......................
To Order
Publications:
• Go to our on-line
order form
• Call us at
(401) 863-3833.
......................
| Winter 2000 | |||||
 |
 |
||||
| Inside this issue | This issue of Inside the Challenge features recent activities and accomplishments of various Challenge projects. Achievements presented here include positive impacts on students, schools, and systems, as well as progress made by Challenge projects in crossing traditional educational boundaries--of schools and districts, states and universities--to facilitate reform, advance existing knowledge, and inspire new collaborations. | ||||
| Impacts on Students, Schools & Systems Building Expertise & New Partnerships Collaboration Across Projects "There's a stigma in the African-American community about studying. If children are smart and dedicated, they will be told they're 'acting white.' If that's acting white, how in heaven's name do you act black? I would think that the sons and daughters of kings and queens in Africa would want to show off their smarts, their dedication." -- N. Charles Anderson, Detroit Urban League President -- Chuck Saxton, teacher, John Muir Elementary School, San Francisco -- Naomi Booker, Principal, Philadelphia's Clymer Elementary School -- Parent of seventh grade student at Houston's Lanier Middle School, about her son's participation in a school program that offers students experience in the workplace |
Impacts on Students, Schools & Systems | ||||
 New York Networks for School Renewal (NYNSR) has been active in the wake of charter school legislation passed by New York state in December 1998. Two NYNSR schools, International High School and Middle College Charter High School, were among the first four schools in New York City granted charter status by the state Board of Regents. Two of NYNSR's sponsoring organizations--New Visions for Public Schools and the Center for Educational Innovation--have established assistance centers to provide interested parties with guidance and support as they pursue charter status for new and converting schools. And the Office of New School Development, first headed by a NYNSR leader, has become the Office of Charter and New School Development, the agency responsible for coordinating the charter school initiative for the Chancellor and Board of Education.A new program at Houston's Hoffman Middle School is succeeding with growing numbers of over-age students already retained at least one year--and therefore at greater risk of dropping out. Inspired in part after Hoffman teachers visited NYNSR's small schools, Success Un-Ltd. operates as a school-within-a-school, placing its 80 eighth graders with their own group of teachers in small classes of 15 or so. The program provides students with a structured environment, offers more hands-on activities, and is bolstered by family pledges of increased involvement with their children--including periodic community service and guarantees that their children will arrive at school on-time. Eighty percent of the eight-graders are now passing, with at least one student earning straight "A"s on what he once failed.The Boston Plan for Excellence-Boston Annenberg Challenge and the Boston Public Schools (BPS) have completed a joint report on how the district spends professional development dollars. Findings indicate that over three-quarters of the nearly $24 million spent on professional development in 1998-99 is not integrated with the district's goals for student performance. The study concludes that if BPS redirected its professional development dollars to support schools' efforts towards whole-school change, it would be able to sustain, even expand, the assistance schools now receive from Challenge funding.In Salt Lake City, the district reports that 24 of the city's 28 elementary schools increased test scores over last year's SAT-9 results, with 77 percent recording improvement deemed significant by district officials. The District Supervisor in Assessment and Testing credits the district-wide focus on literacy for the progress in test scores. As part of the Challenge, school principals, faculty, and staff have reviewed demographics and test scores to develop school improvement plans to boost literacy among all students.The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative's (BASRC) School-University Partnership (SUP) initiative--a research and development effort that teams six universities, 17 public schools, and nine school districts throughout the region to improve new teacher preparation and retention--has already shown encouraging results. At San Francisco's John Muir Elementary School, more than 90 percent of the first graduating class of the Muir Alternative Teacher Education program is still teaching. (Nationwide, nearly half of all teachers leave the profession during their first five years, with the rate higher still for urban schools). And Washington Elementary, working with the San Jose Unified School District and San Jose State University, has improved student achievement. The number of Washington's students passing the reading portion of the SAT-9 in English rose from 10 to 37 percent in just two years. Last August, BASRC received a $50,000 grant from the Quantum Corporation for support of its School-University Partnerships. |
|||||
