Graduation Matters: Improving Accountability for High School Graduation

This report details state-set goals for graduation rates under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, showing how improvement targets are often so low that they undercut the aim of significantly raising graduation rates. 

Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Poor Children in Texas
Their Fair Share: How Teacher Salary Gaps Shortchange Minority Children in Texas

These companion reports document how schools serving more low-income and minority students are being denied their fair share of Texas’ most experienced teachers.

Funding Gaps 2006

This most recent report documents the fact that poorer states receive less in education funding, while poorer districts within states receive lower funding, and that poorer schools within districts are under-funded.

Technical Appendix

2006 Education Watch State Summaries

Part of the Education Watch series, these NAEP Data Tables allow for easy state-to-state comparisons of scale scores for different groups of students. They include tables that look at student achievement and gap trends over time.

Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equity in the Nation’s Premier Public Universities

This report sharply criticizes most flagship universities in each of the 50 states for limiting access to minority students.

Yes We Can: Telling Truths and Dispelling Myths About Race and Education in America

This report examines the educational practices and policies that have raised academic achievement for low-income and minority students, and offers compelling evidence that children of color excel in school when given the right teaching, right classes and right support.

Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities

This report sharply criticizes trends in federal, state, and college practices that discourage low-income and minority students from enrolling and graduating from college.

Missing the Mark: States’ Teacher Equity Plans Fall Short

This analysis of teacher-equity plans prepared by all 50 states and the District of Columbia finds that most states failed to properly analyze data that would determine whether poor and minority children get more than their fair share of unqualified, inexperienced, and out-of-field teachers.

Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality  

This report provides new information on the impact of teacher quality on student achievement and offers specific steps states should take to remedy the persistent practice of denying the best teachers to the children who need them the most.

Primary Progress, Secondary Challenge: A State-by-State Look at Student Achievement Patterns

This report examines state assessment results in reading and math between 2003 and 2005 and finds that progress in raising achievement and closing gaps continues to be strongest in the elementary grades.
 

Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground: How Some High Schools Accelerate Learning for Struggling Students

This report is the result of a careful, on-the-ground study into the practices of public high schools that serve high concentrations of either low-income or minority children and have a strong track record accelerating learning for students who enter high school below grade level. This study compares and contrasts the practices of these high-impact schools with similar high schools that have only an average impact on student performance.

Technical Appendix

The Power to Change: High Schools that Help All Students Achieve

This report chronicles the stories of three very different high schools that are getting strong results for minority students and students from low-income families. The report demonstrates clearly that some high schools are succeeding, even under challenging circumstances.

Hidden Spending Gaps in California's School Districts - School-Level Hidden Gap Reports 

This new series of Hidden Gap reports looks at the impact of the hidden teacher-spending gaps in schools throughout California. The series is comprised of 12 district-specific reports that reveal school-level gaps in California’s largest school districts, along with a web-based tool that allows access to hidden gap information about every public school in California. (Press Release)(Comunicación de prensa)
- To download the reports, visit www.hiddengap.org.
- To find the hidden spending gap at your CA school, visit tsa.hiddengap.org.
 

Getting Honest About Grad Rates: How States Play the Numbers and Students Lose

This Education Trust report highlights the inaccurate and unreliable way states calculate and report high school graduation rates and also rebukes the U.S. Department of Education for failing to exert leadership by demanding that states get honest about their graduation statistics.
 

On Course for Success

The Education Trust along with the ACT collaborated to write On Course for Success which provides examples of model high school courses that prepare students for the rigors of college and ultimately the work force.

One Step from the Finish Line: Higher College-Graduation Rates are Within Our Reach

This report challenges the conventional wisdom about college-graduation rates by highlighting the strategies of some successful colleges and universities.

Choosing To Improve: Voices from Colleges and Universities with Better Graduation Rates

Offers a more detailed examination of the practices of these schools and outlines a growing body of research that tells us that what schools do matters a great deal -- from their efforts to keep new students engaged to their use of data to uncover obstacles to completion.