Inside the Annenberg Challenge Summer 1998

......................
To Order
Publications:

• Go to our on-line
order form

• Call us at
(401) 863-3833.
......................

Summer 1998

Inside this issue The Annenberg Challenge National Office is pleased to present the first issue of Inside the Annenberg Challenge, a brief, informal update addressed to key internal players: Challenge site staff, researchers, governing board and advisory body members, district personnel, and select funders. The main purpose of Inside the Challenge is twofold: to keep interested parties informed of activities across Challenge sites and to focus attention regularly on our collective accomplishments. These updates offer an insider's look at a sample -- and by no means a comprehensive accounting -- of our many successes. We hope you enjoy the view!

Select Highlights

Challenge Site Events

Cross-Site Collaboration

"Teachers also say that their school's focused effort has focused their attention in new ways on the bottom line: improvement of student learning. Schools indicate that before BASRC (Bay Area School Reform Collaborative), they were in the habit of 'reforming for reform's sake,' whereas now they find themselves trying to figure out how to reform for the students' sake."
BAY AREA EVALUATION REPORT

"Schools are such sensitive institutions. The Annenberg [Rural Challenge] grants are relatively small... But it often takes just a little bit of money to encourage schools to be more than just a collection of classrooms.

With effort and care, they can be both the repositories of community history and the places where new memories are created."

Bill Bishop, Columnist Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader

"We now recognize student work as an indicator of our progress toward meeting the BPS [Boston Public Schools] standards. Although we are just in the nascent stages, we are now much more in tune to the relationship between student work, classroom instruction, high expectations, and student achievement."

Tom Hennessey Headmaster, Burke High School

Select Highlights

In Manhattan, the John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy, a New York Networks' school, offers a second chance to 125 former drop-outs, truants and other teens referred via the criminal justice system. Students alternate a week in the classroom with a week of work. Although most students arrive with single digit reading scores, the discipline, support and personalized instruction of Wildcat produce impressive results; of the 35 students taking the last Regents Competency Tests, all 35 passed. Approximately 85 percent of graduates go on to college, and one was accepted into the highly competitive Navy Seals program.

In Los Angeles, the Palisades Charter School Family has implemented mentoring, tutoring, parent education, and college awareness programs to help educationally disadvantaged students. Standardized reading and math test scores have improved five to six points (median percentiles), dropout rates are down 4 percent, attendance rates up 6 percent, the number of disadvantaged students entering four-year colleges has increased, and the number of students enrolled and completing Advanced Placement courses has doubled.

San Francisco's Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, a Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) Leadership school, posted impressive college admission rates among its first class of graduating seniors. With 43 percent of the student body from low-income families, the math-, science- and technology-focused magnet school will send 85 percent (158) of its 185 graduates to college. One hundred forty students plan to attend four-year colleges, with 19 heading to UC-Berkeley.

In Chattanooga, a Public Education Foundation New Visions grant provided the faculty of Normal Park Elementary School with intensive professional development in writing instruction. Year-end fourth grade writing tests revealed that students performing at proficiency had increased from 24 percent in 1997 to 30 percent in 1998.

The Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York Networks, and Philadelphia Challenge projects all released evaluation reports during the past several months. Focusing on year two of the initiative, the Bay Area report found promising evidence that core BASRC strategies -- such as maintaining a reform focus and conducting cycles of inquiry -- are beginning to transform the way schools think about their work. The Los Angeles report described baseline data regarding school families, professional development, technology, parent involvement, and teaching and learning. The New York Networks research team reported evidence that high performing networks can operate as mechanisms of support and accountability to improve student performance and equity in their member schools. Survey results in Philadelphia indicate that a majority of teachers believe that the new content standards (in their second year of implementation) have already made a positive impact in schools.

A team of researchers from NYU released in late April a report on the costs of small schools in New York City. Chief among its findings was that small schools do spend more per student than their larger counterparts, but small schools actually proved more cost efficient when data are calculated by costs per graduate rather than per student. The New York Times published both an article promoting the research and a strong editorial praising small schools as good investments.

San Francisco's John Muir Elementary School had the second to worst reading scores in the district four years ago. Working with BASRC, the school used its grant for books, computers, an improved library, and a parent educator, among other things. Reading scores have risen 16 points, and all signs point to continuing improvement.

