These online newsletters contain “best practices” from school leaders, teachers and other featured speakers from the 2006 HSTW Staff Development Conference in Orlando, Florida. Each newsletter is based on a specific conference objective and contains helpful information from schools successfully implementing the High Schools That Work and Making Middle Grades Work Key Practices. You will also find the name of a person to contact and how to e-mail him or her if you want to learn more about a given school's practice. More newsletters will be added during the coming months.

The conference objectives are to lead change by 1) raising classroom expectations and achievement; 2) raising achievement and getting more students to graduate from high school; 3) creating conditions that support teachers to work together to improve the quality and rigor of classroom instruction at the middle grades and high school levels; 4) providing at least 10 percent more students access to a rigorous and relevant academic core and an academic or career/technical concentration that prepares them for further learning and work; 5) providing students access to high-quality career/technical studies that add relevance to academic studies and increase high school completion rates and readiness for postsecondary studies and good jobs; 6) developing a teacher guidance and advisement system in the middle grades and high school; 7) supporting students to meet achievement standards and to graduate from high school through successful extra-help programs and transition strategies from middle grades to ninth grade and from high school to postsecondary studies and careers; and 8) developing state, district and school policies and practices that create conditions for fuller implementation of the HSTW and MMGW designs.

Click here for full descriptions of conference objectives and sub-objectives. (In PDF Format)

Students Need Strong Guidance and Advisement to Succeed

Raising Achievement and Graduation Rates: Schools Pave the Way to the Future for All Students

Putting College-preparatory Social Studies on the Map: Ensuring Students are Prepared for Their New Frontiers

Giving More Students Access to a Rigorous and Relevant Mathematics Core

Students Rocket to Success in High-level Science Courses with Hands-on Projects and Labs

This publication is an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. To view, you will need to have the free Acrobat Reader installed. The latest reader is downloadable for free from Adobe.