A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

FOR RELEASE
October 5, 1999

Contact:
David Thomas
(202) 401-1579

DEPARTMENT AWARDS $12.7 MILLION IN CONTRACTS FOR COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL REFORM DESIGNS

U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley announced today the award of 12.7 million in contracts to seven organizations to conduct research and develop models of comprehensive school reform for middle and high schools.

The awards will support the design and implementation of new research-based models, research and evaluation to assess the models' promise for raising student achievement, and the creation of additional resources to help significant numbers of schools to adopt and implement the designs.

"These contracts will allow us to address the need for more models of effective school reform at the middle and high school levels," Riley said. "I think the research on comprehensive school reform and the addition of effective models will be very helpful, especially in helping to turn around low-performing schools."

The seven organizations have received contracts ranging from $1.2 million to $2.3 for the first year, and each is expected to range between $6.7 million and $13 million over five years. The contracts require the organizations to create models that include strategies, procedures, materials and teacher professional development for schoolwide reform, aimed especially at increasing academic achievement for adolescent students.

Recently, the department awarded related grants under its Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program, which encouraged raising student achievement under research-driven approaches that strengthen entire schools and make their curricula more rigorous. Results from this program have shown a greater need for models and designs for schools serving adolescents, and for models designed to address capacity problems, especially in rural areas. The contracts were awarded to help significantly increase the number of schools able to adopt and implement such designs.

The department's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) will administer the projects and collaborate with the contractors to establish an interactive network among them. OERI plans to create a complementary research and evaluation team to maximize the usefulness and timeliness of findings from comprehensive school reform research.

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NOTE TO EDITORS: A description of each award is provided below.

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) will develop, implement, and replicate a comprehensive school reform design for middle-grades schools. The model brings together the best features of the elementary school model ATLAS Communities and EDC's decade-long experience with middle-grades reform. ATLAS stands for Authentic Teaching, Learning and Assessment for all Students. The goal of the new model is to help middle-grades schools become high performing organizations that are academically rigorous, developmentally responsive, and socially equitable. EDC will use a variety of service delivery mechanisms to support this change effort, including on-site and distance coaching; networking within and across districts; institutes, workshops, and other professional development programs; electronic communications; and distance learning. Abt Associates, Inc. will be EDC's research and evaluation partner.
   Contact: Nancy Ames. Phone: 617-969-7100.
   Costs: Initial year $1,198,175. Five years total $6,756,833.

The Galef Institute will build a middle grades reform program drawing on its extensive experience with Different Ways of Knowing (K-6) in over 500 schools and pilot studies in the middle grades. Galef will provide fully tested curriculum, instruction, and assessment modules in all subjects and grades (developed in collaboration with the 2061 Project, Connected Math, and others), technology for teachers and students, after-school programs, and family programs. All these will be aligned into a school-wide plan for standards-based reform. WestEd will provide the formative and overall evaluation of the model. Different Ways of Knowing is based on the belief that all students and teachers are intelligent, and have the capacity to develop expertise in a given subject or skill. Learners need varied instructional pathways so that they can tap prior knowledge, and represent their new knowledge in multiple ways. The program will use drama, dance, music, art, and media as tools to promote in-depth, creative thinking that motivates students to think critically and gain deeper, longer lasting understanding.
   Contact: Linda Johannesen. Phone: 310-479-8883.
   Cost: Initial year $1,616,761. Five years total $13,024,095.

The Talent Development Model balances research-based reforms with a planning and implementation process that encourages local adaptations and staff buy-in of changes. It builds on recent work conducted at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk, and at the University of California-Berkeley's Career Academy Support Network. The Talent Development Model, which seeks to transform low-performing high-poverty middle and secondary schools, includes a powerful set of reform strategies. It is designed to reform the organization of middle and high schools into small learning communities including career academies in high schools. It emphasizes reform of curriculum and instruction wherein a common core of high standards courses are offered to students with flexible time and resources that address all students' needs. It stresses reform of parent and community involvement through the use of multiple partnerships. It also seeks to reform professional development by providing on-site assistance and help to staff for planning and classroom innovations.
   Contact: James McPartland at 410-516-8803, or Douglas Mac Iver at 410-516-8829.
   Costs: Initial year $2,328,000. Five years total $11,640,000.

