Education and Literacy;Government Reform
Common Core Funders Working Group leaders commissioned a capstone paper to capture insights from participants in various Working Group activities, including national and regional funders and field leaders in state policy, district implementation, professional development and teacher associations. We asked questions about the turning points in Common Core implementation, about funder roles and influence and about what they believed philanthropy should take away from its support efforts to date.
The resulting report, "Funding the Common Core State Standards: What Have We Learned the Last Three Years?" summarizes our findings and offers new food for thought for funders seeking to move forward in their support of both the Common Core State Standards and other ambitious education systems change efforts.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Leadership matters. And it matters a lot in Chicago's schools. At The Chicago Public Education Fund's 15th Anniversary, for the first time, we publicly released the data that is guiding our strategy. Data from surveys and focus groups of district, charter and turnaround principals citywide. This data reflects our best understanding of why principals succeed, why they stay or leave, and how we can all do a better job enabling their success and retention in the schools that need them most.
If our Baseline Report tells us one thing, it is this: Great principals want to stay. But they need our support, our trust and our investment every day to make the impossible doable and to continue doing right by the nearly 400,000 students they serve citywide.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Midwestern)-Illinois-Chicago Metropolitan Area
In 2010, Teach For America (TFA) launched a major expansion effort, funded in part by a five-year Investing in Innovation (i3) scale-up grant of $50 million from the U.S. Department of Education.
Using a rigorous random assignment design to examine the effectiveness of TFA elementary school teachers in the second year of the i3 scale-up, Mathematica Policy Research found that first- and second-year corps members recruited and trained during the scale-up were as effective as other teachers in the same high-poverty schools in both reading and math. To estimate the effectiveness of TFA teachers relative to the comparison teachers, we compared end-of-year test scores of students assigned to the TFA teachers and those assigned to the comparison teachers. Because students in the study were randomly assigned to teachers, we can attribute systematic differences in achievement at the end of the study school year to the relative effectiveness of TFA and comparison teachers, rather than to the types of students taught by these two different groups of teachers. In addition to the impact analysis described in this report, the evaluation included an implementation analysis that describes key features of TFA's program model and its implementation of the i3 scale-up.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
Six urban school districts received support from The Wallace Foundation to address the critical challenge of supplying schools with effective principals. The experiences of these districts may point the way to steps other districts might take toward this same goal. Since 2011, the districts have participated in the Principal Pipeline Initiative, which set forth a comprehensive strategy for strengthening school leadership in four interrelated domains of district policy and practice:
- Leader standards to which sites align job descriptions, preparation, selection, evaluation, and support.
- Preservice preparation that includes selective admissions to high-quality programs.
- Selective hiring, and placement based on a match between the candidate and the school.
- On-the-job evaluation and support addressing the capacity to improve teaching and learning, with support focused on needs identified by evaluation.
The initiative also brought the expectation that district policies and practices related to school leaders would build the district's capacity to advance its educational priorities.
The evaluation of the Principal Pipeline Initiative has a dual purpose: to analyze the processes of implementing the required components in the participating districts from 2011 through 2015; and then to assess the results achieved in schools led by principals whose experiences in standards-based preparation, hiring, evaluation, and support have been consistent with the initiative's requirements. This report addresses implementation of all components of the initiative as of 2014, viewing implementation in the context of districts' aims, constraints, and capacity.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado-Denver County-Denver;North America-United States (Southern)-North Carolina-Mecklenburg County-Charlotte;North America-United States (Southern)-Maryland-Prince George;North America-United States (Southern)-Georgia-Gwinnett County;North America-United States (Southern)-Florida-Hillsborough County;North America-United States (Northeastern)-New York-New York County-New York City
Acknowledging that national borders need not constrain our thinking, we have examined a selection of alternative academic cultures and, in some cases, specific schools, in search of solutions to common challenges we face when we consider reorganizing American schools. A wide range of interviews and e-mail exchanges with international researchers, government officials and school principals has informed this research, which was supplemented with a literature review scanning international reports and journal articles. Providing a comprehensive global inventory of competency-based education is not within the scope of this study, but we are confident that this is a representative sampling.
The report that follows first reviews the definition of competency-based learning. A brief lesson in the international vocabulary of competency education is followed by a review of global trends that complement our own efforts to improve performance and increase equitable outcomes. Next, we share an overview of competency education against a backdrop of global education trends (as seen in the international PISA exams), before embarking on an abbreviated world tour. We pause in Finland, British Columbia (Canada), New Zealand and Scotland, with interludes in Sweden, England, Singapore and Shanghai, all of which have embraced practices that can inform the further development of competency education in the United States.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States, North America-Canada (Western)-British Columbia, Europe (Western)-England, Europe (Western) - Scotland, Europe (Scandinavia)-Sweden, Europe (Northern)-Finland, Australia-New Zealand, Asia (Eastern)-China-Shanghai, Asia (Southeastern)-Singapore
Children and Youth;Education and Literacy
During the 2014 legislative session, lawmakers passed the nation's most comprehensive legislation in support of English Learners (ELs). The law has three principal goals for all EL students: a) academic English proficiency, b) grade-level content knowledge, and c) multilingual skills development. Chief among the mandates is the requirement that all teachers be skilled in teaching ELs. Delivering these goals will require action at every level of the educational system: state agencies and the Board of Teaching, teacher preparation programs at institutions of higher education, school districts and charter schools, and classroom teachers and school staff.This brief examines the LEAPS (Learning for English Avademic Proficiency and Success) legislation in Minnesota, and includes the knowledge of nearly 40 experts from across Minnesota and its diverse communities who were called on to share their thoughts on how state agencies, school districts, charters, and colleges of education can rise to meet the ambitious challenge set by LEAPS.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Minnesota
Children and Youth, Education and Literacy, Health
This issue of Quality/Calidad/Qualité highlights the experience of Scenarios USA,3 an innovative nonprofit program that has integrated a gender and rights perspective -- and a critical thinking approach -- into curricula, while fostering new pedagogies and greater awareness among teachers. Scenarios USA approaches sexual health not as a stand-alone issue but as intertwined with young people's overall lives and agency. As such, the organization's "sex ed" work is part of a broader strategy of fostering self-expression, leadership, and advocacy among youth, especially among those living in marginalized communities.
Instead of teaching adolescents about contraceptive methods, Scenarios has them thinking and writing about gender norms, power dynamics, and intimate relationships in their own lives.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States
CRPE commissioned Dr. Marcus Winters to analyze the factors driving the special education gap between Denver's charter and traditional public elementary and middle schools.
Using student-level data, Winters shows that Denver's special education enrollment gap starts at roughly 2 percentage points in kindergarten and is more than triple that in eighth grade. However, it doesn't appear to be caused by charter schools pushing students out. Instead, the gap is mostly due to student preferences for different types of schools, how schools classify and declassify students, and the movement of students without disabilities across sectors.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado-Denver County-Denver
