Research and Policy

Postsecondary education is increasingly necessary to prepare young people to reach their full potentials as adults. Although New York City’s public schools are graduating more students and more of them are going on to college, high rates of remedial course-taking and low graduation rates indicate a need to improve academic preparation, enhance college access services, promote more effective transitions into college and provide more supportive environments in postsecondary institutions. 

Full Garvey report

At the request of the Nellie Mae Foundation (NMEF), AISR staff examined the growing body of literature on community organizing to understand how this strategy fits into systemic education reform. The research shows that community organizing for school reform has the potential to create equitable changes in schools and districts, develop innovative education solutions that reflect the knowledge of under-served communities, and build the long-term social capital of under-served communities both to support schools and districts and to hold them accountable for improving achievement.

Full report

Executive summary

Directory of New England organizations

AISR collaborates with the education department at Brown University to offer the Urban Education master’s degree program. Michelle Renée and Warren Simmons co-teach the Urban Systems and Structures class; Mike Grady and Ellen Foley co-teach the Research Design and Methods class as well as a course on grant writing. Both the UEP courses and AISR program work have been enriched by significant interconnections between the two.

AISR provides technical assistance to support the local district redesign efforts of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s New Day for Learning (NDL) initiative. The initiative’s goal is the redesign of school- and community-based learning resources so that all children receive the supports needed to pursue postsecondary education and training and to become active members of a society that is increasingly global.

AISR will support a collaboration between the Rhode Island Office of Higher Education (RIOHE) and the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop a statewide indicator system for K–16 college readiness and success.

In January of 2010, Central Falls High School (CFHS) was identified as one of Rhode Island’s persistently lowest‐achieving schools. Schools identified as persistently lowest-achieving are required to choose among four possible intervention models: turnaround, restart, school closure, or transformation model.

Research and Policy staff engage in a range of projects to inform both the Institute’s work and the fields of district-level reform and community organizing for school reform. This work includes original research, documentation and evaluation of reform efforts, analyses of current education policies, and the development of tools to share lessons and best practices.

This report is the first of a series of lessons learned from the Transatlantic School Innovation Alliance. The goal of this partnership is to improve teaching, learning, and educational leadership by creating a peer network of principals and practitioners in urban secondary schools in the United States and the United Kingdom. The report examines how policy shapes practice in these collaborative networks, which benefit educators by allowing them to share knowledge and best practices with their peers in other schools and cities, as well as internationally. 

TSIA Report

A Smart System in London: Voices in Urban Education 21