Banana Kelly High School in the South Bronx emphasizes rigorous academic programs in reading, writing and math, with an equally strong focus on community service. Having completed its first year of operations, the small school of 80 students has received an impressive 2,100 applications for next year's 60 available spaces, which represents nearly a twenty-fold increase over last year's application figures.

Detroit's Annenberg project has recruited 30 local religious leaders to serve as "Ambassadors" for the Initiative's reform efforts. The clergy is partnering with local schools to provide such support as "adopting" a school or serving as tutors and mentors to neighborhood children. The Ambassadors also will enlist others in the cause of supporting and participating in local public schools.

The momentum created by New York City's two Annenberg projects, the New York Networks for School Renewal (NYNSR) and the Center for Arts Education, is helping to change the political landscape for education in the city. Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew has issued "Guidelines for the Creation of Learning Communities," which incorporate the experiences of NYNSR's small schools and institutionalize for the first time the process of designing and creating new schools. The Board of Education's Committee on New School Policy voiced its support for the guidelines on June 4, 1998. In addition, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani pledged this spring an additional $25 million to support the Board of Education's Project ARTS, a plan to provide arts instruction in all grades. The new pledge, for fiscal years 1999 and 2000, is on top of a prior three-year commitment of $75 million.

In Salt Lake City, 15,000 parents, students, teachers, administrators, and community members completed and returned surveys prepared and distributed by the Salt Lake City School District and Insight Research. Site teams have begun examining and analyzing the survey data, which will be used as baselines for developing school profiles that identify issues of concern and areas for improvement.

In Boston, the Cox Charitable Trust has created the Fund for Nonprofits, a new collaborative effort of local foundations to pool their resources for public schools to create a single source of additional funding. Rather than schools tailoring grant applications to fit a variety of funders' agendas, schools and nonprofits apply jointly for grants that further a school's teaching and learning goals. This past winter, the Fund awarded $235,000 to ten organizations and their partner schools.

Challenge Site Events

"Initially, there was resistance in Philadelphia to reform efforts proposed by Superintendent David Hornbeck, [regarded by some as] nemesis of the teacher's union. But Hornbeck used the Annenberg money to lure support for his district-wide initiative. Now 82 percent of Philadelphia's schools improved over last year's baseline, with 71 of the 208 schools meeting two-year performance targets in one year."
TAMARA HENRY,
COLUMNIST, USA TODAY

Challenge Site Newsletters & Journals

Atlanta
UACC Update

Bay Area
In Depth

Boston
Focus

Chicago
School Works

Detroit
The Initiative

NY Networks
New York
Networks for
School Renewal

Philadelphia
Philadelphia
Teacher
and
Cluster to
Cluster

Rural Challenge
Rural Matters

South Florida
South Florida
Annenberg
Challenge

The Mozart Middle School, one of five member schools in Chicago's Middle Schools Initiative Network, held a "Family Night" last winter that attracted 300 parents, students and teachers. Started by the Irving Park Middle School but now implemented by all member schools, Family Nights bring together families and school staff to share a meal, each other's company and new experiences ranging from art classes to parenting workshops. The success of these gatherings has spawned a new cross-network event, "Community Saturday," intended to build relationships among the parents, students and teachers of all the partner schools. Hosted on a rotating basis by each network member, the agenda for Community Saturdays -- covering such issues as how parents can help their children academically or how to talk about drugs or AIDS -- derives from the results of a parent survey conducted by the Network.

In late February, the Urban Atlanta Coalition Compact sponsored a two-day Expo on Excellence in Urban Education. A gathering of those with proven track records in improving education for African-American students, the Expo provided Atlanta's Challenge schools a chance to sample the offerings of organizations from which they will choose partners to help with their school improvement plans.

The Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York Networks, and Rural Challenges have all held the first of what are to be annual public accounting events for their funded schools. In Los Angeles, for instance, school families presented evidence from their internal evaluations -- citing progress in improved rates for student attendance, dropouts, discipline, and parental involvement -- to panels of critical friends and an audience of teachers, administrators, funders, policymakers, community leaders, and press. Such unprecedented public reporting by schools reflects the Challenge's efforts both to break down the isolation of educators and to encourage the public to re-claim its ownership of schools.

