A Washington Post Bestseller An entirely fresh approach to ending the high school dropout crisis is revealed in this groundbreaking chronicle of unprecedented transformation in a city notorious for its "failing schools" In eighth grade, Eric thought he was going places. But by his second semester of freshman year at Hancock High, his D's in Environmental Science and French, plus an F in Mr. Castillo's Honors Algebra class, might have suggested otherwise. Research shows that students with more than one semester F during their freshman year are very unlikely to graduate. If Eric had attended Hancock—or any number of Chicago's public high schools—just a decade earlier, chances are good he would have dropped out. Instead, Hancock's new way of responding to failing grades, missed homework, and other red flags made it possible for Eric to get back on track. The Make-or-Break Year is the largely untold story of how a simple idea—that reorganizing schools to get students through the treacherous transitions of freshman year greatly increases the odds of those students graduating—changed the course of two Chicago high schools, an entire school system, and thousands of lives. Marshaling groundbreaking research on the teenage brain, peer relationships, and academic performance, journalist turned communications expert Emily Krone Phillips details the emergence of Freshman OnTrack, a program-cum-movement that is translating knowledge into action—and revolutionizing how teachers grade, mete out discipline, and provide social, emotional, and academic support to their students. This vivid description of real change in a faulty system will captivate anyone who cares about improving our nation's schools; it will inspire educators and families to reimagine their relationships with students like Eric, and others whose stories affirm the pivotal nature of ninth grade for all young people. In a moment of relentless focus on what doesn't work in education and the public sphere, Phillips's dramatic account examines what does.

Almost half of all Chicago Public School students fail to graduate, and in some CPS high schools more students drop out than graduate. It is a problem that can sometimes feel overwhelming to address because the causes of dropout are myriad and complex. What is often lost in discussions about dropping out is the one factor that is most directly related to graduation-students' performance in their courses. In this research report, CCSR authors Elaine Allensworth and John Q. Easton look into the elements of course performance that predict whether students will graduate and suggest what schools and families can do to keep more teens in school. Building on earlier CCSR research of "on-track indicators" that demonstrated a connection between failing freshman classes and dropping out, the authors found that a number of freshman-year factors can be used to predict high school graduation. Grades are as predictive as on-track indicators; almost all students with a "B" average or better at the end of their freshman year graduate, compared to only a quarter of those with a "D" average. The research also revealed how critical attendance is for freshman success. Conventional wisdom holds that eighth grade test scores are good predictors of students' likelihood to do well in high school courses. However, course attendance is eight times more predictive of course failure in the freshman year than test scores. Just one week of absence is associated with a much greater likelihood of failure, regardless of incoming achievement. The authors also examine how school practices affect students' grades, failure rates and attendance. Students' grades and attendance are particularly better than expected in schools characterized by two features-supportive relationships between teachers and students, and a perception among students that the work they are doing in high school is preparing them for the future.

Grades and attendance-not test scores-are the middle grade factors most strongly connected with both high school and college success. In fact, grades and attendance matter more than test scores, race, poverty, or other background characteristics for later academic success. This report follows approximately 20,000 Chicago Public Schools students as they transition from elementary to high school. It is designed to help answer questions about which markers should be used to gauge whether students are ready to succeed in high school and beyond. It also considers the performance levels students need to reach in middle school to have a reasonable chance of succeeding in high school.

The Booker Prize winner. “[One of] the top 10 books about the British in India . . . the book is a joy and makes an elegiac farewell to the Raj.” —Ferdinand Mount, The Guardian In this sequel to The Raj Quartet, Colonel Tusker and Lucy Smalley stay on in the hills of Pankot after Indian independence deprives them of their colonial status. Finally fed up with accommodating her husband, Lucy claims a degree of independence herself. Eloquent and hilarious, she and Tusker act out class tensions among the British of the Raj and give voice to the loneliness, rage, and stubborn affection in their marriage. Staying On won the Booker Prize in 1977 and was made into a motion picture starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in 1979. “Staying On far transcends the events of its central action . . . [The work] should help win for Scott . . . the reputation he deserves—as one of the best novelists to emerge from Britain’s silver age.” —Robert Towers, Newsweek “Scott’s vision is both precise and painterly. Like an engraver cross-hatching in the illusion of fullness, he selects nuances that will make his characters take on depth and poignancy.” —Jean G. Zorn, The New York Times Book Review “A graceful comic coda to the earlier song of India . . . No one writing knows or can evoke an Anglo-Indian setting better than Scott.” —Paul Gray, Time “Staying On provides a sort of postscript to [Scott’s] deservedly acclaimed The Raj Quartet . . . It is, on any showing, a creditable achievement.” —Malcolm Muggeridge, The New York Times Book Review

