Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program: The Third Wave and Its Preliminary Effects. PREL Briefing Paper (original) (raw)
US Department of Education, 2003
The Field-Focused Study and the entire task order were directed by Robert K. Yin, Ph.D., of COSMOS. Margaret K. Gwaltney, M.B.A., of COSMOS served as the deputy project director, and Dawn Kim served as project coordinator. Many other staff members from COSMOS and TMG collaborated in the study, which involved four rounds of site visits to 18 CSRD schools and the collection and analysis of student achievement data from these schools. Michelle LaPointe, Ph.D., of the Policy and Program Studies Service, U.S. Department of Education, served as the ED project officer for most of the evaluation (Kathryn Doherty, Ph.D., was ED's first project officer). The report was mainly prepared by Robert Yin and Dawn Kim and is presented in two volumes. Volume I contains the main text. Volume II contains six appendices to Volume I, including short summaries of the 18 schools that were studied. The summaries, as well as data presented in Volume I, are based on 18 in-depth and detailed cases reviewed by each school and available separately from COSMOS (see www. cosmoscorp.com). Throughout, all schools are identified anonymously. Component 9 (see Section 2.3.4): Most schools were in a position to coordinate or converge resources, but resources for sustainability were still uncertain. District and State Influences. The Field-Focused Study also collected data about district and state actions potentially affecting the schools' CSRD implementation. Some of these actions were part of the CSRD administrative procedures, because states implement CSRD by having districts apply competitively on behalf of some or all of their schools. In the process, both states and districts can support or monitor the schools' CSRD efforts. The study found varying degrees of such support (see Section 3.1.1). More important than these procedures related directly to the administration of CSRD, the study uncovered other important state and district policies, not directly related to administering CSRD, that nevertheless influenced CSRD implementation (see Section 3.1.2). Some conditions, such as extremely limited professional resources, had a negative influence on CSRD. Other conditions, such as the direct alignment of CSRD designs with district improvement plans and state standards, had an extremely positive influence. Other conditions reflected the ongoing dynamics of school systems-e.g., districts reducing financial support for all external research-based methods, a district allowing a CSRD vi school to become a charter school, and a district deciding to merge two schools that happened to be CSRD schools. Strong district or state influence, creating a "vertical" alignment to the school level, led alternatively to either complementarity or conflict with CSRD. As examples on the complementary side, CSRD provided two schools with resources and a compatible reform agenda to respond to their designation as underperforming schools in the state's accountability system. As examples on the conflicting side, the shifting content of state assessments led districts to use resources for alternative curricula and professional development that were contrary to those involved in a CSRD school's original plans or implementation. In general, these external state and district conditions appear to be highly relevant to CSRD implementation. Conditions Associated with Successful Implementation and the Role of State and District Influences: Three Pathways to Reform The study identified three different sets of conditions, or "pathways," that appeared to be associated with the successful implementation of CSRD (see Section 3.4). The first pathway is a component-driven pathway, whereby a school uses the 9 CSRD components to guide the development and implementation of a comprehensive reform. The second is a method-driven pathway, whereby the school adopts and implements a comprehensive research-based method that affects virtually all school operations and whose successful implementation substitutes for the need for any independent articulation of the 9 CSRD components. (However, many research-based methods focus on specific curricula and are not comprehensive.) The third is a vertical-driven pathway, whereby a school articulates and pursues the needed comprehensive strategies as a result of state and district requirements involving: the setting of standards, use of appropriate assessment tools, and required alignment of district-and school-based strategic planning and improvement plans to meet state performance standards. No single pathway was considered the "best" or preferred pathway, and no pathway was necessarily more immune than the others to such disruptive conditions as: high principal turnover rates, limited professional development resources, or planned or unplanned school restructuring. Sustainability of "Whole-School" Reform: Still Questionable Given Current Fiscal Climate As a final topic, the study examined the prospects for sustaining school reform beyond the final year of CSRD funding (see Section 3.5). vii Neither the original legislation nor ED defined the exact nature of a school's changes to be associated with sustaining a comprehensively reforming school beyond the three-year CSRD award period. As a result, the Field-Focused Study examined two different views of sustainability and judged the 18 schools according to both. The first view, based mainly on the experiences of the New American Schools initiative, holds that the central changes to be sustained should be the practices associated with the originally-supported research-based method. The second view is that comprehensive reform, though embracing a research-based method, also transcends it. By this second view, successful sustainability would not necessarily be associated with the continued use of any particular method but could involve transitions from one researchbased method to another, over time. The transitions would have to reflect a progression toward continued school and student improvement rather than the "churning" of innovative practices. Using the most lenient benchmark and accepting either of these two views as a criterion for assessing sustainability, 14 of the 18 schools were exhibiting a promising level of sustainability by the time their CSRD awards were ending. Accepting only the second view reduces the number to 11, and accepting the first view reduces it to 10. The main barrier to sustainability continues to be the limited availability of sufficient resources, especially in light of states' and districts' revenue shortfalls in recent years. To sustain a reforming process, even when existing resources have been coordinated and targeted to reform, still requires discretionary funds to support such essential activities as: adequate professional development (including support for teacher substitutes), especially in situations of high teacher turnover; time for common planning periods or teachers' work on school leadership teams; and support for external technical assistance. Though such needs can be served with modest levels of funds, serving the needs is still a discretionary activity that may have to be ignored if core school operations are underbudgeted. viii Contents
Comprehensive School Reform: An Observational Study of Teaching in Grades 3 through 5
The Elementary School Journal, 2006
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Evaluation of the Comprehensive School Reform Program Implementation and Outcomes
2010
This Fifth-Year Report from the Evaluation of the Comprehensive School Reform Program Implementation and Outcomes (ECSRIO) is the final report on the outcomes of the federally funded Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program. It presents findings about the relationship between participation in the U.S. Department of Education's Comprehensive School Reform program in 2002 and subsequent student achievement five years later. This report follows the study's Third-Year Report which presented findings as of 2005 and was published in 2008. 1 The Fifth-Year Report examines the CSR program throughout the country and its relationship with gains in student achievement as of 2007. Although we appreciate the assistance and support of all of these individuals, any errors in judgment or fact are the responsibility of the authors.
National Clearinghouse For Comprehensive School Reform, 2004
About NCCSR-A partnership of The George Washington University, the Council for Basic Education, and the Institute for Educational Leadership The National Clearinghouse for Comprehensive School Reform collects and disseminates information that builds the capacity of schools to raise the academic achievement of all students. Through its web site, reference and retrieval services, and publications, NCCSR is the central gateway to information on CSR. If you have documents on CSR that should be added to our database, please contact us for submission information.