In June, the Rural Challenge hosted at its headquarters in Granby, Colorado the second annual Rural Rendezvous, a three-day gathering of student, teacher, community, and program staff representatives from all the funded projects, planning grants and other invitees. Organized in "home groups" to create a sense of belonging, the 300 participants viewed a Gallery Exhibit featuring work of the funded partners, met for small group discussions, created a mural, attended workshops, and heard from speakers (including students), musicians, vocalists, and dancers.

In late February, the Urban Atlanta Coalition Compact sponsored a two-day Expo on Excellence in Urban Education. A gathering of those with proven track records in improving education for African-American students, the Expo provided Atlanta's Challenge schools a chance to sample the offerings of organizations from which they will choose partners to help with their school improvement plans.

The Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York Networks, and Rural Challenges have all held the first of what are to be annual public accounting events for their funded schools. In Los Angeles, for instance, school families presented evidence from their internal evaluations -- citing progress in improved rates for student attendance, dropouts, discipline, and parental involvement -- to panels of critical friends and an audience of teachers, administrators, funders, policymakers, community leaders, and press. Such unprecedented public reporting by schools reflects the Challenge's efforts both to break down the isolation of educators and to encourage the public to re-claim its ownership of schools.

In April, BASRC hosted in Santa Clara its third annual Collaborative Assembly, entitled Schools at Work. More than 900 people took part in 120 inquiry sessions designed not just to share and celebrate the successes of member schools but to delve into the challenges that remain ahead. As a kick-off to the Assembly, BASRC opened 16 local schools for public visits; 300 citizens and community leaders attended.

In June, district officials and principals from every school in Hamilton County (TN) participated in a four-day Cross-Site Collaboration continued Leadership Development Retreat sponsored by Chattanooga's Public Education Foundation. The retreat begins a long-term initiative to recruit, train, support, and evaluate school principals and enhance their capacity as leaders of standards-based reform.

In June, 60 teachers from Houston's 11 funded Beacon schools underwent a six-day session offered by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform to train coaches for next year's "critical friends groups" (CFGs), clusters of teachers who observe each other's classes frequently to improve their teaching and the performance of their students. The training offered strategies for working collaboratively as well as designing a plan for beginning a new CFG.

Cross-Site Collaboration

The Principals for a Day Program [in which 600 civic leaders shadow principals in Chicago schools] is designed to foster a deeper understanding of the challenges facing city schools and increase respect for the small miracles that happen in our schools every day.
...It is my hope that this day will serve as more than just a time to play principal. It is my hope that it will serve as a catalyst for renewed commitment to our public schools and the children they serve.
KEN ROLLING,
CHICAGO ANNENBERG CHALLENGE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
IN THE MAY 19, 1998 CHICAGO TRIBUNE OP-ED PAGE

In late February, representatives from each of the three Challenge arts projects -- New York City's Center for Arts Education, the National Arts Education Consortium and a partnership of the Minnesota Center for Arts Education and the Minneapolis Public Schools -- met together in New York City for the first time to discuss issues of common concern. Likewise, in March, participants in the mid-sized Annenberg efforts (Atlanta, Boston, Chattanooga, Chelsea (MA), and Salt Lake City) gathered in Chattanooga for their inaugural meeting. Firsthand explorations of several of Chattanooga's poorest neighborhoods and the schools that "serve" them brought to life poignantly the meeting's focus: equity and diversity.

In San Diego, at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in April, some 200 researchers attended the Challenge's session on the cross-site evaluation. Participants joined one of six site-based groups (Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, or Rural) to discuss with the local evaluators findings around a chosen theme. Several Challenge researchers also made presentations at individual sessions during the week.

In April, project directors, researchers and invited guests met in South Florida for the seventh Challenge cross-site meeting. Discussions centered on preparations for this summer's drafting of the Challenge Interim Evaluation Report, expected to be released in December 1998. Participants also attended the announcement of a South Florida Annenberg Challenge grant to Ft. Lauderdale's Museum of Discovery and Science.

Nearly 100 teachers and administrators from most of the major urban sites met in Houston this spring for the second Challenge Practitioners Conference. Eighteen school teams displayed in a Gallery Exhibit the ways they use data to improve teaching and student learning. Participants spent most of the two days conferring in small groups -- composed of three school teams and several outsiders -- sharing, examining and critiquing each other's work. As a follow-up, staff from the Annenberg Institute will publish proceedings of the meeting, including a description of the "accountability tools" presented by the schools at the conference.

Inside the Annenberg Challenge