In a 2010 address to the College Board, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan laid out a vision for high school that advances the Obama administration's goal of the U.S. once again leading the world in educational attainment. There is no grade in which the magnitude and complexity of this shift becomes clearer than in senior year. Historically,…

The debate over the best delivery of general education, whether through a canon of Great Books, a core curriculum of specific courses and course sequences, or a distribution requirement of course types providing for greater student choice, has existed for generations. Today, the debate plays out in practice across the top-rated colleges and…

The 1990 High School Transcript Study (HSTS) collected 21,607 transcripts from 330 schools. Similar studies were conducted of high school course taking patterns in 1987 (the 1987 High School Transcript Study of approximately 22,700 transcripts) and in 1982 (approximately 12,000 transcripts from the High School and Beyond Study). The introductory…

Background: Since the early 1980s there have been extensive federal, state, and local efforts to improve schools for all students, including broad policy initiatives intended to change the school experiences of students with disabilities. These efforts have had significant impacts on policy and practice at all levels of the education system,…