The May 2008 issue of Educational Leadership, a journal published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), features an article by MDRC Senior Associate Janet Quint, "Lessons from Leading Models," which summarizes MDRC’s research on Career Academies, First Things First, and Talent Development. The theme of the May issue is “Reshaping High Schools.”

In her article, which is adapted from her synthesis report, Meeting Five Critical Challenges of High School Reform: Lessons from Research on Three Reform Models, Quint makes the case for looking at evidence-based models:

The expectations placed on U.S. high schools have never been greater. Society now rightly expects high schools to prepare all students for success in college or a workplace that requires an increasingly high level of skills. Meeting these expectations is particularly daunting for high schools serving large numbers of low-income students — and the stakes are high.

Ninth graders from economically disadvantaged backgrounds often start high school feeling unknown by teachers and peers and lacking essential literacy and numeracy skills. If their high schools do nothing to break through struggling 9th graders' isolation and academic weaknesses, students are likely to fall behind academically — and students who fail courses in 9th grade are at high risk of dropping out altogether. Low-performing high schools clearly need new models, not only to help all students graduate, but also to prepare them for life after graduation.

High school administrators can find signs of hope, however, in successful, replicable strategies from three well-established reform initiatives that grapple with improving achievement in low-performing high schools — Talent Development, First Things First, and career academies. The nonprofit research organization MDRC, at which I am a senior researcher, conducted separate evaluations of these three models highlighting approaches that help low-performing high schools reshape themselves.