National Youth Employment Coalition: Information Center


Costs and Benefits of Using Tests that Help Students Learn
	This report, released by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, provides data on what staets and districts currently spend on tests; examines the failings of current multiple-choice tests; and analyzes the sots and opportunities of creating, implementing, and scoring assessments that ensure students are equipped with 21st century competencies.

Powerpoint Presentation for the 2/26/13 GED Webinar
	This is a copy of the presentation that Brian Smith from the GED Testing Service provided during the webianr entitled "The New GED" What to Expect in 2014" on February 26, 2013.

Preparing for the New GED Test: What to Consider before 2014
	This brief, released by the Working in the fall of 2012, provides and overview of the GED test and a primer outlining the changes that will be made for 2014 and offers ways states can prepare for them. It also describes alternatives to attining a high school equivalency diploma (HSED). Finally, the report summarizes actions staets need to take to ensure that those with the most need and least resrouces, are not shut out of the education system.

Data Collection and Use for Reconnecting Youth
	This brief is designed to assist community and state leaders, youth advocates, educators, and other stakeholders interested in improving or expanding upon the options for struggling students and out-of-school youth. It provides background on important aspects of data collection and use to help local- and state-level stakeholders think about where to start, how to assess how their community or state is doing, and how to improve or expand upon work already under way.

Building Roads to Success: Key Considerations for Communities and States Reconnecting Youth to Education
	Building Roads to Success: Key Considerations for Communities and States Reconnecting Youth to Education is designed to assist community and state leaders, youth advocates, educators, and other stakeholders interested in improving or expanding the options for struggling students and out-of-school youth. It is relevant to the work of municipal government, community-based organizations, school districts, postsecondary institutions, workforce development organizations, apprenticeship programs, and other youth-serving organizations. It is equally geared toward the work of governors' offices and state policymakers, departments of education, youth advocates, and workforce boards.

NCLB High School Graduation Rate: Non-Regulatory Guidance (Dec. 2008)
	On October 29, 2008, the Department published final regulations amending the existing regulations implementing Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The amendments included changes to 34 C.F.R. Â§200.19, regarding the "other academic indicators" that States use in defining "adequate yearly progress" (AYP). This non-regulatory guidance provides States, LEAs, and schools with information about how to implement the provisions in 34 C.F.R. Â§200.19(b). Section A of this guidance defines the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, the extended-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, and the transitional graduation rates that are allowable until States must implement the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate. Section B guides States in setting a single graduation rate goal and annual graduation rate targets. Section C outlines requirements for reporting graduation rate. Section D answers questions about how States include the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate and any extended-year adjusted cohort graduation rate in AYP determinations, including the use of disaggregated rates for student subgroups. Section E provides information about how a State must revise its Consolidated State Application Accountability Workbook (Accountability Workbook) to include certain information and submit its revisions to the Department for technical assistance and peer review. Section F clarifies the timeline for implementing the new graduation rate provisions, as well as the process for how a State that cannot meet the deadlines outlined in the final regulations may request, from the Secretary, an extension of time to meet the requirements.

Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century (June 2009)
	As the nation embraces the goal of graduating all students college and career ready, there is a growing movement to realign standards, assessments, and accountability systems to that goal. Meaningful Measurement: The Role of Assessments in Improving High School Education in the Twenty-First Century, is a collection of essays by leading experts that discuss important assessment issues, examines promising assessment practices from across the globe, and offers recommendations on how the federal government can support an assessment agenda for the twenty-first century. Topics include: assessments that measure studentsâ?? college and career readiness, performance assessments, the role of benchmark assessments, assessing high school students who are English Language learners and students with disabilities, the benefits of international assessments, the role of technology in improving assessments and their use, and how assessment design affects the implementation of a growth model at the high school level. Chapter authors include Andreas Schleicher of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Linda Darling-Hammond and Ray Pecheone of the School Redesign Network at Stanford, Rick Stiggins of the ETS Assessment Training Institute, and Judy Wertzel, formerly of the Aspen Institute.

A New Model of Student Assessment for the 21st Century - September, 2008
	The authors of this publication assert that traditional systems of assessing student performance help to produce school failure and commonly-used hundred-year old structural mechanisms have, in fact, become powerful barriers to academic achievement. To counteract these systems, the authors create the Youth Women's Leadership Charter School, a public charter high school serving low-income and minority young women in inner-city Chicago, and they describe their school's new model of teaching and assessment. This experience-based report explores the ways that standardized instructional time, semester grading, and Carnegie units influence many students to underperform and prevent failing students from getting back on track to meeting rigorous standards for graduation. The new assessment system based upon individual student mastery consistently produced higher levels of learning, high school graduation, and college attendance at the charter school. This is a provocative primer for other school reformers. - By Camille Farrington and Margaret Small, Washington, DC: American Youth Policy Forum, September 25, 2008

Avoidable Losses: High-Stakes Accountability & the Dropout Crisis
	In the state of Texas, whose standardized, high-stakes test-based accountability system became the model for the nation's most comprehensive federal education policy, more than 135,000 youth are lost from the state's high schools every year. Dropout rates are highest for African American and Latino youth, more than 60% for the students we followed. Findings from this study, which included analysis of the accountability policy in operation in high-poverty high schools in a major urban district, analysis of student-level data for more than 271,000 students in that district over a seven-year period under this policy, and extensive ethnographic analysis of life in schools under the policy, show that the state's high-stakes accountability system has a direct impact on the severity of the dropout problem. The study carries great significance for national education policy because its findings show that disaggregation of student scores by race does not lead to greater equity, but in fact puts our most vulnerable youth, the poor, the English language learners, and African American and Latino children, at risk of being pushed out of their schools so the school ratings can show "measurable improvement." High-stakes, test-based accountability leads not to equitable educational possibilities for youth, but to avoidable losses of these students from our schools. Authors: Linda McSpadden McNeil, Eileen Coppola, Judy Radigan, Rice University; Julian Vasquez Heilig, University of Texas-Austin