Students preparing for college and careers need access to career-focused programs of study that combine challenging academic content and intellectually demanding career/technical (CT) studies. Schools wanting to raise student achievement can create career-focused programs of study that connect a solid academic core with a sequence of CT courses.…

When faculty members at Furman Middle School in Sumter, South Carolina, expressed concern about the lack of time in each day to provide the interventions, remediation, and enrichment the students needed to be prepared for state testing, their principal devised a creative flexible schedule to meet student needs. These include: (1) a morning…

The New DARE middle school program, Take Charge of Your Life, has reinvented DARE as part of a major national research study that promises to help teachers and administrators address the issues of drugs and school violence. Gone is the old-style approach to prevention in which an officer stands behind a podium and lectures students in straight…

Parents are the central source of emotional, financial and social support for their children. Many young people also have the benefit of relationships with adults other than parents--including teachers, coaches, grandparents, older siblings, neighbors and employers--who serve as informal mentors. These relationships provide youth with extra…

The causes of reading failure are numerous and complex. If instruction provided by the school is ineffective or insufficient, even some otherwise capable learners will have difficulty learning to read. Improving literacy instruction through professional development is an ongoing process involving all of the members of a schoolwide literacy team in…