Funded by an Investing in Innovation (i3) Validation grant, the Rural Innovative Schools (RIS) Project is the first widespread effort to scale up the early college model by implementing it in comprehensive high schools. This paper will present preliminary findings from the evaluation of this project. The impact study uses a quasi-experimental…

Nearly 7,000 students drop out of the nation's public high schools each school day, and 3,000 of them are in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states. Altogether, an estimated 1.3 million teenagers in the United States abandon high school each year without earning a diploma. In 1,700 of the nation's high schools, less than 60 percent of…

As a superintendent of the Bellevue School District, the author discusses the Bellevue School District's curriculum and its ongoing development. The mission of the Bellevue School District is to give every student the kind of education traditionally reserved for America's elite class or, stated another way, to give every student a first-rate,…