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Preface: Who We Are Overview: Multiple Paths with Multiple Strengths  Matching Grants Promoting Urban School ReformLarge Urban Grants: - Bay Area - Boston - Chicago - Detroit - Houston - Los Angeles - New York - Philadelphia - South Florida Special Opportunities: - Atlanta - Chattanooga - Chelsea, Mass. - Salt Lake City - West Baltimore Linking Rural Schools and Communities Spotlighting Arts Education- Minnesota Arts - National Arts Consortium - New York City Arts Highlights of 1997Outright Grants Grant Terms, National Coordination, and Ongoing Evaluation of Progress Appendix: Tables |
Promoting Urban School Reform - Large Urban Grants (cont.) New York The first of the Annenberg Challenge urban grants awarded, the New York Networks for School Renewal (NYNSR) is a $25 million, two-for-one matching grant with three central goals: to increase the number of small, excellent schools of choice in New York City, to change the educational system so that it better supports and maintains such schools, and to effect systemwide public school reform. The NYNSR project has advanced the concept of a Learning Zone - a mechanism to reduce bureaucratic regulation, thereby giving schools greater autonomy to improve student learning and achievement. Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew has adopted the Learning Zone, which necessarily requires changing policies with regard to budgeting, school-based governance, and curriculum and assessment. In exchange, schools will shoulder increased public accountability for the areas of student achievement, equity, and fiscal integrity. NYNSR currently consists of more than twenty-six networks, representing 140 schools, that have been organized for a variety of purposes. Some networks serve discrete geographic areas while others unite schools with common philosophies from all across the city. Networks can be organized by grade level; they also reach across the K-12 spectrum. Composed of as few as three and no more than eight member schools, networks remain small so that schools can know each other well and build the necessary trust for working together effectively. Participating network schools receive NYNSR funds to fulfill their annual work plans as well as to support network activities -- such as regular meetings, dinner groups, inter-school visitations, and joint professional development experiences - that will further the common guiding principles established by each network. NYNSR places a premium on networking because it is a proven strategy for lending the expertise of established schools to new ones. Educators in networks are able to engage and focus on real situations in schools and to share successful strategies for meeting common challenges. Moreover, since systemic reform means that schools in the process of innovation need to change the system instead of merely circumventing it, networking also offers opportunities for negotiating alternatives to standard district policies and procedures that would be difficult to obtain one school at a time. Implicit in NYNSR's structure and activities is a firm belief in the importance of school-level authority and accountability. Four sponsoring organizations -- ACORN (the N. Y. Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE), the Center for Educational Innovation (CEI), and New Visions for Public Schools (NV), formerly the Fund for New York City Public Education - work closely to implement the NYNSR project with four public partners: the Mayor of New York City, the President of the Board of Education, the Schools Chancellor, and the President of the United Federation of Teachers. The project is advised by a thirty-eight-member consultative council and is staffed by four. |
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Philadelphia The Children Achieving Challenge -- Philadelphia's $50 million, two-for-one Challenge grant - is unique among the major Challenge initiatives; its scope is districtwide. Launched in the fall of 1994 by Superintendent David Hornbeck, the ambitious and comprehensive ten-point agenda involves all segments of the community and addresses a host of issues, among them: school readiness, school-to-career needs, standards and assessments, improved classroom practice, professional accountability, local school governance, and technology. Improved student achievement for all children in the city is the ultimate goal. Acting on the assumption that "smaller is better," the district has restructured both schools and the system in which they operate. The city's 267 schools have been broken down into hundreds of small learning communities (SLCs), independent units of no more than 400 students with a corresponding cadre of responsible teachers. The district, in turn, has been reorganized into twenty-two "clusters," groupings of neighborhood schools that include a high school and its feeder middle and elementary schools. Newly formed cluster offices coordinate resources and services to member schools. Teaching and Learning Networks, for example, offer individual coaching and professional development opportunities for teachers, while Family Resource Networks connect children and families to health and social services. Together, the cluster and SLC structures have helped reduce an inflated central bureaucracy and are more responsive to the needs, values, and concerns of students, parents, teachers, and community members. The Children Achieving Challenge qualifies at once as "top-down" and "bottom-up" reform - a standards-driven effort introduced by the district, with the means to implement the new standards determined by teachers in SLCs - and thus assigns new roles to the district and the schools. With a dual focus on equity and accountability, the district's major function is to set clear content, performance, and opportunity-to-learn standards, with an accompanying system of incentives and sanctions. At the same time, however, the district also speaks of getting out of schools' way: of giving SLCs significant autonomy to share resources and to shape teaching and learning across the K-12 continuum, allowing those closest to students - parents, teachers, principals - to make the decisions that most affect them. The novelty of these new roles for schools and the district alike demands significant relearning among teachers, administrators, and district leadership - a Herculean task in and of itself. These changes also require widespread public understanding and support, a cause which the district, the Challenge, and their many partners in Philadelphia's business and foundation communities have embraced. The eleven-member Oversight Committee of the Governing Board of the Philadelphia Public School/Business Partnership for Reform oversees the Children Achieving Challenge in conjunction with an eleven-member Coordination Committee. A staff of five administers the Challenge. |
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South Florida Supported by a $33.4 million, two-for-one matching Challenge grant, the South Florida Annenberg Challenge (SFAC) is a three-county regional initiative designed to improve student achievement and career readiness for the 680,000 students in Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach counties. By linking the three counties, SFAC hopes to create a regional identity characterized by community involvement and commitment to quality education for all students in a rapidly growing, increasingly diverse geographic area. To foster increased participation in schools, the Challenge funds "partnerships for public education." These partnerships are newly composed groups of three or more schools, a local business, and a parent or community organization that together develop innovative approaches to issues such as school readiness, technology, teacher training, and parent involvement. Stressing the need to envision new and customized solutions to long-standing problems, the Challenge does not consider proposals for additional monies from existing programs. To help the reforms endure, SFAC requires participating schools to devise plans for sustaining their reform efforts beyond the period of the grant. Challenge staff have designed three levels of grant opportunities that acknowledge both the difficulty and the amount of time required to establish viable relationships and to develop imaginative approaches for improving schools. Exploratory grants of $2,500 provide new partners an opportunity to begin building the necessary trust for working together productively. Planning grants, for up to $25,000, allow partnerships ample time to devise, test, and revise proposals that are truly innovative. Implementation grants of up to $450,000 over two years provide significant resources to carry out bold innovations. To date, SFAC has awarded over $123,000 in exploratory grants to fifty-three partnerships and $650,000 in planning and implementation grants. The South Florida Annenberg Challenge is governed by an eleven-member regional Annenberg board, with additional local boards in each of the three counties. A staff of six administers the Challenge in South Florida. |
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