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

Mission

To improve educational results for children, youth, and adults by providing research and development assistance in delivering equitable, high quality educational programs. NWREL provides research and development assistance to education, government, community agencies, business, and labor.

Key Initiatives

NWREL focuses on comprehensive school improvement strategies, building on its solid, long-term relationships with schools and communities in the Northwest region. Development efforts are concentrated at school-community partnership sites that serve high concentrations of economically disadvantaged children in both urban and rural areas. NWREL provides a broad array of information and assistance services to educators, policymakers, and the public to support widespread educational improvement efforts across the Northwest region. Key initiatives are:

Assessment and Evaluation. NWREL is developing the Information Planner, a comprehensive system to identify, define, manage, interpret, and report educational information as a cohesive set of school and community indicators, with related resources, training, and technical assistance to support implementation and maintenance. In the area of classroom assessment, NWREL is concentrating on research, development, and training in trait-based assessment and teaching.

Early Childhood Education. NWREL is developing processes and resources for schools to establish classroom environments that are developmentally and culturally appropriate for young children. NWREL also has developed a self-study process, resource materials, and training to assist teams from schools and local community agencies in planning and improving comprehensive services for children and families.

Rural Education. NWREL is developing a school-community renewal process and related tools to enable members of rural communities to carry out school improvement efforts they plan and implement themselves.

School Improvement. NWREL is developing strategies and tools to enable school/district/community systems to change their school culture so that all students achieve high standards consistent with what their communities value. Major components are the Onward to Excellence II school improvement process (see below) and the curriculum inquiry and improvement model for school teams to examine current practice, clarify standards and local priorities, plan learning experiences, and conduct classroom research.

Community-based Learning. NWREL's work focuses on helping education and community partners improve learning activities they create for both students and teachers through such vehicles as school-to-work transition, service learning, cooperative education, work experience, and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Mathematics and Science Education. NWREL is developing and disseminating resources from "real-life" examples of effective science and mathematics materials and practices.

Signature Works

Trait-based Assessment and Instruction. NWREL's trait-based assessment and instruction models identify critical traits of effective writers, readers, oral communicators, and mathematical problem-solvers. The traits provide the targets for assessing competency in these areas and provide an effective way for teachers to organize their curriculum and instruction. Rubrics for scoring products of student work are accompanied with practical and useful resources for teachers.

Onward to Excellence II. The Onward to Excellence II (OTE) school reform model includes processes and activities for: (1) direction setting, (2) planning action, (3) taking action, and (4) maintaining momentum. The model integrates school and district-level change processes resulting from 17 years of research, development, and implementation. Currently, OTE is being utilized in the field in four variations: (1) as a full systemic improvement system; (2) as a targeted school-level process; (3) as a support in the implementation of the Montana Performance Based Accreditation Process; and (4) in Alaska Onward to Excellence.

Specialty Area

School Change Processes. NWREL's work focuses on learning more about and improving the processes for changing schools to enable all students to achieve high standards. NWREL is:

• Convening groups — practitioners, policymakers, assistance providers, researchers, program leaders, community representatives, and others — to increase the focus on student learning and find common ground related to school change processes;
• Synthesizing data and information — status, trends, policies and emerging results — for use throughout the nation;
• Establishing networks of people with common problems, issues, and activities to support one another in school change efforts; and
• Informing networks with experiential and research-based knowledge to stimulate thinking and action.

In addition to NWREL's School Improvement Conference focused on the topic of transforming low-performing schools, the Laboratory has conducted three annual national forums on school reform in collaboration with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and The Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

The 10 regional laboratories, through the School Change Collaborative, are developing new resources, including self-study resources such as Data-in-a-Day, and materials to support the formation of learning communities.

Selected Recent Products

Journey of a Reader. The teacher training and resource materials use a six-trait model for assessing and teaching reading. These six discrete skill areas, or traits that good readers demonstrate, include: (1) decoding conventions; (2) establishing comprehension; (3) realizing context; (4) developing interpretation; (5) integrating for synthesis; and (6) critiquing for evaluation. The

materials include a video-based teacher professional development package, 200-page resource book of K-12 assessment tasks and tools, and a classroom poster.

It's Just Good Teaching. Concepts of good teaching in mathematics and science are presented in a series of publications and professional development videos including examples from classrooms. This series focuses on aspects of equity, standards, assessment strategies, family involvement, and technology. The two videos introduce parents to ongoing changes in middle school mathematics education and inquiry-based science teaching.

Lifelong Learning. A series of five booklets is designed to help parents, students, and teachers build the skills and attitudes lifelong learners need, both in and out of the classroom. Three of the booklets are aimed at parents and recommend out-of-school activities that can help students build the communication, studying, research, and thinking skills needed for lifelong learning. The fourth booklet is targeted to high school students, and the fifth — aimed at educators — identifies research findings and provides research-based recommendations for classroom activities.
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This page last modified 20 October 1999. (lvb)