College is increasingly unattainable for students, and existing student debt exceeds an astounding $1.2 trillion. There are approximately 40 million people in the U.S. who have student debt. Student debt averages $29,400 per person. It's time to take action and reduce student debt! This fall, the NEA launches NEA Degrees Not Debt, an informational campaign to help NEA members, students, and their families learn about their options to make college more affordable.

Each year, CHILDREN AT RISK reexamines its methodology of ranking schools to ensure that the rankings most accurately reflects school performance, utilizes the most appropriate data available, and incorporates feedback from educators, researchers, and service providers.

CHILDREN AT RISK is pleased to have completed the 2016 Annual School Rankings.

• Student Achievement Index – Performance on STAAR Reading and Math tests
• Campus Performance Index – An adjustment of achievement indicators to eliminate bias toward campuses with low percentages of economically disadvantaged students
• Growth Index – The improvement over time on standardized test scores in Reading, English, and Math
• College Readiness Index - graduation rates, SAT/ACT participation rate and scores, and AP/IB participation rate and scores

Each year, CHILDREN AT RISK reexamines its methodology of ranking schools to ensure that the rankings most accurately reflects school performance, utilizes the most appropriate data available, and incorporates feedback from educators, researchers, and service providers.

CHILDREN AT RISK is pleased to have completed the 2016 Annual School Rankings.

• Student Achievement Index – Performance on STAAR Reading and Math tests
• Campus Performance Index – An adjustment of achievement indicators to eliminate bias toward campuses with low percentages of economically disadvantaged students
• Growth Index – The improvement over time on standardized test scores in Reading, English, and Math
• College Readiness Index - graduation rates, SAT/ACT participation rate and scores, and AP/IB participation rate and scores

Each year, CHILDREN AT RISK reexamines its methodology of ranking schools to ensure that the rankings most accurately reflects school performance, utilizes the most appropriate data available, and incorporates feedback from educators, researchers, and service providers.

CHILDREN AT RISK is pleased to have completed the 2016 Annual School Rankings.

• Student Achievement Index – Performance on STAAR Reading and Math tests
• Campus Performance Index – An adjustment of achievement indicators to eliminate bias toward campuses with low percentages of economically disadvantaged students
• Growth Index – The improvement over time on standardized test scores in Reading, English, and Math
• College Readiness Index - graduation rates, SAT/ACT participation rate and scores, and AP/IB participation rate and scores

Summer melt occurs when students who have been accepted to college and intend to enroll fail to matriculate in college in the fall semester after high school. A high rate of summer melt contributes to the lower postsecondary attainment rates of low-income students, in particular. This article presents qualitative findings from two interventions intended to reduce summer melt among low-income, urban high school graduates who had been accepted to college and indicated their intention to enroll. Results from student and counselor surveys, interviews, and focus groups point to a web of personal and contextual factors that collectively influence students' college preparation behaviors and provide insight into the areas of summer supports from which students like these can benefit. The data fit an ecological perspective, in which personal, institutional, societal, and temporal factors interact to affect students' behaviors and outcomes. A model of summer intervention shows that obstacles in completing college financing and informational tasks can lead college-intending students to re-open the question of where or whether to attend college in the fall after high school graduation. Given the pressure of concerns about how to actualize their offer of admission, students rarely engage in the anticipatory socialization activities that might help them make optimal transitions into college.

Many young people learn a discouraging set of lessons between the ages of 16 and 24. They come to see secondary school as irrelevant, available jobs as demeaning, and their prospects and choices as diminishing. Some continue to "drop in" to school long enough to get a diploma, but leave lacking the skills or interest to pursue further education. Others drop out of school altogether. Seen in this context, the ambitious promise implied in the federal law to "leave no child behind" will require moving expeditiously beyond the "one-size-fits-all," factory-model high school to a far richer diversity of learning environments. This paper focuses on four types of learning environments that appear to hold particular promise for vulnerable and potentially disconnected youth: reinvented high schools, secondary/postsecondary blends, education/employment blends, and extended learning opportunities beyond the school day, year, and building. The first section paints a statistical portrait of the substantial number of urban youth who could potentially benefit from these new programmatic options. The second section describes the authors' process for identifying and investigating emerging, powerful learning environments, then profiles four programs that show evidence of effectiveness. The report concludes with a discussion of the policy opportunities today for creating multiple avenues for young people to achieve to higher standards, along with four specific policy recommendations to meet this goal.

Urban Alliance, headquartered in Washington, DC, serves at-risk youth through its high school internship program, which provides training, mentoring, and work experience to high school seniors from distressed communities in Washington, DC; Baltimore; Northern Virginia; and Chicago. The program serves youth before they become disconnected, helping them successfully transition to higher education or employment after graduation. Urban Alliance has commissioned the Urban Institute to conduct a six-year, randomized controlled trial impact and process evaluation of its high school internship program. This report provides a process analysis of the program; the analysis is informed by extensive evaluator observation and interviews with staff, stakeholders, and youth. It also presents baseline information about Urban Alliance and the youth participating in its high school internship program in Washington, DC, and Baltimore in the 2011–12 and 2012–13 program years. Subsequent reports as part of the impact study will describe the early-adulthood impacts of the Urban Alliance internship program on the youth it serves. Below is a summary of the findings in this first of three reports.

The number of high school age students who do not complete high school is receiving increased attention as a serious challenge facing the educational system. This is happening for several reasons. New research estimates that about 30 percent of high school students fail to earn a diploma in the standard number of years, a higher figure than state and local education officials typically cite. In many states, barely half of African-Americans and Latinos graduate from high school. The magnitude of the challenge is becoming clear at the same time that a consensus is emerging that education beyond high school is critical to economic self-sufficiency and success in today's knowledge-intensive economy. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 60 percent of jobs created between now and 2010 will require at least some postsecondary education. In the emerging economy, a high school dropout or a young person who earns a GED, but no further postsecondary credential, has extremely few opportunities for a family-supporting career. Addressing the dropout crisis will require responding to a dual challenge: state education systems must promote and support both dropout prevention strategies and dropout recovery efforts. This brief describes current practice in both prevention and recovery, highlighting promising approaches in each area that can help reduce stubbornly high dropout rates. It concludes with several suggestions for how state policymakers can help promote a more systemic approach to the dropout crisis.