Adolescent Literacy

Site Selection Criteria

Schools profiled for Adolescent Literacy must meet two criteria:

1. The school must be successful in fostering student achievement. This is measured through examination of publicly available state achievement data. The school must have met AYP for all subgroups in the most recent year for which data were available.

2. The school must be implementing the research-based practice with fidelity and quality. Based on available documentation about a site and information obtained through a screening interview with staff at each school, researchers rated the extent to which a school is implementing a research-based practice and following the recommendations related to that practice, with attention to the thoroughness of the implementation and the availability of supporting sample materials. Schools are profiled on Doing What Works (DWW) only for those practices that they are implementing well.

(Note: Highlighting a specific teaching practice at a school should not be construed as a statement about how well other teaching practices were or were not implemented at that school.)

To identify schools for potential inclusion, Doing What Works contractors asked researchers, district and state administrators, and associations and organizations involved in improving adolescent literacy to nominate schools that have been successful at implementing the recommended practices.

DWW contractors then analyzed the achievement data of, and implementation of research-based practices by, nominated schools, as described above.

The final selection among the schools that met the necessary criteria to be an example of a school to be profiled was made with the goal of providing a range of examples to illustrate:

• • Different subject areas and grade levels;
• • Different approaches to instruction;
• • Varied locations; and
• • Innovative approaches to implementing the practice.