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Preface Early Lessons from the Challenge
How the Challenge Is Influencing |
The Annenberg Challenge assumes that a key ingredient in improving student learning is helping schools change. And a growing body of research suggests the conditions under which student learning increases and the strategies most likely to create those conditions in schools. Challenge projects have embraced many of these strategies, attempting to enact them on a large scale and to back them up with extra resources and support.
Schools must wrestle along the way, however, with a potentially paralyzing status quo. Inadequate time and resources make it hard for teachers to learn new ways, particularly on the job where research suggests it happens best. Schools and teaching loads are too large for teachers to know students well. The habit of keeping parents and community at arm's length dies hard, and structural constraints reinforce the tradition of schools working in isolation from one another. Accountability systems neither encourage nor help schools to adopt reflective methods for continuous improvement. In spite of these barriers, Challenge projects are making headway in each of the following areas: |
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High standards. Student achievement, most believe, rises when schools implement high standards for what students should know and be able to do. While Challenge projects differ in their ideas about who should set standards and how progress is best measured, they concur that standards matter. For example:
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The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative asks schools to use standards development as a catalyst for bringing together teachers to talk about students and outcomes and for focusing their reform efforts. Some schools develop their own standards; some adapt them from other sources to fit their priorities. In the schools where standards seem to have taken hold most, teachers use common planning time to collectively examine student work, create rubrics for evaluating the work, and develop consensus about what constitutes quality. After one school set clear grade level standards for reading, its teachers created assessments and collected data based on the standards. The number of first graders reading at grade level increased from 12 percent in September to 39 percent in June, and second-grade reading jumped from 12 to 70 percent at grade level.
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Philadelphia created district-wide curriculum standards, then launched "content institutes" and curriculum frameworks to help teachers use the standards. Although getting teachers fully on board-as expected-is taking several years, test scores have risen for two years in a row.
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Developing teachers' capacity to teach well. What teachers know and can do is a critical influence on what students learn. And teacher learning is most powerful, research suggests, when it deepens subject matter knowledge, promotes collegiality and reflection, and occurs on the job. Challenge projects have taken this research to heart and increased significantly opportunities for such learning. For example:
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Teachers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge schools participate in professional development activities at significantly greater rates than teachers in non-Challenge schools, researchers have found. That professional development is more focused and sustained, connects more to their students' needs and their schools' improvement goals, and provides more opportunities for teachers to work and learn collaboratively. | |
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As well as sponsoring a major teacher-education initiative, the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project has put in place 116 professional learning communities known as Critical Friends Groups in eight School Families. In some schools there are multiple groups, bringing their efforts closer to mainstream. Researchers cite the groups' potential to help teachers support and push one another and take steps to change their classroom practice. | |
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In the Bay Area, BASRC has funded professional development closely merged with the daily work of teachers at school, using school "coaches" or other on-site support services rather than outside workshops or conferences. Schools choose the support that meets the needs of their teachers and students, using tools teachers can develop and use every day at school. In Summer Leadership Institutes, teams meet for five days to plan for the coming school year, assess their school's program, create an action plan for addressing gaps, then develop a strategy for measuring progress in closing these gaps. | |
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In the summer of 1998, it is worth noting, over 20,000 teachers from Challenge-supported schools took part in intensive professional development activities. In Philadelphia, from 1996 to 1998, the number of teachers and principals engaged in summer professional development seminars increased from 900 to 5,300.
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Personalizing school environments. The more students feel connected to and known well by their teachers and classmates, research shows, the more motivated they are to view school positively, to avoid negative behaviors-and to learn. Challenge projects have worked to personalize learning by creating small schools or breaking large schools into smaller academies or learning communities.
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The average student population in New York City's public schools is roughly 1,500. In New York Network schools, it ranges from 300 to 500. The positive benefits of the project's small schools, from parental satisfaction to student retention, continue to emerge. One school, the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, boasted the highest reading and math scores in its district and the third highest SAT scores among New York City schools: 95 percent of its first graduating class were headed to selective four-year colleges.
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Chicago's Challenge supports 30 small schools, and also personalizes schools by increasing the number of trained adults who work with students. Each school network is linked to an external partner, bringing into the classroom outside resources such as artists and museum educators. Other programs, such as "buddy" readers or training for parents to assist in classrooms, also result in more attention for students.
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Most Philadelphia schools have divided themselves into small heterogeneous learning communities of fewer than 400 students as part of their reform effort. More than 130 small learning communities have been formed in high schools and over 600 in elementary/middle schools. "The small learning community allows students to see our teachers all of the time," a student at Gratz High School explains. "I have the same teachers every year and really feel like we have a relationship . . . Before, students were just numbers unless they stood out and did something extraordinary."
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How the Challenge Is Helping Schools
