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Throughout the nation, universities work with public schools to improve curriculum and instruction. Some engage in collaborative efforts, such as professional development schools (PDSs), that have both school improvement and teacher education goals. Others are less comprehensive, concentrating on improvement in a particular curriculum area. The Curriculum-Focused Partnership (CFP) described in this case study exemplifies the latter type of university-school partnership. The CFP operated in a difficult context, which may account for its limited success. At the same time, the case provides guidance on actions to avoid as well as activities that hold promise.
The CFP teaches:
The CFP was designed to bring together the resources and expertise of higher education, the local private sector, nonprofit educational and cultural organizations, and an urban district to improve instruction in science in the intermediate grades. Specific objectives of the project include: establishing innovative science intermediate grade programs in schools identified as "the most needy" in the city; providing monthly in-service training programs for science teachers; providing classroom support by graduate students to selected teachers as they implement innovative science and math curricula; and providing intensive training to selected teachers so they can assume leadership roles at the completion of the project.
The classroom support, which became the major focus of the CFP, was provided by graduate students in science. The graduate students demonstrated innovative science instruction in the classrooms each week.
The partners included not only the school district and the local university, but a science center and a private sector school-focused organization. Neither of these was an active participant in the daily operations of the CFP, although the science center used the CFP funding to expand its school services. The private sector organization, a council of businesses with an interest in improving education, sent a representative to the (infrequent) meetings of the CFP but had little policy input or role in the partnership's activities.
The schools identified for this partnership project are located in the center of an extremely blighted city. The city has a long history of fiscal and educational failure. The center of the city includes abandoned housing, drug osupermarkets,o public housing projects, and poorly maintained schools. Over 91 percent of the students in the district are ethnic minority, and the percentage is even higher in center city. At one school served by the project, close to 85 percent of the students are homeless, with extensive substance abuse in their families. There is a high rate of mobility and transience. For both educational and financial reasons, the state is working toward taking over the district. This leads district personnel to feel beleaguered and harbor suspicions of outsiders. As in many urban districts, internal divisions within the central administration compound the difficulty of doing business in the district.
Both the university and the science center reflect the progressive tradition of the community. The university, located near the center of the city, has a long tradition of seeking to increase enrollment in science and mathematics of a traditionally underrepresented population. From the 1970s on, this tradition has led to concerns about the "pipeline," and concomitant interest in improving educational opportunities in the local public schools. The availability of funds from the EPP was seen as a way to extend such programs through the Pipeline Center. Similarly, the science center had long had engaged in outreach to the schools, and staff at the science center welcomed the opportunity to increase existing efforts.
Unlike many cities, however, the city had little tradition of business involvement in community affairs. The few large businesses that remained in the city engaged in some philanthropy, largely to hospitals, but were not involved in city politics or education. The council of businesses was an effort to gather business support for education, but it was struggling to define its role and had little presence in the CFP.
The CFP was begun by a professor at the university. He was the director of the Pipeline Center, which attended to the pipeline issues involved in science and mathematics enrollment, and also active in state professional associations. He devised the initial idea and convened the members of the current partnership, assuming a primary role for planning and decisionmaking.
The Pipeline Center has limited hard money. Consequently, staff always seek opportunities for additional funding. The EPP announcement was, in the director's eyes, "an opportunity to do some good." The center had provided graduate student assistants to some teachers in the city, and the director believed that focusing the assistance would be beneficial. The goal was to improve curriculum and instruction in science in intermediate grades, a level of schooling he saw as a "wasteland."
At the start, the CFP was carefully designed and followed a compelling logic. The argument was: To improve instruction at the intermediate grades, teachers need models of what good science teaching is. Consequently, the graduate students will come into classes regularly, demonstrate appropriate instruction, and work with the teachers so they understand how to teach better. At the same time, teachers will receive regular in-services, focused both on science curriculum and instruction, and the content of science. The latter focus is warranted, according to the argument, because one reason that science is so badly taught is that intermediate-level teachers do not themselves understand the scientific concepts. These classroom- and teacher-centered activities were to be further supported by the science center's provision of materials that could be used in the improved lessons. Further, the science center would create a teacher center, using mainly non-CFP funds, that would support teacher development. The logic also held that by concentrating the CFP's efforts within a limited number of the most troubled schools, the impact would be greatest. Further, the teachers involved with the CFP would become leaders in their schools and the district, and carry the improvement on after the project ended.
In the initial stages, the role of the private sector was as ill-defined as it was throughout the project.