First-Things-First is a model for district and whole school reform. It is currently being phased into all comprehensive high schools and middle schools in Kansas City, Kansas, a medium-sized urban district. The model includes a research-based set of seven critical features aimed at building strong, mutually accountable relationships among adults and adolescent students; transforming teaching and learning in every classroom with an initial focus on literacy; and realigning organizational supports to achieve these two goals. The plan builds on 3 years of model implementation and research in Kansas City, Kansas by continuing support and expansion there plus work in another urban school district and additional urban and rural high school and feeder middle school pairs. Through this work, the research and development team will create the tools to support further expansion in and beyond this project, while also generating reliable information on implementing the First-Things-First model and the effects it creates on student and adult outcomes. The Institute for Research and Reform in Education, which developed First-Things-First, will provide technical support for its implementation and expansion. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation will oversee all aspects of the project.
   Contact: Robert Granger. Phone: 212-532-3200.
   Cost: Initial year $1,940,189. Five years total $11,143,740.

The National Center on Education and the Economy, in association with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, aims to use close collaboration between researchers, developers and practitioners to strengthen the middle school and high school components of the America's Choice Design. The Design will tie together a curriculum that extends from the beginning of middle school through the end of the lower division in high school. The Design calls for an extensive system of safety nets intended to make sure that all students reach the standards, no matter where they start. These include intensive courses for entering students, an after-hours tutoring program, and a dropout recovery program. All students will take their program in houses of 200 to 400 students, and core teachers will follow their students through the programs.
   Contact: Marc Tucker. Phone: 202-783-3668.
    Costs: 1st year $1,940,327. Five year total $10,198,136.

The Southern Regional Education Board will design, develop, implement and refine a comprehensive middle and secondary-grades model by bringing together its High Schools That Work and emerging middle-grades efforts into an integrated whole-school improvement initiative for clusters of rural schools. The project will: (1) develop capacity to deliver an array of site-specific services to accelerate change; (2) incorporate proven, standards-based curriculum products; (3) provide access for all students, particularly at-risk students, to an "advantaged" academic core curriculum; (4) perform a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of the model and its effect on school and student performance; and (5) expand the high school emphasis to focus on all students. Southern Regional Education Board will refine the model, implement Making Schools Work in clusters of high schools and middle schools, and will assess the model's utility for nationwide implementation. The Research Triangle Institute will evaluate the model, including its impact on school organization, instructional practices, and student achievement.
   Contact: Gene Bottoms. Phone: 404-875-9211.
   Costs: Initial year $2,156,143. Five years total $11,639,999.

Building on much of the widely adopted Success for All Elementary Schools program, the Success for All Foundation will develop, evaluate, and disseminate the Success for All Middle School program. This program will be designed to accommodate the developmental needs and extraordinary capabilities of young adolescents, especially those who are placed at risk due to poverty, limited English proficiency, minority status, or location in inner cities or isolated rural areas. The Success for All Middle School will be organized to create close connections between young adolescents and their teachers to help them succeed in rigorous coursework-both by improving the quality of curriculum and instruction and by providing a variety of support services-and to connect schools with children's families and communities. The consistent theme throughout the Success for All Middle School is high expectations, rigorous and exciting curricula designed to engage students' motivation, curiosity, and social energy, and supports of many kinds to enable all students to succeed in the equivalent of a top-track curriculum. Rigorous field experiments will evaluate outcomes and processes of the program.
   Contact: Nancy Madden at 410-616-2330 or Robert Slavin at 410-616-2310.
   Costs: Initial year $1,608,983. Five years total $12,272,741.