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

Mission

To improve teaching and learning and advance systemic school improvement by increasing capacity for reform and forming strategic alliances with key members of the region's education and policy-making community. One of the ways in which the LAB puts these strategies into effect is by conducting its research in collaboration with educational practitioners and community members. Knowledge gained through inquiries into standards and assessment, school services, professional development, and community involvement is exchanged with policymakers and schools through publications, computer media, and LAB-facilitated workshops. The LAB views excellence and equity as two equally important guiding principles, and places special emphasis on developing effective approaches for meeting the educational needs of linguistically and culturally diverse student populations.

Key Initiatives

Urban School Reform. Current partnerships with the Boston, Bridgeport, New York City, and Providence school districts have focused on improving the quality of education for all urban students by using a variety of research and technical assistance techniques and strategies to assist all stakeholders in urban school reform. This initiative creates interactions that connect research with practice and provides opportunities for dialogue to encourage thoughtful reflection on system policies and procedures that affect student outcomes. The initiative's work with urban educators has long-term value and immediate use, influencing policy and practice within these urban school systems.

Professional Development for Educational Leadership. The goal of the Professional Development for Educational Leadership initiative is to build the capacity of administrators, teachers, and educational stakeholders to play a leading role in collaborative, research-based education reform and to learn to reflect on their actions. Through collaborative inquiry, initiative staff invites a variety of stakeholders to see themselves as leaders. By encouraging a multitude of people to envision themselves as education leaders engaged in research, reflection, and collaboration, the initiative promotes the development of new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and systems.

School Change and Community Involvement. To address the issues of larger system reform, this LAB initiative is designed to identify ways to effect and sustain systemic changes at the school building, district, and state levels in order to improve student performance. With its focus on the context for the classroom, the initiative encourages coordination among all levels of the system — the school building, district, community, higher education, state agency — to improve outcomes for all students. For example, work under this initiative examines strategies that state departments of education can use to lead reform effectively and ways to engage parents and community members in support of reform.

Secondary School Restructuring. The Secondary School Restructuring initiative identifies actions that high schools, districts, states, and education associations can take to transform themselves into high performing, relevant, rigorous, and continuously improving educational systems for the 21st century. The initiative explores systemic school reform through strategic entry points that have the potential to have an impact on practice and considers how curricular, instructional, organizational, funding, and policy practices affect equity in education.

Standards, Assessment, and Instruction. The Standards, Assessment, and Instruction initiative focuses on research, development, and assistance that addresses core issues associated with the implementation of education reform in the region. In particular, this initiative concentrates on the implications of reform for linguistically diverse student populations. The LAB's work has evolved through partnerships with both state education agencies and local districts that are committed to utilizing research-based approaches and best practices in order to address major issues associated with achieving excellence and equity for all students.

Signature Programs

Implementing Standards with English Language Learners. This work draws on knowledge of standards and education reform and the latest research on second language acquisition and effective school practices with English language learners. In the Lowell School District in Massachusetts, LAB staff work as researchers and professional development advisors alongside content area, bilingual, and ESL teachers from four urban middle schools and district-level Title I and VII facilitators. This program explores an area into which there has been little existing research and minimal understanding in the field: how professional development can support the implementation of standards in classrooms that include English language learners. Work has focused on three sustainable professional development strategies examination of student work, peer visitations, standards analysis all related to standards implementation at the classroom level. Qualitative data analysis yielded findings that show which kinds of professional development, outside facilitation, colleague-to-colleague collaboration, and policies are needed to support standards implementation with diverse student populations.

Indicators of Capacity: Readiness for Reform in High-Poverty Elementary Schools. LAB staff studied six high-poverty schools that are using Title I funds and that have been recognized for their achievement. Structural practices and processes that over an 8- to 10-year period led to changes in outcomes in the six schools studied were examined. The study used focus groups, interviews, and document reviews to learn which strategies the schools shared. Findings showed, for example, that the power of teacher efficacy, often spreading from a core group of faculty to a critical mass, was a common feature of successful turnaround schools. This project's research has proven to be a fruitful starting place for addressing a variety of needs posed by local school districts. Because the project's research demonstrated the promise of schoolwide projects and the importance of decentralized decisionmaking and teaming, the New York City deputy chancellor's office has used the project's findings to serve as the basis for a design for site-based management for the city.

Strengthening the Accreditation Process. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), aware of the LAB's commitment to secondary school restructuring, sought assistance in improving the quality of instruction offered in each of the 700 high schools that comprise the NEASC Commission on Public Secondary Schools. As a result, the LAB has conducted research into accreditation practices that will have significant results both regionally and nationally. In collaboration with the commission, the LAB engaged a national panel of experts to review new accreditation standards and then suggested revisions to the visit methodology being considered by the NEASC commission. Recently, a set of seven self-assessment guides was co-produced by NEASC and the LAB.

Specialty Area

Selected Recent Products

A Guide to Involving English Language Learners in School to Career Initiatives. This guidebook provides suggestions for increasing and improving English language learners' involvement in school-to-career initiatives across the country. It describes model career initiatives that include these students and analyzes some of the school restructuring issues raised by the research conducted for this book.

Ñandutí. This Web site resource for parents, teachers, and administrators provides up-to-date information on early-start and long-sequence foreign language programs. Ñandutí provides practical, easy-to-use materials, resources, and techniques applicable to K-8 instruction. The site is accessible at http://www.cal.org/earlylang.

School Matters: Mapping for Reflecting and Planning. This activity guide provides guidelines for a school's discussion of its history in relation to reform initiatives. Though the product outlines a process that takes only a few hours, the discussion it begins can stimulate a school community to reflect on its history and context for reform.

Themes in Education: Block Scheduling. The second in the LAB's Themes in Education Series, this reader-friendly booklet provides an overview of block scheduling, the different schedule options it provides, and some of its advantages and potential disadvantages. Included are case studies of schools in the LAB's region that are using block scheduling.

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[ Mid-Atlantic Laboratory for Student Success (LSS) ]

This page last modified 19 October 1999. (lvb)