The director approached the district's associate superintendent with the idea of the CFP already developed. The associate superintendent has a reputation for being aggressive on behalf of the schools and has pursued a variety of partnerships between her schools and other organizations (both private and public) wherever she could find them. However, she works within a strife-ridden and contentious district, whose challenges are magnified by the threat of receivership. The project was announced at a general meeting of area teachers and administrators, and principals who were not included in the initial planning phases of the project. Project staff indicated that the principals did not think that they had a voice in how this project was to develop in their schools, and consequently, some expressed resistance to implementing the project at their site. Relationships between project staff and teachers required considerable time and energy at the outset, in part because of wariness and lack of cooperation by some of the principals. Project staff attempted to work with schools where the principal was at least receptive, if not openly supportive.
Implementation of the CFP was uneven. The graduate student assistance to classrooms occurred, and as graduate students expressed a need for greater support, the director hired additional staff responsible for developing a resource room and a manual for classroom helpers. However, the vision of teachers working with the graduate students never materialized, and attendance at in-service workshops was spotty. The science center continued its educational support activities, but it had few ties to the curriculum improvement efforts.
Perhaps most problematic was the relationship with the school district. The original image was that the area schools would be helped to develop a meaningful science curriculum, reflecting current thinking in science education. However, the district's science curriculum was unevenly implemented, so the CFP could not work within an established scope and sequence. Even more important, although the school district is the partner of record for this funded partnership, individual schools functioned largely as independent partners, with basic partnerships developing at each site among the school administrators, the teachers, and the university staff and graduate students. The commitment of each principal has been critical to overall project success at each school and has influenced heavily the degree of teacher commitment demonstrated. At one site, the principal said that he "holds the vision for the project," and that there is a high attendance rate at teacher training workshops. Some teachers report visits to their classrooms by either the principal or the vice principal as indicators of support. However, the principals were never involved as partners, or decisionmakers, in the implementation stage of the project and were informed rather than consulted about the implementation of this project in their schools.
When viewed as an interorganizational arrangement, then, the CFP is actually a series of dyadic relations between the university and individual schools. The science center, also a partner of record, has its own dyadic relationship with schools, most of which are not involved in the CFP. In fact, there are no differences in the scope or intensity of services offered to CFP schools and other schools in the district.
The following section begins with a discussion of the partnership structure and moves to analysis of its activities.
The most notable aspect of the partnership structure is the absence of any formal links among partners. The primary partners are the science center, the university, and the local school district. The business group is listed as a partner, but no representatives from this body attended meetings regularly in the early stages of the partnership. Communication is conducted informally and decisions about implementation issues tend to be made by the project director and his staff. There is little structured interaction among partners. Initially, this lack of structure was of some concern to the science center and the school district, who would have preferred more formal meetings and a defined policy role. However, participants have come to accept the style of the director.
Each of the primary partners entered into the partnership because it presented a way to further pursue areas that each organization already had determined were important to its mission. The associate superintendent had been committed to improving science education in her schools and perceived the partnership project as something that would help the schools reach those goals. She was quick to state that the most significant benefits of this partnership to the schools were the resources each partner was able to contribute. However, this associate superintendent sent mixed signals about the importance attached to this project. For example, the CFP was not included in meetings of representatives of partnerships in the city.
The science center agreed to join forces with the university and the schools after being approached by the project director, but was unclear of the scope or content of its involvement in teacher development activities, stating its expectation that these would be determined as collaboration developed. The science center director realized, he said, that the CFP would not become a collaborative effort to improve schools. Consequently, he came to view the CFP as a source or fiscal support for activities that his institution already was engaged in.
The objectives of this project were to establish innovative science intermediate school programs, provide monthly in-services and intensive support activities for selected teachers, and to offer in-service training for teachers who would be able to assume leadership roles in their schools and throughout the district at the completion of the project. Strategies to assist in the implementation of these project objectives included after-school teacher development workshops, all day or weekend in-services, and one-on-one coaching by university science graduate students. The graduate students presented model lessons to students to demonstrate hands-on science teaching. An additional strategy to help implement the partnership goals was to increase the use of the science center's educational outreach program by familiarizing teachers with what was available.
University graduate students provided in-class support to teachers, coaching them on the presentation of hands-on science lessons. The majority of the participating graduate students were from the same ethnic minority groups as the students in the schools. Further, many of them were male. One unanticipated consequence was that the graduate students served as role models for the intermediate grade students.
When the graduate students, none of whom had been involved in teacher preparation programs, expressed concern about how they were to approach their task, the project hired additional staff and developed resource guides and manuals. The students were trained by university staff to present grade-appropriate science activities and to communicate effectively. The graduate students were encouraged to support the teachers in their development of self-confidence and new subject matter expertise. In theory, each graduate student planned lessons in consultation with his or her classroom teacher, but in most instances, the teachers relied on the students to develop the ideas. Further, teacher adherence to district curricular guidelines varied. From the perspective of project staff, the district lacked meaningful scope and sequence guidance.
