Book chapter 2019

Effective school reforms for increasing engagement

Handbook of Student Engagement Interventions: Working with Disengaged Students
Journal · pp. 245-261
Abstract

We describe evidence-based school reforms designed to increase student engagement across whole schools, whole grade levels, or whole departments in the secondary grades and summarize the roles that support personnel, teachers, and school leaders’ play in these initiatives. The highlighted reforms-the Diplomas Now school transformation model for middle schools and high schools, New York City’s Student Success Mentors Initiative for chronic absentees, Project SUCCESS for sixth graders, school-wide or department-wide project-based and problem-based learning, and wall-to-wall college and career academies (and coherent high-quality career and technical education course sequences) for high schools-were selected because each has clear evidence of effectiveness and represents an open-source prototype that is adaptable, implementable, and scalable in districts serving significant numbers of disengaged youth. All the reforms seek to create stronger learning environments, improve social conditions and relationships within the school, and systematically build adults’ collective efficacy and capacity to meet students’ needs. © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Project-Based Learning Mentoring Career Academies Engagement high schools School reform Interdisciplinary instruction Middle schools Semi-departmentalization Tiered student supports

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States
Funding & Acknowledgements
No funding information
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