9 Mar 2016
Brief

Graduation Advantage Persists for Students in Deeper Learning Network High Schools

Updated Findings From the Study of Deeper Learning: Opportunities and Outcomes

Kristina Zeiser, Nicholas Mills, Suzanne Wulach, and Michael S. Garet

Can deeper learning approaches lead to higher graduation rates? A second round of graduation data from the Study of Deeper Learning: Opportunities and Outcomes suggests that perhaps they can.

According to the National Research Council, “deeper learning” enables a student to transfer her knowledge and skills from one situation to another. The term also is used to refer to learning that results in a combination of cognitive competencies (mastery of content knowledge and complex problem-solving skills), interpersonal skills (such as communication and collaboration), and intrapersonal competencies and dispositions (such as learning how to learn and academic mindsets).

Consistent with the findings from the original Study of Deeper Learning, newly completed analyses including additional school pairs and an additional cohort of students find a graduation rate advantage of 8 percentage points for students in participating deeper learning network high schools compared with similar students in matched non-network high schools.

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Graduation Advantage Persists for Students in Deeper Learning Network High Schools: Updated Findings From the Study of Deeper Learning: Opportunities and Outcomes and its technical appendix by American Institutes for Research is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from AIR at copyright_PS@air.org.

Related Projects

Project

Study of Deeper Learning: Opportunities and Outcomes

AIR is studying the ways in which schools provide opportunities for students to acquire complex knowledge and deeper learning skills. Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the study examines the impact of these opportunities on how students develop five dimensions of deeper learning: mastery of core content, critical thinking skills, collaboration skills, communication skills, and independent learning skills.

Related Work

Kristina Zeiser
31 Aug 2016
Blog Post

Three Studies Show Impact of Deeper Learning

Today, success isn’t just about what you know. It’s also about how quickly you can grasp and apply new knowledge. That’s the theory behind “deeper learning,” a broad term encompassing the goals of an increasing number of U.S. schools and school systems. In a series of reports, researchers at AIR examined whether and how opportunities for deeper learning change high school graduation and college attendance rates for students. In this blog post, Kristina Zeiser, Jordan Rickles, and Mette Huberman share the studies’ results.
9 Mar 2016
News Release

AIR Study Finds Persistent Graduation Advantage For Students in Deeper Learning Network High Schools

A follow-up to an earlier study of the effects of “deeper learning” in high schools conducted by AIR confirms that students who attended network schools with instruction focused on deeper learning graduate at a higher rate than their peers.
Students working together
24 Jan 2017
Spotlight

Spotlight on Deeper Learning

What do today’s students really need to learn in order to succeed, not only in the classroom but also later on in college, careers, and as engaged citizens? What role can deeper learning—“a set of competencies students must master in order to develop a keen understanding of academic content and apply their knowledge to problems in the classroom and on the job”—play?
15 Sep 2014
Report

The Shape of Deeper Learning: Strategies, Structures, and Cultures in Deeper Learning Network High Schools (1 of 5)

In the past few years, a movement for “deeper learning” has emerged on the United States’ educational scene, based on decades of development work by educators, support from the philanthropic community, and the interest and engagement of national and local policymakers. This is the first in a series of three research reports on the strategies, opportunities, and outcomes of a set of high schools explicitly organized to promote deeper learning among their students.
16 Sep 2014
Report

Providing Opportunities for Deeper Learning (2 of 5)

The concept of deeper learning has been used both to describe a set of competencies or goals for students, and to characterize a way of learning (or a process) that promotes these competencies. In this report—our second in a series of three—we focus specifically on the opportunities that students experienced to engage in deeper learning in their classrooms.
24 Sep 2014
Report

Evidence of Deeper Learning Outcomes (3 of 5)

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation defines deeper learning as “a set of competencies students must master in order to develop a keen understanding of academic content and apply their knowledge to problems in the classroom and on the job.” In this third report, the focus is on whether students who attended selected network schools had higher educational outcomes than did their matched counterparts who attended similar non-network schools.

Further Reading