Profiles of the Regional Educational Laboratories

Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University

Mission

The LAB promotes educational change that provides equitable opportunities for all students to succeed. We advocate for populations whose access to excellent education historically has been limited or denied.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

The work of the LAB is organized into three program areas: Student-Centered Learning, Teacher Development, and Collaborative Leadership. Problems underlying each program area and the focus of work in each area are briefly described below.

Student-centered learning (staff contact: Joseph DiMartino). The disengagement of many secondary school youth interferes with their school performance. Many high school students, especially those living in poverty, perform poorly on state standardized assessments, dropout of school at high rates, and leave school ill prepared for either further education or the workforce. In many high schools in both urban and rural areas, outdated programs, curriculum, and instruction are ill suited to changing demographic and economic realities. Most American high schools have not been able to adapt to social changes and demands for accountability. They have historically resisted change rather than embracing it. At the heart of these challenges is the failure to adapt the institutional environment to the individual learning needs of adolescent students.

The LAB will address this problem by creating more student-centered structures, models, and practices that result in a reduction in the disengagement of secondary school youth. We will investigate the effects of a major national model for transforming urban high schools, collect and share information from research and practice on personalization of student learning, and collect and share information from research and practice on content area, literacy instruction for secondary students. This will be accomplished with the help of personalization researcher John Clarke and literacy expert Julie Meltzer, among others. In addition, the LAB will work with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, an accreditation body, and with the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Researchers, practitioners, and others will be convened to develop a personalization rubric to measure the extent to which schools have student-centered practices in place.

Teacher development (staff contact: Charlene Heintz). Teacher development has received insufficient attention relative to the volume and pace of education reform. It rarely takes into account the challenging subject matter, the demands of statewide assessments, the need for literacy development across grades, and the need to connect to schools' overall vision for student success. Much of it is short-term. To increase student learning in low-performing schools, we must help schools and teachers create strategic, long-term, inquiry-based professional development opportunities that are part of teachers' day-to-day culture. We must design and sustain working environments that foster creative thinking and risk-taking.

The LAB's program of work in this area is designed to identify the barriers to conducting teacher development in an inquiry-based, collaborative environment. We will examine the policies, interventions, and procedures needed to support teacher opportunities for continuous improvement. The work is organized into four major activities: structuring the collaborative design and implementation of school-wide, outcomes-based teacher development plans; creating online teacher development capacities to deliver and support teacher learning; connecting teacher practice to how students develop subject-based literacy and comprehension in academic disciplines; and using statewide assessments to inform practice and improve literacy in low-performing schools. Partners in this work include state departments of education throughout our region; local boards of education; district teacher unions; the Center for the Enhancement of Science and Mathematics Education (CESAME); and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL).

Collaborative leadership (staff contact: John Correiro). Standards-driven and accountability-focused reform, coupled with the increased attention to underperforming schools in our region, has increased the pressure on leadership at all levels of the educational system. Policymakers agree that a "leadership problem"--shortages of leaders, increased expectations for leaders, and ineffective professional development of leaders in education--affects high-poverty settings and districts where large-scale improvement has not taken hold. For active, collaborative leadership to take hold among teachers, principals, central office personnel, school boards, and parents--all who seek to play leadership roles need new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. They also need to work together over time to understand issues and concerns, plan, and cooperate.

The LAB will address its region's educational leadership challenges by partnering with Connecticut to study and support schools identified as low performing, and by working with a regional support system center in Rochester, New York, to study and advance that state's support network. The LAB will also facilitate shared inquiry with teams of leaders working in urban settings. In addition, the LAB will expand its successful work with leadership networks--the Superintendents' Leadership Council, the Principals' Leadership Network (partnering with National Association for Elementary School Principal and National Association for Secondary School Principals), regional leadership teams consisting of representatives from secondary and postsecondary institutions (in a project led by our partner Jobs for the Future), and regional State Education Agency (SEA) policy seminars.

