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Preface Early Lessons from the Challenge
How the Challenge Is Influencing |
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Linking schools to one another. Personal and professional connections among teachers and from school to school directly influence the success of school reforms, research shows. Challenge projects have all fostered informal and formal networks based on trust and common purpose-envisioning "systems of schools" in contrast to "school systems"-and through them hope to encourage teacher learning and school-to-school accountability. The presence of community and university partners in such networks especially stands out in the Challenge approach.
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The Chicago Challenge includes 49 school networks, ranging in size from 3 to 15 schools, for a total of 223 schools. Forty-three external partners-including universities, museums, community groups-serve as a technical assistance hub to each of these networks. In a survey conducted by Chicago researchers, two thirds of the principals report that network participation has provided useful resources for school improvement, with over 90 percent reporting moderate school improvement
as a result, including new curricular programs and practices, new opportunities for teacher professional development, and refocused school priorities. |
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The Rural Challenge understands the toll extracted by isolation in rural areas and insisted that all its grants form clusters of schools to provide mutual support. Clusters range in size, including: the Navajo Nation, the 19 pueblos in New Mexico; state-wide efforts in Alaska, Alabama, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota; a network of five schools spread across Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina; the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont; and several groups of neighboring districts in California, Wisconsin, and South Texas. Clusters share resources, offer common development for teachers who are often the single members of their academic department or specialty, trade effective community development processes, and encourage one another onto more intensive change.
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In Los Angeles, LAAMP's 28 School Families-composed of a high school and the elementary and middle schools that feed into it-have developed a wide range of governance structures and activities to promote cross-school exchange and collaboration. Work teams, which typically have representation from all schools in a Family, allow for family-wide conversations about reform. Transition teams ease the movement of students from one grade level to another. Some School Families hold family-wide professional development days; some share instructional "coaches."
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Developing strong community relationships. Research documents the positive links between strong school and family partnerships and high student achievement, including higher grades, test scores, attendance, graduation rates, enrollment in post-secondary education, and fewer placements in special education. Parents develop greater confidence in schools from such partnerships, and teachers have both higher opinions of engaged parents and higher expectations for their children.
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All Rural Challenge funding supports community revitalization and connects student learning to the community. Students have helped re-establish local newspapers; provide data for state and federal environmental protection agencies; map vegetation; and monitor watersheds and species. Much of the work relates to local environments, history, and literature; community members act as resources and mentors. In Howard, South Dakota community members joined students to develop a community historical museum within the school. In Kasigluk, Alaska-where some houses are still lit by seal-oil lamps-students, parents, and community elders worked together for the past year to create a World Wide Web site that celebrates their learning and publishes their writing.
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Philadelphia has recruited almost 15,000 new parent and community volunteers to work in schools. Three-hundred-fifty local employers now provide apprenticeships for 3,500 eleventh- and twelfth-grade students. A Family Resource Network is redefining the relationships among district- and school-level student support staff, teachers, and community organizations serving youth and families.
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Los Angeles School Families have initiated parent education, parent centers in schools, and school activities involving parents. For example, over 50,000 parents completed a free eight-week course on how to be more active in their children's education. A reading fair for parents and students in one School Family drew 2,000 participants this year. A special program, Parents as Learning Partners, has established voice-mail systems for teachers and lending libraries for parents in 29 schools in three School Families.
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Meaningful accountability systems. Challenge projects seek to have schools value and internalize a kind of accountability that provides direction for improvement, using data and evidence as tools for guiding their change efforts. They aim for a balance between school-level autonomy and district and state authority.
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The New York Networks has developed a set of principles for good school practice to form the basis of cross-school accountability. Within some of the many networks that connect the project's small schools, for example, teachers compare graduation requirements and student portfolios.
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The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative requires its Leadership Schools to engage in an ongoing "cycle of inquiry" about a specific area like literacy. They formulate a researchable question, design instruction, teach and collect data, look carefully at the evidence from student work, and then adjust their classroom practice and their ideas about teaching and learning. Schools must also involve parents and the community in annual "accountability events" to help them understand standards and assessment and go over evidence of student progress.
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Under Children Achieving, all Philadelphia schools have two-year performance targets based on a calculation that includes student test scores in three subjects, promotion or graduation rates, and staff and student attendance. To be eligible for rewards, schools must exceed their performance targets and reduce the proportion of students scoring below Basic or not tested by 10 points. Of 249 Philadelphia schools, 145 exceeded their targets, and all but eight schools made progress toward their goals. Schools serving the poorest children made as much progress as schools serving more affluent populations.
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The Rural Challenge's Colorado Rural Charter School Network-created to de-consolidate large rural districts and save children from long, difficult, and in winter, sometimes dangerous bus rides-has invented a peer evaluation system for its work. Each of the cluster's five schools is visited by teams from the other schools, who look with experienced eyes at the areas identified by the host school. Participants have found that outsiders can bring great authority to conversations about areas needing improvement.
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How the Challenge Is Helping Schools
