Walter H. Annenberg's Challenge to the Nation

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Pr eface:
Who We Are

Overview: Multiple Paths with Multiple Strengths

Matching Grants

Outright Grants

Nurturing New School Designs

- New American Schools

- Education Commission
of the States

Supporting School Reform

- The Annenberg Institute for
School Reform

Grant Terms, National Coordination, and Ongoing Evaluation of Progress

Appendix: Tables Nurturing New School Designs (cont.)
EDUCATION COMMISSION OF THE STATES
Working with New American Schools in the national dissemination of its designs is the Education Commission of the States (ECS). ECS's work in this partnership is focused on creating operating environments that support innovative, high-performance schools. The complementary relationship is based on the recognition that redesigning schools - the goal of NAS - requires changing attitudes and policies that critically affect reform efforts - a goal of ECS. A $6.5 million Challenge grant supports ECS's work in this partnership.

Founded in 1965, ECS is a national, bipartisan, nonprofit organization that links governors, legislators, state board members, and other state leaders to people at all levels of the education system. An ECS priority is to encourage policy makers and state leaders to create education policy that leads to serious change.

ECS contributes in several ways to the dissemination efforts of NAS. Staff work with policy makers in each of the NAS partner jurisdictions and other networking states to forge the policy changes necessary for NAS designs and other promising school reforms to flourish. Second, the organization produces print and audiovisual materials portraying NAS designs and the ways that policy makers and communities can support them. Third, ECS provides communications services, including training for design teams and technical assistance to school staff, policy makers, and the community at large.

As part of its work during the past year, ECS has produced the following:

Building Community Support for Schools: A Practical Guide to Strategic Communications
Using examples from NAS designs and jurisdictions, this "how-to" manual includes step-by-step guides and checklists for developing a strategic communications plan that helps school, district, or state department staff set more thoughtful priorities, spend scarce resources more wisely, listen and respond to the needs and concerns of people inside and outside the education community, target activities to those who are most affected by and concerned about education improvement efforts, and regularly measure results.

Let's Talk About Education Improvement
This guide is designed to help educators, policy makers, and community members involve more people in conversations about what they want for education and about how public schools can do a better job of educating students. In addition to a sample conversation focused on ways a community can explore an NAS design, the guide includes checklists, discussion activities, ideas for overheads and take-home materials, and lists of additional resources.

Investing in Student Achievement
Using footage from three NAS schools, this video, shown to over 500 educators and policy makers at the ECS National Forum in July 1997, raises key issues about education funding.

Although encouraging policy changes that support educational change is a complicated and slow process, ECS's support-building for NAS has already borne some fruit. For example, in Pennsylvania, technical assistance from ECS was influential in the state's new charter school law. And in Maryland, the work of ECS helped effect policy change that resulted in a new governance and accountability system for the Baltimore City Public Schools.

Supporting School Reform

THE ANNENBERG INSTITUTE
FOR SCHOOL REFORM
Notably absent from the world of school reform, until recently, was the one big "tent" under which school reform activists could meet to compare notes, discern new patterns, and perhaps construct some larger truths. Since 1986 Brown University had been home to one of school reform's most prominent players: Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. Sparked by the phenomenal growth of the Coalition and other school networks, Brown University set out in October 1993 to broaden its horizons and to erect this larger tent. With initial funding of $5 million from anonymous donors, it created the National Institute for School Reform. When Mr. Annenberg announced his half-billion-dollar reform campaign two months later, he looked to the Institute to help pull together the many ideas and strategies energizing public education nationally. A $50 million grant from the Challenge enabled the Institute to take on this role in earnest; it also prompted a name change for the Institute, to honor Mr. Annenberg's generous gift.

Because old models of education no longer address the realities of today's schools and students, the Annenberg Institute promotes and advocates the serious redesign of American schooling. Its fundamental goal is to assist in creating and sustaining excellent schools that - in collaboration with their communities - help all students reach high levels of learning. Believing that all students can and must be successful, the Institute is committed to developing and supporting reform strategies that intentionally include schools serving urban, minority, and low-income youth.

The Institute concerns itself with all the elements of schooling - from understanding the needs of students and their families to changing the way teachers teach and students learn, to formulating supportive education policy and fostering public engagement. Because there is more than one "right" solution to the problems of education, the Institute brings together the broadest possible range of teachers, schools, and school reform initiatives to share ideas and to make the best practices of reform more accessible to school communities.

The Institute also strives to make better education an urgent and vital part of the daily conversation in homes and communities. It seeks to involve people from every segment of society as both advocates for and participants in the work of reform and to develop strategies to ensure that the results of its work reach those who need them.
Three Strands of Work: Accountability,
Capacity, and Public Engagement
The Institute's work is guided by its convictions about school reform, which stem from the work of its staff and other professional colleagues. The Institute believes that higher standards alone will not result in better student performance. Just as it is unfair to hold students accountable for knowledge they have not had a reasonable opportunity to learn, it is unfair to hold teachers and schools accountable for the performance of those students unless they are given the tools to achieve success. To build that capacity, teachers and schools must have access to specific knowledge, skills, and resources not ordinarily available to them. The responsibility for ensuring this development must be carried by partnerships of teachers, schools, districts, communities, and states.

The Institute also believes that no significant change in American public education will be possible without the active participation, approval, and support of the public at every level of society. The Institute works to re-engage and strengthen the public element of public schools by initiating conversations that involve all the stakeholders - teachers, administrators, students, parents, public officials, and others in the community - in redesigning schools and schooling.

Based on these convictions, the Institute is focusing its current efforts on three interrelated strands of work:

Rethinking accountability to include both the development of effective assessments and the strategies to use them to improve student performance;
Developing the capacity of schools and teachers to set and help their students meet high standards;
Engaging the public as advocates for excellent schools and as participants in developing and sustaining them.

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