Critics have pointed to the many problems in American high schools. Urban high schools are typically large, impersonal institutions in which students can easily feel anonymous and lost. Classes often do not require students to think deeply and critically about the material they are learning, and students often cannot see the relevance of classes to their lives. Large proportions of students — more than half in some urban high schools — drop out of school. In an economy where postsecondary education or training is rapidly becoming the prerequisite for a decently paying job, high school dropouts are all too likely to face a future of underemployment or joblessness. And many students who do graduate lack the skills needed to succeed in college or the workplace.
In 1991, MDRC began its work in the area of K-12 education by focusing on efforts to change high schools to better meet the needs of disadvantaged students, and secondary school reform remains central to MDRC’s learning agenda. Findings from an array of current and completed projects are adding to our knowledge about how middle and high schools can help students prepare for a brighter future.
Current Projects
Many high school reform initiatives involve the breaking down of large schools into smaller entities — often called “small learning communities” or “academies” — characterized by interdisciplinary teams of teachers who share the same students and have common planning time. These small learning communities seek to foster a more personalized atmosphere in which students and teachers come to know and trust each other and to hold each other accountable. The Career Academies Evaluation is a study of one of the first and best-known examples of this restructuring approach, combining small learning communities with career-oriented curricula and with work experience. The project also marks MDRC’s first — and highly successful — effort to introduce a random assignment evaluation into an ongoing school-based program.
MDRC is now evaluating two more recent comprehensive high school reform initiatives: First Things First and Talent Development (which also contains a middle school model). Both seek not only to transform the structure of schools by introducing small learning communities but also to change the nature and content of classroom instruction. To that end, they offer professional development to teachers and sometimes specially developed curricula as well.
A fourth initiative MDRC is studying, Project GRAD, contains both secondary and elementary school components. For high school students, the intervention includes various activities to prepare students for college, along with a college scholarship for students who graduate high school with a 2.5 grade point average.
The most recent addition to MDRC's portfolio of high school reform studies, The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study, entails a rigorous random assignment test of promising "catch-up" literacy programs aimed at students who enter the ninth grade reading two to four years behind grade level.
MDRC is also seeking to further the state of knowledge about high school reform through dialogue with other members of the research community, policymakers, funders, and practitioners. Since January 2004, MDRC has held three High School Reform Conferences, with the goal of bringing rigorous evidence into policy discussions and thinking about ways that evidence can best be utilized to inform both policy and practice.
In 2005, MDRC joined The National High School Center, which acts as a central source of information and expertise on high school improvement issues for all students, with a special focus on students with disabilities, students with limited proficiency in English, and students at risk of school failure. The National High School Center is part of a national network of Content and Regional Comprehensive Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education to help build capacity of states across the nation to effectively implement the provisions and goals of the No Child Left Behind Act. In November 2006, MDRC's Corinne Herlihy and Janet Quint developed a policy brief for the Center, Emerging Evidence on Improving High School Student Achievement and Graduation Rates: The Effects of Four Popular Improvement Programs.
Finally, MDRC is focusing on improving the math skills of middle-schoolers in the Professional Development in Math Study, being conducted with the American Institutes for Research, which is investigating the effectiveness of an intensive professional development intervention for seventh-grade math teachers.
Completed Projects
A number of studies, now completed, have helped build MDRC’s expertise about how secondary schools operate, the problems they face, and workable solutions to these problems. In particular, the Home-Grown Lessons project, which marked MDRC’s entry into the K-12 arena, profiled 16 school-to-work programs designed to provide high school students with clearer pathways to postsecondary employment. Project Transition studied the implementation and effectiveness of a program designed to help students succeed in ninth grade, a particularly hazardous point in their educational trajectories.
Key Documents on School-Based Reforms in Secondary Schools
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