sectors — perceptions, achievement, programs, and demographics — that influence adolescent literacy. A glossary of the conceptual model's components is included.
Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners
Explicit teaching of reading comprehension skills will help English Language Learners apply these strategies to all subject matter.
Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future
Barely 50% of minority students graduate from high school on time. If this trend continues and the minority student populations increase as projected, the economic strength of the U.S. will be undermined. But if 78% of all student populations graduate on time by 2020, the U.S. can realize stunning potential benefits: conservatively, more than $310 billion would be added to the national economy.
A Closer Look: Closing the Performance Gap
The performance gap — what students are expected to do versus what they can do — is compounded each year a child falls short of acquiring expected skills. As a result, underachieving high school students are at great risk for academic failure, discouragement, and disengagement. This article offers a framework to support adolescent literacy that ties improved student outcomes to an instructional core and an infrastructure core.
Rethinking High School: Five Profiles of Innovative Models for Student Success
Only 68% of all students entering high school nationwide will earn their diploma. The news for students from historically underserved populations is even worse. These students have slightly more than a 50% chance of graduating from high school. To respond to this crisis, educators and policymakers are focused on developing small high schools which offer students a more personalized setting. But is the effort making a difference? In the absence of available long term data, WestEd examined five new, inner-city high schools across the country and discovered rigorous curricula, racially and socioeconomically diverse student bodies, academic access, engaged students, and supportive learning environments.
Using Multiple Texts to Teach Content
Each of us, every day, has to contend with multiple messages or texts—in the news, over the Internet, in our workplace, in books, and in conversation. Making sense of these sometimes conflicting messages is critical. But without being explicitly taught how to do so, students can have trouble synthesizing multiple texts—gathering facts without keeping an eye toward the different perspective of each. This Learning Point Associates article offers a case study and guidelines for using multiple texts in the classroom to increase the critical thinking and academic sophistication of older students.
Building on their research in secondary classrooms, the Center on English Learning and Achievement has developed guidelines that describe six essential features of effective literacy instruction and how teachers can implement them.
