Research in High School Improvement
Search the Database
The National High School Center is developing an Actionable Knowledge Database for high schools that will allow easy access to high-quality information about policies, programs, practices, and tools that aim to improve high schools.
The research portion of the database will provide access to information about high school interventions categorized into three standards as defined below:
Evidence-Based Practices: Educational practices whose effectiveness has been demonstrated through rigorous research methods that use objective and systematic procedures, such as experimental or quasi-experimental research;
Promising Practices: Practices that are potentially effective but have a limited research base to provide conclusive evidence about the benefits of the practice and how such benefits are achieved; and
New and Emerging Practices: New instructional and high school reform interventions that are documented and widely used by practitioners or policymakers, but have not yet been tested using rigorous research.
The interactive system will allow users to search the extensive database by topic, author, and/or citation in order to locate research on important high school issues. Users will be able to create customized searches by target population (for example, low socio-economic students, special needs students, English Language Learners); gender; geographic settings (for example, urban, rural, suburban); and school settings (for example, traditional school setting, charter school, small learning communities).
Review Process
The extensive database, spanning the last 20 years, will provide practitioners and policymakers the information they need to make well-informed decisions without having to sift through individual research studies themselves.
Studies will be gathered through extensive searches of published literature and screened for relevance to the topic(s) of interest. Those studies that meet these criteria will then be systematically reviewed and summarized by High School Center researchers.
The High School Center will provide access to summaries of individual studies or literature and will also develop comprehensive reports detailing the key research-based findings that categorize practices as evidence-based, promising, or new and emerging. Over time, the database will continue to be updated as new studies and findings transpire.