National Leadership Area

Teaching diverse students (staff contact: Maria Pacheco). Through the Education Alliance's Center for Equity and Diversity and its national advisory panel, the LAB will pursue three programmatic strategies in addressing its national leadership area on teaching diverse students. These strategies are summarized below:

• Identify and synthesize studies on teaching diverse learners including those that integrate research on human development, culture and language; culturally responsive pedagogy; exemplary program models and practices; assessment policy; and teacher recruitment, retention, and development. These syntheses will advance the procedural knowledge regarding effective practices and policies at local, regional and national levels, especially in terms of its application in the context of low-performing schools.

• Establish a national academy for cultural and linguistic diversity to encourage discussions across role groups on key issues for the teaching of diverse learners. In addition, provide professional development and support to existing and aspiring teachers and administrators who work with diverse learners, promote greater diversity among teachers and educational leaders, and communicate the results of national research studies to educational leaders.

• Develop and disseminate information to ensure widespread distribution of research results, promising models, and effective practices among educational practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and members of the community.

Key Accomplishments

Student-centered learning. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) affects 700 high schools (95 percent of the public high schools in New England). In the past, the LAB conducted a 3-year study of the accreditation process of the Commission on Public Secondary Schools of NEASC. This study provided the research support and technical assistance needed by NEASC as it developed the new standards and procedures for accreditation, which were adopted for implementation in January 2000.

When NEASC substantially revised its accreditation process, it significantly increased the regional focus on standards, quality of instruction, and student-centered learning environments. High schools in New England must now demonstrate that they support all students in meeting the same high standards of academic, civic, and social achievement. Each year, NEASC will visit 70 schools, and the LAB will provide technical assistance in analyzing the information gathered. In addition, the LAB will conduct regional conferences to assist high schools facing an accreditation review.

Northeast Superintendents' Leadership Council. The LAB has a history of developing long-term partnerships with groups of educational leaders. The Northeast Superintendents' Leadership Council (SLC), an organization of superintendents that promotes equity and excellence in American schools, was founded in 1989 by the Education Alliance at Brown University. Considered a model for organizations promoting development of educational leaders, the SLC has advanced its work through a variety of studies and targeted projects, and most notably through its annual leadership institutes. The SLC's success has led the LAB to further develop and support leadership networks and activities that serve principals (Principals' Leadership Network), and state education agencies (SEA policy seminars). In addition to helping committed educational leaders develop their knowledge, skills, and collegial support, the LAB's work with leadership networks provides an ongoing source of insight into emerging issues in regional education and an important pathway for developing and sharing knowledge.

Upcoming Products and Events

Keep Talking, a discussion guide, offers school leaders a tool for engaging families and communities in school reform. For 3 years, the LAB has studied family partnerships in several New England schools. Based on its study, the LAB has developed a five-part conversation guide that will help school principals facilitate discussions about family partnerships. It is designed to encourage teachers, parents, and administrators to talk about family and community partnerships in a different way (Summer 2001).

Diversity kit will help teachers learn about culturally responsive classroom practice. The kit will include a tool for personal and professional inquiry by providing both current research and relevant examples that lead teachers to reflect, discuss, and revise their classroom practice (Winter 2001).

Education Notes will include short articles--updates on major events, commentary on current issues in education reform, descriptions of recent publications and valuable online resources, and brief summaries of crucial issues in educational research. Issues planned for this year will deal with collaborative models of educational leadership, secondary-school reform, and equity and diversity (three issues per year: Summer/Fall, Fall, Winter).

First Annual Conference on Teaching Diverse Learners. LAB will host this conference as part of its National Leadership Center work. Through a variety of activities--keynote addresses, individual and panel presentations, videos, and brainstorming sessions--participants will engage with researchers and practitioners in discussions about effective, research-based practices designed to meet the needs of English language learners (Summer 2001, Providence, Rhode Island).

Second Annual Northeast Principals' Summit. The Summit is sponsored by the Principals' Leadership Network, a regional consortium of K-12 principals supported by the Education Alliance and LAB at Brown University, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the American Federation of School Administrators. Together, this partnership is collecting data, developing action research projects in the field, and publishing results in user-friendly formats around selected issues of regional and national significance to school principals (Fall 2001, location to be announced).

[The Regional Educational Laboratory at AEL Inc] [Laboratory for Student Success]

This page last modified August 29, 2001 (jer)