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The impact of the CFP is difficult to assess. On the one hand, the increased numbers of graduate students working in classrooms and their increased skill at doing so meant that students were exposed to hands-on science regularly. Some participating teachers also reported gaining comfort with new ways of teaching science. On the other hand, the teachers did not become curriculum leaders and the relationship of the science center's outreach program to the improvement of science instruction never developed. For a variety of reasons, impact on students cannot be judged.
This section begins with a discussion of the nature of the CFP's impact on the city schools, including the impact on curriculum and instruction, and teachers. It then moves to a brief look at the impact on students.
The context in which the CFP worked mitigated impacts on schools. The city school district is in fiscal and educational disarray, as indicated by the state's efforts to take over the district. Further, the district must rise to the challenge of teaching severely educationally disadvantaged students who live in an area that is beset by drugs, crime, and corruption. The district office itself is the scene of internal politics as well as the home to dedicated educators. However, even within this context, other partnerships have made an impact on schools. Recently, for example, the assistant superintendent began meeting regularly with representatives of all the partnership organizations with which the schools work. The CFP is not included in these meetings.
The reasons for the omission are unclear. However, the project director's informal communication style contributed to the CFP's lack of visibility at the school-district level. The director's - concern is at the classroom level. Although he talks about the importance of working on the district's curriculum, he does not include district personnel in his communications. One result is that the classroom activities are seen as an "extra," rather than part of a curriculum improvement effort. The director stated, "I can't stand meetings that have no purpose." But he failed to connect the CFP's marginal status in the district with this position.
The lack of connection to the district also influenced the degree of success with teachers. Although most participating teachers valued the work of the graduate students, and many believed they would continue to teach "hands-on science," they did not view themselves as curriculum leaders.
The participating teachers consistently indicated that the following problems deterred them from effective science teaching: secure storage of instructional materials, low institutional priority given to science teaching, need for smaller class sizes to do hands-on science, and the need for supportive leadership from the administration. During the life of the project, some teachers noted an increased interest in and support for the teaching of science. The involvement of graduate assistants as models of effective science teaching coincided with initial evidence of change in teacher behavior. Principals noted a change not only in the attitudes of teachers but also in their performance, and talked about an increase in student enthusiasm for science classes. In some instances, graduate students coached teachers in new methods of instruction. But feedback sessions, according to project staff, were difficult to implement because graduate assistants felt intimidated about providing honest responses to teachers. In a few instances, teachers were dropped from the project because they were content to let the graduate assistants do all the hands-on activities or were, at best, only partially engaged in the activities. Some of the coaching actually involved the graduate assistant providing encouragement to the teacher to take ownership of new approaches and begin developing original ideas him or herself.
Self-initiated science teaching and requests for supplies are some of the indicators of success. The number of teachers committed to new approaches to teaching science grew. Project staff indicated that after the second year of the project, the number had grown to 10 or 11 teachers who would be able to assume positions of responsibility for implementing new approaches to science teaching. Teachers said that without the graduate students, they would not have provided as many hands-on activities for their students because of the time required for preparation.
In the project design, additional materials were seen as coming from the science center's outreach program. Although the science center reported an increase in use of the materials they provided, no data were kept that would allow attribution to the CFP. Further, the teachers expressed concern that after the partnership ended, they would not have access to the materials brought by the graduate students.
The school administration provided the project management with standardized reading, math, and language arts test scores. However, this information cannot be used to infer project effectiveness because of the involvement of multiple external service providers to the CFP.
Subjectively, principals and especially teachers commented on marked improvements in students' attitudes toward science. Teachers believe that the hands-on activities and the practical focus of many of the lessons made science relevant and fun for students. This enthusiasm resulted in improved attention and concentration and a willingness to participate more actively in class. The presence of the graduate students has benefited the students in other ways as well. In many cases, teachers described them as role models for their students.
Probably because the partnership structure was only loosely implemented, it was not institutionalized. At the end of EPP funding, each of the primary partners continued its activities. The science center expressed gratitude for the opportunity to extend its outreach services. Staff members at the Pipeline Center thought the CFP enabled them to provide an important service to schools and to develop support structures needed by graduate students. The business community had only a tangential relationship to the CFP, and there were no continuing ties. On the district level, there was little of the CFP to institutionalize, but teachers seemed likely to continue teaching hands-on science and sharing their experiences when encouraged by principals.
The CFP operated with an informal communication style among partners. Further, decisions were made by the Pipeline Center and communicated to other participants. Most relationships were dyadic, between individual teachers and either staff or graduate students from the Pipeline Center or the science center outreach department. Consequently, the partnership structure was not institutionalized.
According to participants, they never intended the partnership to be institutionalized. Each partner organization viewed participating in the CFP as an opportunity to continue, strengthen, or expand already existing community outreach programs. The university already had been involved in using graduate students to assist with teacher development and teacher training. The science center already had been involved in outreach to the schools. The school district was concerned about the quality of instruction at the intermediate level and was under pressure from the state to improve student outcomes.
