Profiles of the Regional Educational Laboratories

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory

Mission

To find, share, and sustain effective solutions to educational problems facing practitioners and decisionmakers in the southwestern United States. SEDL's particular emphasis is on ensuring educational equity for all students.

SEDL pursues this mission through diverse and interrelated funding and project arrangements. The primary strategies are those of integrated research, development, and dissemination.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

According to state data, more than 450 schools and districts in the southwestern region are classified as low performing. The methods for identifying these schools differ as do the characteristics of the schools and districts and the nature of their performance. Despite these differences, schools and districts in the region share some common problems.

• All five states must improve student achievement in reading and mathematics (staff contact: David Rainey and David Hill). Too many students in all five states fail to meet state expectations in one or both subjects, and students who are not successful in reading and mathematics are unlikely to be successful in school or later in life.

• Nearly all low-performing schools and districts in the region lack the "know-how" to make significant improvements (staff contact: David Rainey and David Hill). Staffs in low-performing schools and districts have little practice in translating their beliefs and expectations into a coherent educational program, and in aligning curriculum and assessments with standards. They need assistance in learning to collect, analyze, and interpret data that would help them assess their current practice, define their problem, and manage their work. Those staff s also need help in finding strategies to improve their performance and build their capacity to carry out such work.

• Assistance and support must be available at both school and district levels (staff contact: David Rainey and David Hill). Improvements at the school level alone will not be sustained without support from the district level as well. In addition, districts that learn to work successfully with one or two low-performing schools will be able to transfer the knowledge and skills gained to work with other low-performing schools.

• The technical assistance infrastructure in each state lacks the capacity and/or resources to respond to the numbers of low-performing schools and districts requiring assistance (staff contact: David Rainey and David Hill). The five state education agencies in SEDL's region acknowledge there are not enough resources available to provide high-quality assistance to low-performing schools and districts in need.

• Limited research-based information exists on helping low-performing schools and districts transform into high-performing learning communities (staff contact: Shirley Hord for practitioners and Catherine Clark for policymakers). The existing R&D knowledge base is rich with advice on how to work on more isolated and limited improvement problems, but lacks guidance on how to work more systemically and to build a culture of continuous inquiry and improvement. Moreover, that lack of knowledge exists across state, district, school, and classroom levels of the system for practitioners and policymakers alike.

With its partner, the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, SEDL is addressing critical problems through its work to assist low-performing schools and districts in becoming high-performing learning communities. SEDL will work intensively with 20 sites, each containing the district office and one or more low-performing schools. The purpose is to help each build its capacity to consistently attain high levels of student achievement, the essence of a high-performing learning community. As part of this partnership with schools and districts, SEDL will provide research-based, long-term technical assistance in improving reading and mathematics instruction. SEDL will start site work by helping the staff of each school and district assess its needs, plan for improvement, and make strategic decisions to improve teaching and learning.

As SEDL helps schools and districts adopt deeper, more systemic approaches to the improvement of teaching and learning, they will also build the capacity of the existing technical assistance infrastructure in each state to support the transformation of low-performing schools and districts. SEDL will identify at least one assistance provider at each site. At the same time, SEDL will work with a larger group of technical assistance providers in each state to reflect on findings and share tools.

Besides deepening the skills of regional technical assistance providers, SEDL will contribute to the body of procedural knowledge about how practitioners and policymakers can work across levels and components of the education system. This "know-how" will focus on the content, as well as the relationships, linkages, and pathways that schools, districts, and policymakers can follow to support transformations to high-performing learning communities. To enrich the research base about systemic approaches, SEDL will also translate that procedural knowledge into new or modified tools and products to be used by technical assistance providers, practitioners, policymakers, and community members.

National Leadership Area

Family and community involvement (staff contact: Catherine Jordan). SEDL's National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools focuses on the problem of involving families and communities in schools to promote student achievement, especially in reading and mathematics. Specifically, the work of the Center addresses three questions: how to involve families from diverse communities in schools?; how to involve parents in preparing children to enter kindergarten?; and how to involve community organizations in developing high-performing learning communities in schools? The Center has identified the following strategies to address these questions. The strategies are:

• Build a national presence for the Center that provides a trusted source for research and practice about connecting family and communities with schools to support student achievement.