Continuous Improvement in High Schools gives educators and policymakers an accessible, actionable framework to address one of the nation's most important educational priorities: improving high school graduation and postsecondary preparedness rates. Martha Abele Mac Iver and Robert Balfanz, national experts in dropout prevention, apply the Carnegie Foundation’s continuous improvement framework to the issue of student success in high school, starting with the critical ninth-grade year. A proven tool for organizational change, the framework provides a systematic structure for examining the root causes of problems and testing possible solutions. Mac Iver and Balfanz draw on their decades of experience working with educators and their deep knowledge of challenges faced by high schools to customize the framework to the high school context. They model the use of improvement science principles such as establishing practical measures, conducting disciplined inquiry, and accelerating learning through networked communities. With real-world examples and ideas for change, the authors show how attention to five key areas can enrich student educational experience and improve high school outcomes. These areas are early warning and intervention systems; family engagement; students’ sense of connectedness to school; social, emotional, and academic development; and teacher instructional practices. The guidance offered in this useful work will enable educators and their collaborating partners to create their own powerful solutions for student success.

Experience-honed guidance and tools to help school and teacher leaders understand and uncover equity-related issues within their building-and organize action to address them.

A comprehensive analysis of the astonishing changes that elevated the Chicago public school system from one of the worst in the nation to one of the most improved. How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools tells the story of the extraordinary thirty-year school reform effort that changed the landscape of public education in Chicago. Acclaimed educational researcher Anthony S. Bryk joins five coauthors directly involved in Chicago’s education reform efforts, Sharon Greenberg, Albert Bertani, Penny Sebring, Steven E. Tozer, and Timothy Knowles, to illuminate the many factors that led to this transformation of the Chicago Public Schools. Beginning in 1987, Bryk and colleagues lay out the civic context for reform, outlining the systemic challenges such as segregation, institutional racism, and income and resource disparities that reformers grappled with as well as the social conflicts they faced. Next, they describe how fundamental changes occurred at every level of schooling: enhancing classroom instruction; organizing more engaged and effective local school communities; strengthening the preparation, recruitment, and support of teachers and school leaders; and sustaining an ambitious evidence-based campaign to keep the public informed on the progress of key reform initiatives and the challenges still ahead. The power of this capacity building is validated by unprecedented increases in benchmarks such as graduation rates and college matriculation. This riveting account introduces key actors within the schools, city government, and business community, and the partnerships they forged. It also reveals the surprising yet essential role of Chicago's innovative information infrastructure in aligning disparate initiatives. In making clear how elements such as advocacy, civic capacity, improvement research, and strong democracy contributed to large-scale progress in the system's 600-plus schools, the book highlights the greater lessons that the Chicago story offers for system improvement overall.

The rapid changes in the composition of school-age youth around the world have catalyzed a growing concern about how to address children’s mental health and education. Grounded in this increasingly global perspective, The International Handbook of Consultation in Educational Settings is designed to provide a multicultural/transnational approach to consultation theory, research, training, and practice in educational settings. With chapters written by geographically diverse and prominent scholars across the field of school psychology, this handbook captures the range of ways in which consultation services are trained, implemented, and researched internationally. Written for practitioners, researchers, faculty members, and graduate students in the fields of school psychology, school counseling, special education, and educational psychology, this volume is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive look at consultation in learning environments across the world. The International Handbook of Consultation in Educational Settings offers various perspectives on models, implementation, training, and research on school consultation. After an introduction to the volume by the editors, contributors to Part II examine school-based consultation around the world to explore how consultation services are implemented in different countries. Part III addresses cross-cultural issues in consultation, particularly at a systems level. Part IV presents themes related to processes and issues in the implementation of consultation by focusing on approaches in various countries. The chapters in Part V focus on consultation training, offering insights into the development of students and professionals into effective consultants in cross-cultural and systemic contexts. Part VI describes how practitioners can contribute to the body of research on consultation through careful planning and implementation of their work. Finally, the editors summarize key concepts and findings in a concluding chapter.

The second edition of The Encyclopedia of Middle Grades Education has been revised, updated, and expanded since its original publication in 2005. The Encyclopedia is a comprehensive overview of the field; it contains alphabetically organized entries that address important concepts, ideas, terms, people, organizations, publications, and research studies specifically related to middle grades education. This edition contains over 210 entries from nearly 160 expert contributors, this is a 25% increase in the number of entries over the first edition. The Encyclopedia is aimed at a general audience including undergraduate students in middle?level teacher preparation programs, graduate students, higher education faculty, and practitioners and administrators. The comprehensive list of entries are comprised of both short entries (500 words) and longer entries (2000 words). A significant number of entries appearing in the first edition have been revised and updated. Citations and references are provided for each entry.