From the beginning of the project, it was clear that the project would be managed through the Pipeline Center, and that communications with the school district and decisionmaking around project activities would be handled by the project director, with occasional input from the codirector. Projectwide decisions (e.g., relating to personnel) were viewed by the project director as his domain. Although the science center initially expressed a desire for a more formal management structure, the informality established at the beginning became the norm, and the role of the science center evolved into one of providing services to teachers. The science center never became involved in policy issues affecting the implementation of partnership activities except as they affected the science center directly.
The business community nominally participated by providing resources and making in-kind contributions through already established programs. It was difficult to identify specific contributions that grew out of involvement in the CFP. Many businesses had a prior history of helping individual schools, and the CFP did not require changed roles.
The project director, as well as participating principals and teachers, viewed the graduate students as the key element in the CFP. The role of the science center was more isolated, and even teachers who participated in science center-sponsored activities did not see the science center as a opartnero in what they were doing with the university and the graduate students. The relationship between individual teacher and graduate student, by definition of the project director, was to be one of short duration (two years) and not designed to remain ongoing.
Several principals spoke highly of the graduate student assistants and attributed marked improvement in teachers' and students' skills to their work. Several expressed the desire to make similar coaching arrangements available to all teachers, but none was willing to devote limited staff development funds to such an activity. The Pipeline Center expressed an intention to continue to seek money to support the presence of graduate students in the classroom.
The CFP exemplifies the work of many partnerships in both its successes and its failures. On the positive side, it developed and implemented an innovative method of improving instruction. The use of non-education graduate students had several positive effects. One that was discussed very little is that ethnic minority students developed relationships with graduate students from the same ethnic group. This provided a view of possible future opportunities generally unavailable to the young people. A second effect was that teachers saw hands-on science instruction in action and were able to opracticeo new ways of teaching, receiving feedback on their efforts. By the end of funding, principals and Pipeline Center staff reported that up to a dozen teachers had changed how they taught.
Equally positive, the science center was able to expand its outreach activities through the CFP. However, the outreach activities were never integrated into the overall curriculum improvement effort. As a result, although teachers had access to the additional materials they desired, they did not see the connection between those materials and the hands-on science instruction they offered.
More negatively, the improvement of instruction of the participating teachers was not translated into curriculum and instructional change throughout the participating schools, let alone throughout the district. Some teachers took advantage of the in-service activities offered by the CFP to enhance their own skills, but few used the opportunity to develop leadership skills. In some schools, a supportive principal facilitated sharing among participating and nonparticipating teachers, but this was not systematically encouraged by the CFP.
In addition, although participating organizations were committed to completing their activities successfully, they never developed an enduring relationship. The partners said that continuing a partnership was never a goal of the project. However, each has important knowledge and skills to contribute to a continuing improvement process. If the partnership had developed, at the end of the EPP grant, the science center and the Pipeline Center might have been able to provide services that supported each others' efforts, whether a formal relationship existed or not. As it was, each intended to seek funds to continue its work separately, and it is likely that their efforts will have less and less common focus.
Perhaps most important, the CFP was unable to work with the school district to improve science curriculum guidelines for the district. Consequently, the relationship between hands-on science teaching and a coherent approach to curriculum improvement did not develop. For students, then, the opportunity to receive high quality instruction was dependent on whether they were lucky enough to be in the classroom of a teacher who worked well with a graduate student. Further, the extent to which even those teachers who were positively affected by the project will continue using the new approaches is unclear. Neither the district nor the Pipeline Center is committed to ongoing support of their efforts.
The CFP had marked strengths, but also marked weaknesses. The reasons for the weaknesses were twofold. First, the project director held a clear vision of what good science teaching was and had creative ideas about how to influence classroom instruction. He was less knowledgeable and creative about how to work with partners and how to spread the impact of his center's efforts. His informal communication style coupled with his focus on the classroom to the exclusion of the school or the district contributed to the limited impact of the project.
The project director's limitations, however, were probably less significant than the overwhelming problems in the school district. Internal struggles, misperceptions about the importance of principals, stressful relationships between teachers and their principals, and an overall sense of frustration at the administrative level inevitably hindered the implementation of successful grass-roots projects.
The CFP, then, raises a fundamental question about educational partnerships. The question is: Is the formation of a partnership an effective strategy for curriculum and instructional improvement in highly stressed school environments? Would educational reform be better served with attention to dysfunction at the district and school level? That the schools in the district needed outside help was evident. What is less clear is whether they were able to benefit from the type of assistance offered by the CFP.
Before starting a similar endeavor, it may be important to ask such questions as:
Questions of infrastructure and system support can be answered only with the active participation of the school district. External partners can help raise appropriate questions and work with district and school staff to answer them. Further, partnerships can be successful only when their activities fit with the answers. For example, if no incentives exist for teachers to help other teachers, the partnership cannot rely on such help as an integral element of its design.
Basically, the CFP illustrates the difference between successful service delivery and successful partnerships. The CFP successfully delivered services, but it was unable to achieve long-lasting and broad improvement in science instruction.
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[Multifocus Partnership Part A]
This page was last updated January 8, 2002 (jca)