Keep the Promise (KTP) is a multi-year longitudinal study of at-risk high school students, involving Massachusetts’ three largest urban school districts — Boston, Springfield, and Worcester.
 
The objectives of the research are threefold:

• To track the behavior, experiences, and perceptions of students who are in the classes of 2003, 2004, and 2005 and who need extra academic help to develop the skills required to pass MCAS (the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) and earn a Massachusetts high school diploma.
   
• To catalog and begin to evaluate the effectiveness of high school remediation programs with an aim toward identifying promising practices.
   
• To gauge the quality and effectiveness of related outreach efforts to students and their families.

Key Research Questions

Qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis are being used to address the research objectives defined above. The key research questions include the following:

• Student characteristics and behavior: What is the profile of students who took MCAS 10th grade exams more than once before passing (or who never passed them), and how does it compare to the profile of students who passed? To what extent do students who fail to pass MCAS by their senior year continue to work toward passing MCAS and obtaining their high school diplomas? What steps do they take in pursuit of their objective? How do attitudes and behaviors of at-risk students change, if at all, as the MCAS requirement becomes increasingly embedded in the school landscape?
   
• Remediation program design and effectiveness: What program characteristics appear to deliver the best results? Are certain types of programs more appropriate for some student populations than others?
   
• Outreach and participation: Are there particular characteristics or experiences (e.g., demographic, academic) that make a student more or less likely to participate in voluntary remediation programs? What other factors enhance or diminish the likelihood that a student will utilize academic support services (e.g., motivation, family pressures, practical or economic incentives/disincentives)? What are the characteristics of programs and outreach efforts that do the best job of getting students to actively participate?
   

Reports

Refining Remediation: Support Strategies for At-Risk High School Students in Three Urban Districts(December 2005). [PDF]
Developed especially for use by district and high school leaders, this report provides important data confirming the crucial, positive impact that the state's MCAS remediation funding has had on student achievement. It is organized around the key challenges in striving to meet students' needs with remediation assistance. The report provides detailed information on the ways that educators in Massachusetts' three largest districts have addressed those challenges.

Stepping Backwards: The Fraying of Massachusetts’ Commitment to Students at the Front Lines of School Reform (April 2004). [PDF]
This report puts specific numbers on the impact of the cuts in Worcester, Springfield, and Boston and describes the qualitative decline of academic support programs as well. The inescapable conclusion is that Massachusetts has taken a significant, but reparable, step backwards in its effort to keep its promises to all of the students served by its public schools.
 

What We Know Now: Early Findings and Important Questions About Urban High School Remediation in Massachusetts (November 2003). [PDF]
This report provides an analysis of available student record data for the Classes of 2003 and 2004 with the aim of developing a better understanding of the characteristics of students who fail the MCAS exam. Most importantly, these new data provide a more complete picture of the target population and raises key questions for educators to consider when planning programs for FY’04.
 

Beyond Tests and Good Intentions: What the Academic “ER” Looks Like in Boston, Springfield, and Worcester (October 2003). [PDF]
This report provides an overview of the remediation services available to students in each of the three study districts during the 2002-2003 academic year and is intended to serve a descriptive, not evaluative, function. Services will be considered in three main groups — in-school remediation activities, before/after school services, and summer programs. One high school in each district is given an in-depth profile.
 

Seizing the Day: Massachusetts At-Risk High School Students Speak Out on Their Experiences at the Front Lines of Education Reform (October 2003). [PDF]
This report summarizes baseline information gathered through interviews and surveys conducted with students in 11th and 12th grades in the spring of 2003 — the first two classes to face Massachusetts’ new MCAS graduation requirement. The focus of these data collection activities is to gather students’ perceptions, attitudes, and experiences in regard to the MCAS and related academic remediation programs. The qualitative data collected through the interviews serves as a contextual complement to the written survey.