The Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) recently announced that Howard S. Bloom and Rebecca Unterman are the recipients of SRA’s 2014 Best Policy Report/Brief Award for Sustained Progress: New Findings about the Effectiveness and Operation of Small Public High Schools of Choice in New York City. The award was presented at the SRA Biennial Meeting in March in Austin, Texas.

Bloom’s and Unterman’s report finds that New York City’s small public high schools, which have nonselective admissions and serve many disadvantaged students, have produced sustained positive effects, raising graduation rates by 9.5 percentage points. More of their graduates also emerge ready for college: 6.8 percentage points more according to one measure of college readiness used by the City University of New York. This report also describes what principals and teachers at these schools believe accounts for their success.