• promoting the use of effective strategies in literacy development in the early grades;

• Synthesize emerging findings and resources so that an effective database of research and best practices is available.

• Disseminate information through an annual conference, an annual report, the media, and Web-based tools to help advance procedural knowledge in the area of connecting family and community involvement to student achievement.

• Work with such national partners as the Johns-Hopkins's Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships; the National Center for Early Development and Learning at UNC, Chapel Hill; and the Public Education Network, to gain expertise and leading edge knowledge about building comprehensive family and community connections with schools to support student learning.

• Provide training and networking across the Regional Education Laboratory network for information exchange and understanding of the field.

Key Accomplishments

During FY2001-05, SEDL will build on the procedural knowledge, which was developed by two programs--Strategies for Increasing School Success (SISS) and the Program for Refining Educational Partnerships (PREP)--to address the development of professional learning communities and sustained partnerships among home, school, and communities to support student achievement.

Development of learning communities. The SISS program was designed to facilitate the development of professional learning communities in schools for the improvement of student learning. SEDL staff examined what was needed for schools to operate as professional learning communities and what happened as schools undertook comprehensive school reform. The project resulted in the creation of procedural knowledge about the degree of readiness, organizational structures, and administrative supports needed for schools to take a more systemic approach to the improvement of student learning. SEDL found that five dimensions, which are vital to the development of a professional learning community, can help overcome barriers to implementing successful school improvement. From this work, SEDL developed tools such as Leadership for Changing Schools training program and a monograph, Professional Learning Communities: An Ongoing Exploration. The tools will be used as SEDL addresses the transformation of low-performing schools and development of technical assistance capacity.

Development of sustained partnerships to support student achievement. Working with schools and community members, SEDL's Program for Refining Educational Partnership developed and applied the Collaborative Action Team (CAT) process in 22 sites across the southwestern region. The partnerships were designed to be self-sustaining over time to support improved student outcomes. Evaluation data show the majority of partnerships have been sustained from 1 to 4 years and indicate continued growth. SEDL created procedural knowledge about how to focus on student achievement, create certain organizational structures, and provide sufficient time so that schools and communities can develop self-sustaining collaborative partnerships. Based on the results of this program, SEDL developed print and electronic resources including Creating Collaborative Action Teams: Working Together for Student Success, which will be used with intensive site work.

Upcoming Products and Events

Regional policy forum. TSEDL will hold the 2001 policy forum on resource allocation. The forum will provide state-level policymakers and key staff members with information on policy issues related to resource allocation. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Joe Johnson, Director of Compensatory Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education (Fall 2001, Albuquerque, New Mexico).

Insights on education policy, research, and practice, SEDL's policy briefing paper series, is published annually and reports on policy concerns in the southwestern region. The first edition of Insights will report on current knowledge of resource allocation practice and will offer perspectives on the issues and challenges facing policymakers and practitioners. To access the Insights series online, go to http://www.sedl.org/pubs/policy/ (Fall 2001, Release of First Edition).

Annual Forum on Family Involvement with Education. SEDL's National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools will convene its first annual forum in conjunction with the National Community Education Association (NCEA). NCEA's conference targets community educators, teachers, administrators, policymakers, higher education representatives, and community advisory committee members. SEDL will convene a full-day preconference program focused on the Center's research synthesis. The interactive session will engage participants in deepening their understanding of issues they face when building family and community connections with schools (Fall 2001, Charleston, South Carolina).

Intensive site work. "Early Findings from the Field," will be SEDL's first annual report about its intensive site work. The report will describe activities of districts and schools transforming themselves from low-performing schools to high-performing learning communities, and document their progress in improving student achievement in reading and mathematics (Spring 2002).

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This page last modified August 29, 2001 (jer)