Lessons from Comprehensive School Reform Research

Christopher T. Cross Editor The National Clearinghouse for Comprehensive School Reform 2121 K Street, NW, Suite 250 Washington, DC 20037 Telephone 1 (877) 766-4CSR Fax 1 (877) 308-4995 Email: [email protected] Website: www.goodschools.gwu.edu The mission of NCCSR is to collect and disseminate information that builds the capacity of schools to raise the academic achievement of all students. Copyright © 2004 by the National Clearinghouse for Comprehensive School Reform. Permission to reproduce or transmit the information in this publication in any form or by any means must be sought in writing by NCCSR. Please note that in all cases federal reg- ulations prohibit the use of NCCSR publications and/or products for profit. NCCSR is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and is operated by The George Washington University under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0137. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Education. The mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations does not imply endorsement by the U.S. government. Readers are free to duplicate and use these materials in keeping with accepted publication standards. NCCSR requests that proper credit be given in the event of reproduction. Printed in the United States of America. Lessons from Comprehensive School Reform Research Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ii Foreword..........................................................................................................iii Christopher Cross Chapter One Benefiting from Comprehensive School Reform: A Review of Research on CSR Implementation............................................1 Brian Rowan, Eric Camburn, and Carol Barnes Chapter Two Comprehensive School Reform and Achievement: A Meta-analysis ..............................................................................................53 Geoffrey D. Borman, Gina M. Hewes, Laura T. Overman, and Shelly Brown Chapter Three Challenges for the Future of Comprehensive School Reform ................109 Kathryn M. Borman, Kevin Carter, Daniel K. Aladjem, and Kerstin Carlson LeFloch Chapter Four The Past and Future of Comprehensive School Reform: Perspectives from a Researcher and Practitioner ....................................151 Steven M. Ross and Libia Gil About the Authors ......................................................................................175 i Putting the Pieces Together Acknowledgements publication such as this requires a real team effort. The idea for doing this book came from the management team at the National Clearinghouse for AComprehensive School Reform (NCCSR), under the leadership of Arthur Gosling who has guided the Clearinghouse since its creation in 1999. That team has included David Huie, deputy director of NCCSR, Joel Gomez, principal inves- tigator for NCCSR and Konyka Dunson and Lori Cavell, research associates at NCCSR. The final editing work was done by Greg Pearson, a research assistant at NCCSR who served as my right hand in this effort. Finally, several staff of the U.S. Department of Education, including Joseph Conaty and Margaret McNeeley, deserve special commendation for their support of this work. Extremely important in the development of the book was the work of our edi- torial board. We were very fortunate in having a board that consisted of both experts in comprehensive school reform (CSR), as well as noted scholars in the field of education research. The board members were George Bohrnstedt, senior vice president of the American Institutes for Research; Susan Fuhrman, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Good, professor of educational psychology at the University of Arizona; Donna Harris, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wellesley College; and Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey, president of New American Schools. They are remarkable colleagues, each con- tributing significantly to the quality of this publication. The authors whose work is published here have demonstrated their profound commitment to working in the CSR field. Each chapter reflects the thoughtful involvement of multiple authors who have collaborated with one another to present a thoroughly researched and thoughtfully analyzed paper. Our goal has been to present a comprehensive understanding of comprehensive school reform after five years of effort by thousands of teachers, principals, district leaders, and state officials, with the support and encouragement of officials in the U.S. Department of Education, as they have worked to improve learning opportunities for all children. Finally, commendation goes to the NCCSR partner organizations that have worked together since 1999 to build the capacity of schools to raise the academic achievement of all students. Under the leadership of the Institute for Educational Policy Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at The George Washington University, NCCSR has been supported by partners the Institute for Education Leadership (IEL) and the Council for Basic Education (CBE) in bringing the best possible information to schools. ii Foreword Foreword s we as a nation have worked hard on reforming our education system so that all students will have the opportunity to succeed in school and in life, A few of these efforts have attracted as much positive attention and have been sustained over so long a period of time as has the notion of comprehensive school reform. As Brian Rowan and his colleagues note in chapter one of this book, the roots of comprehensive school reform (CSR) can be traced back several decades to the RDDU (research, development, dissemination, utilization) paradigm and to a 1975 report from the RAND Corporation, commonly known as the “change agent” study. However, what we today call CSR had its federal roots in two events in the 1990s. First was the creation in 1991 of the New American Schools Development Corporation; the second, the enactment in 1994 of the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program. Both of these efforts resulted in the investment of both intellectual and financial capital in substantially developing work in the field. Our work in this volume is framed by the 11 components of comprehensive school reform that are contained in the federal law and explicated first in the Rowan, et al chapter. These 11 elements describe the characteristics that must be present to have an effective CSR program. They range from a reliance on the need for a research basis for student learning and support by school constituents to extensive staff development and clear evaluation of impact. These 11 components of CSR are the guiding principles that frame the work of the National Clearinghouse for Comprehensive School Reform (NCCSR). The Congressional and Executive branch leaders who have paved the way for CSR also recognized that there must be a sustained effort to generate research to support CSR; research on everything from implementation to program effectiveness. Through its work, the NCCSR has worked diligently to advance the state of knowledge, to disseminate that work to the field and to gather together in one place the best information available for those in the field, especially school leaders faced with the daunting challenge of what must they do to improve the perform- ance of all students in every school. When this book was conceived, our goal was to make it comprehensive—to bring together in one place the very best total picture of CSR that was possible. To that end, we sought authors who would inform our readers about the history and context for the development of CSR, the challenges faced in implementing CSR programs, the evidence about the effectiveness of various models, and finally the perspectives of both a researcher and a practitioner who have been involved with this effort for well over a decade. In the chapters that follow, the careful reader will learn a great deal about comprehensive school reform. In the chapter by Rowan, Camburn and Barnes, readers will learn of the history leading up to the present day, as well as about the important issue of CSR implementation. What is important? What factors in model iii Putting the Pieces Together design impact implementation? How has implementation worked in practice? In the chapter by Borman, Carter, Aladjem, and Le Floch readers will learn about what the authors term “the necessary conditions” for CSR, as well as what it takes to sustain this rather intense form of school improvement—an issue of ever- increasing importance to policymakers across the nation. In the Borman, Hewed, Overman, and Brown chapter, the focus is on results. Here Borman and his colleagues look at the data on 29 different models, a chapter that will give any school official considering a CSR program extensive food for thought. In chapter four, Gil and Ross present their views from the experience of a practitioner (Gil) and of a researcher (Ross) who have seen it all. Gil, as superintendent in Chula Vista, California, implemented CSR widely in that district. Ross was a close observer and research participant in the aborted effort to have every school in Memphis, TN adopt a CSR model. Their recommendations confirm much of the research that precedes this final chapter. While each reader will take away a different set of information, often quite detailed, there are some messages that seem clear to this editor:

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