Teachers varied in the degree to which they depended on their graduate assistants. Many teachers "handed over" their classes to their assistants, who taught the entire lessons. Others cotaught classes, and included 5 to 10 minutes of hands-on science in every science class, using the graduate assistants for support. The project director's goal is to see a gradual decline in teacher dependence on graduate assistants. The policy is that the average length of time a teacher should work with a graduate student would be two years.
As the CFP developed, the codirector emerged as a critical player in project implementation. A long-time staff member of the university's Pipeline Center, he has extensive experience working with science and math teachers and has been instrumental in developing and sustaining relationships with the teachers involved in the project and with the staff in the central administration. Maintaining a low profile, the codirector is accessible to teachers who feel insecure about taking on the daunting new responsibilities of teaching science and math. Improved relationships with principals over time as well as sustained involvement of the teachers can be attributed, in large part, to his strong interpersonal skills. The associate superintendent for the district considers her primary relationship to the project to be with the codirector. The director and codirector maintain individual leadership roles within different, discrete areas of the project. The university professor is the final arbiter of project policy and staff decisions, and makes these decisions autonomously. The codirector is a leader in areas of implementation and the first person on project matters to be approached by individuals at the school level.
During the first year of the CFP, attendance at the in-service workshops was low. It improved somewhat during the second year. There appears to be a relationship between the commitment demonstrated by the school principal (and assistant principal) to the project and to extracurricular training activities by the teachers. Those schools where principals (or assistant principals) visited the classrooms, discussed the project with other staff members, and displayed a public appreciation for the project also were the schools where teachers participated the most in teacher development activities.
Over time, principals became more enthusiastic about the projects at their schools. Principals expressed appreciation for assistance provided by the graduate students and encouraged teachers to attend in-service activities. Principals varied in their levels of support, ranging from passive acceptance to demonstrable support. Those who have changed their perceptions attributed their new attitude to improvement in their teachers' skills and the visible enthusiasm of the students for hands-on science activities. One principal said, "If the kids are excited about what they are learning, they will keep coming back to school."
Involvement with the central administration remained fairly consistent throughout the duration of the project. There was no staff turnover in the participating district offices and everyone originally assigned to the project remained with the project. The importance attached to this project, however, varied among different district administrators. In particular, this project was noticeably absent from a list of partnerships compiled by the associate superintendent.
Teachers shared their new experiences with colleagues, but the level of sharing varied from school to school and from teacher to teacher. However, the level of principal encouragement influenced the degree to which teachers were willing to present their new experiences to others. At some schools, teachers shared new techniques and methods with the entire school at staff meetings and conducted in-house workshops for other teachers. Other teachers were still "too busy trying to figure it out for themselves" to share information with their colleagues, in the words of one principal. Even those teachers who shared information do not view themselves as "curriculum leaders." Perhaps most important, the sharing that takes place is of "model" lessons, and there remains no attention to scope and sequence or to the content that students should learn.
Graduate student assignments increased throughout the development of the project. The project director considered the graduate assistants to be the most important critical element in the project, and indicated his intent to secure funds to continue supporting graduate assistants in the classroom after partnership grant funds were terminated. In general, graduate assistant involvement in the classrooms and with the teachers was considered successful. In a few cases, student behavior and classroom management problems presented some difficulties, and, in even fewer cases, difficulties between the graduate students and the teachers were reported. Where there was friction between a teacher and an assistant, it was usually because the assistant attempted an instructional approach that the teacher did not approve, or because there were problems between graduate assistants and students. Project staff members provided extensive support to graduate students and by intervening quickly they usually dispelled tension fast. The relationships between teachers and graduate assistants were overwhelmingly viewed as positive and productive by teachers, graduate assistants, project staff, and school principals. Teachers commented on how the graduate assistants were oexcellent role modelso for the intermediate level students.
At the start of the project, the graduate students were given only cursory training. However, they expressed concern about their performance so greater attention was paid to selecting and training graduate students to ensure that the most appropriate candidates were equipped in the best possible way to work with teachers and students. A rigorous selection process was designed to identify candidates who had the requisite knowledge, interpersonal skills, and level of sensitivity necessary for such an assignment. Graduate students engaged in a two-to-four week training period that provided instruction in theory as well as practice. Further, pedagogical issues were addressed. Graduate assistants were encouraged by university staff members to view their relationship with their teacher as their priority. They were encouraged to develop a "partner" relationship with their teacher, request teacher feedback, discover teacher needs, and actively involve the teacher in the planning process.
In the eyes of most school district participants, the CFP was the graduate assistants.
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[Curriculum-Focused Partnership Part B ]
This page was last updated January 8, 2002 (jca)