| Partner schools in the national Transforming Education through the Arts Challenge (TETAC) have earned various honors and awards. Lusher Alternative Elementary, a National Blue Ribbon School in New Orleans, recently ranked number one in Orleans Parish and within the top 20 schools in the state based on Louisiana's Accountability Assessment Program; Mandeville Middle School placed seventh in its Parish and 23rd in Louisiana. Similarly, three Florida TETAC schools earned "A" grades on their state's school assessment system: F. K. Sweet Elementary in Fort Pierce and Tallahassee's Buck Lake Elementary and Florida State University Middle School. In LaGrange, GA, West Side Magnet School scored first in Troup County on the March 1999 Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and a West Side Magnet teacher and theater specialist was selected as the county's Teacher of the Year. Lastly, North Hi Mount Elementary School in Fort Worth was selected to participate in the national Mars Millennium Project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.In December, the Rural School and Community Trust released the first in a series of four state-wide research studies that shows smaller schools reduce the damaging effects of poverty on student achievement. Analyzing standardized test results from 1,626 of Georgia's roughly 1,800 schools, researchers from Ohio University and Marshall University found that as school size increases, the achievement scores in schools serving children from poorer communities declines on 27 of 29 different tests. The researchers also calculated a statistic called "poverty's power rating"--the proportion of the variance in test scores that can be explained by the level of poverty of the schools' communities. In all grades and on all 29 tests, poverty's power rating is substantially lower in smaller Georgia schools than in larger ones. The Rural Trust will release results from the other state studies--of Montana, Ohio, and Texas--in the coming months.Philadelphia's Roberto Clemente Middle School is in the midst of a stunning turnaround. In 1994, it ranked dead last among all 43 of the city's middle schools, with low student achievement and high rates of discipline problems and absenteeism. Four years later, the school made the district's honor roll, surpassing in just a year, by an impressive 228 percent, its two-year target improvement goals, which involve a combination of student test scores, student promotion rates and teacher and student attendance rates. The principal credits changing teacher attitudes, professional development, intensified engagement with students, and more effective uses of technology for the school's improvement.Several Challenge projects have taken steps toward establishing permanent legacies as they approach the end of Annenberg funding. In Chicago, the Challenge has launched the Chicago Public Education Fund, a new, independent organization that aims to supply focus--currently, on the issue of leadership--to the significant amount of foundation dollars that flows perennially to public education in Chicago. The Rural School and Community Trust, successor organization to the Rural Challenge, has been operating since October 1, 1999, working in policy, advocacy, and large-scale public engagement around issues affecting rural education and community revitalization. In Los Angeles, LAAMP has joined with LEARN (the major reform initiative within the LAUSD) to establish a research, policy, and advocacy organization, while in the Bay Area, BASRC's 2001 Committee continues its planning towards establishing local collaboratives modeled on BASRC. |
|||||
 |
Building Expertise & New Partnerships | ||||
"Who wouldn't want to help the district right now? This is a time filled with hope." -- LAAMP President Maria Casillas, on her appointment as pro bono advisor to Ramon Cortines, Interim Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District -- Dat Nguyen, student member of the Salt Lake City Board of Education, who had stopped attending school before enrolling at the district's alternative high school for adults and non-traditional students -- Team member from Minnesota's Arts for Academic Achievement, after her visit to the Center for Arts Education in New York City and several of the project's high schools |
The South Florida Annenberg Challenge (SFAC) continues to create regional partnerships for education reform. SFAC is working with the Florida Council of 100, an influential group of state business leaders, on a project to provide assistance to schools in Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach counties that received grades of "D" on the state's education report card. CEOs participating in the PASS program (Partnership to Advance School Success) will team with a school principal and coach for a three-year period to develop school improvement plans, with the goal of schools earning "C" or better under the state's grading formula. Pending positive signs of success, the state Department of Education has set aside $2 million to spread the initiative to 20 other school districts throughout Florida over the next year. The Center for Arts Education in New York City is developing a pilot internship program to link high school students with career opportunities at arts organizations and companies, as well as arts-related industries. The initiative will include professional development for teachers, so they can better promote arts-related career opportunities with their students. Five educators and 25 students from six high schools will be selected to pilot the program beginning later this spring. Chattanooga's Leadership Development