This brief illuminates key policy and practice implications of the middle grades playing a stronger role in achieving our national goal of graduating all students from high school prepared for college or career and civic life. The brief is based on more than a decade of research and development work at the Center for the Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. It also draws on direct field experience in more than 30 middle schools implementing comprehensive reform and a longstanding collaboration with the Philadelphia Education Fund.

This report by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that there is a wide variance in the quality of the nation's several thousand charter schools with, in the aggregate, students in charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools. The report found that the academic success of students in charter schools was affected by the individual state policy environment. This report is the first detailed national assessment of charter school impacts since its longitudinal, student-level analysis covers more than 70 percent of the nation's students attending charter schools. The peer-reviewed analysis looks at student achievement growth on state achievement tests in both reading and math with controls for student demographics and eligibility for program support such as free or reduced-price lunch and special education. The analysis includes the most current student achievement data from 15 states (AR, AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, LA, MN, MO, NC, NM, OH, TX) and the District of Columbia and gauges whether students who attend charter schools fare better than if they would have attended a traditional public school. This link enables access to the executive summary, full report, technical appendix and press release.

As the focus on school improvement at a state education agency moves from mostly a compliance approach to playing a greater role in capacity building, the agency's leadership needs to rethink student and learning supports. That is the focus of this report. Given that almost half of the chief state school officers have assumed their position in the last three years, major changes are underway across the country. We hope the content of this report can help focus agency leadership on the importance of fashioning systemic changes that recognize the primary and essential role a system of learning supports can play in school improvement policy and practice. We begin with a look at how state education agencies currently conceive and organize efforts to guide and support district and school approaches to addressing external as well as internal barriers to learning. Then, we explore recommendations for state education agencies to expand school improvement policy, frame intervention, and rework operational infrastructure. We conclude by delineating specific implications for revising school improvement guidance.

The Washington State Legislature passed Senate Bill 6261 in 2008, which calls for the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board to examine programs to help young people between 18 and 24 years of age be more successful in the workforce and make recommendations to improve policies and programs in Washington. Section 28 states:
     Conduct research into workforce development programs designed to reduce the high unemployment rate among young people between approximately eighteen and twenty-four years of age. In consultation with the operating agencies, the board shall advise the governor and legislature on policies and programs to alleviate the high unemployment rate among young people. The research shall include disaggregated demographic information and, to the extent possible, income data for adult youth. The research shall also include a comparison of the effectiveness of programs examined as part of the research conducted in this subsection in relation to the public investment made in these programs in reducing unemployment of young adults. The board shall report to the appropriate committees of the legislature by November 15, 2008, and every two years thereafter. Where possible, the data reported to the legislature should be reported in numbers and in percentages.

This policy brief details how states can see a net reduction in costs by moving expenditures away from large, congruent care facilities (often called "training schools") for youth and investing in community-based alternatives. Such a resource realignment can reap better results for communities, taxpayers, and children. Evidence is growing that there are cost-effective policies and programs for intervening in the lives of delinquent youth which actually improve community safety and outcomes for children. While there is no silver bullet that will guarantee reductions in crime, policies that include prevention and intervention for youth in the community have been shown to have a positive public safety benefit. Major findings and recommendations for reform are included.