Initiative, a district-wide effort to recruit, train, and support effective principals and other school leaders, aims to redefine traditional conceptions of leadership--from the notion of a single individual guiding others to a quality spread among an entire community. As a result, in addition to support and training for principals and assistant principals, the Initiative offers various programs--such as Leadership in Inquiry, Data, and Accountability and Leadership in School Improvement Planning--to other school and district personnel. Another 24 teachers from 24 different schools meet twice a month as Leadership Fellows, a program that supports teachers as emerging leaders. The Urban Atlanta Coalition Compact continues its efforts to bolster relationships among schools and parents. At a Parent Empowerment Retreat last November, parents generated sets of expectations for schools and parents alike, as well as a prototype for an ideal home-school interaction. The previous month, the Family Enrichment Institute provided a non-threatening arena to encourage communication between schools and parents, offering 90-minute sessions on African-American history and culture, the Internet, parenting skills, conflict resolution, and family literacy. |
||||
| Working with staff from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge hosted in December a day-long meeting for 90 external partners working with Chicago Annenberg schools. The training session aimed to help external partners work more effectively with schools in their efforts to use data as a means of improving classroom instruction. The Institute and the Chicago Challenge plan to hold two follow-up conferences this spring and summer. California's new School Accountability Law allows low performing schools to work with "external evaluators" to help develop and implement a school improvement plan. The California Department of Education has selected both LAAMP and BASRC as approved external evaluators, an important recognition of the expertise and track record of the staff of both projects. LAAMP is paired with two elementary schools in Los Angeles which do not receive Annenberg funds; BASRC is working with several of its unfunded Membership schools to provide the additional targeted assistance, while offering "unofficial" support to its funded schools. Officials estimate that New York City will need approximately 30,000 new teachers during the next four years. In response, New York Networks for School Renewal, the UFT, and the Board of Education launched last fall the New Educator Support Team (NEST) in 13 New York City public schools to develop new programs to provide needed support and professional development for beginning teachers. Six educators with extensive classroom and mentoring experience will serve as facilitators to help schools design customized strategies to increase new teacher retention. The teacher support programs created at the 13 schools may later serve as models for the wider system. The Arts for Academic Achievement held in January a day-long training event at the Walker Art Center for 115 artists working with Minneapolis Annenberg schools. Participants shared strategies for collaborating effectively with teachers and students, explored ways to best match their art form to a school's curriculum, and considered avenues for connecting their work to the district's graduation standards. School, district, and other partners joined the artists for an evening reception. |
|||||
|
Collaboration Across Projects | ||||
| In October, 20 representatives from foundations across the country met in Chicago for a discussion hosted jointly by the Challenge national office and Ray Bacchetti, education program officer at the Hewlett Foundation and BASRC board member. Participants explored the role of intermediary organizations in promoting school reform--and the attendant implications for their work as funders. In January, teams from 15 of the 18 Challenge projects met in Providence for a two-day session on principal and school leadership co-hosted by the Challenge national office and the Annenberg Institute. Participating school principals, project staff, district decision-makers, and other partners shared insights on promising strategies regarding principal leadership, as well as on the conditions, structures, and policies that support principals as school leaders. Participants also developed action plans for attracting additional attention (and resources) to the issue of principal leadership that they will implement upon their return home. Several of the teams intend to continue the collaboration begun at the conference and are planning on their own to reconvene in Houston. Several teams of Challenge projects are collaborating around the issue of literacy. In January, groups from LAAMP's North Hollywood School Family and Philadelphia's Frankford Cluster toured Boston Annenberg schools to compare notes, particularly regarding the use of literacy coaches. Later this spring, a team of educators from Chattanooga will visit Philadelphia schools to observe teachers there using the same literacy approach. Project directors and researchers from the three Challenge arts projects met with national Challenge staff in Chicago over the Superbowl weekend in late January. Participants presented case studies of funded schools to highlight their goals, underlying theories, and approaches to tracking progress in schools. |
|||||
|
Inside the Annenberg Challenge
|
|||||
