ACCOMPLISHMENTS

EDUCATION
CTAC's accomplishments in educational reform have been striking and substantive.  This assistance has reached thousands of classrooms and by association several million children throughout the Unites States.  Representative achievements are highlighted below. 

A. CORE CITIES
CTAC provides intensive on-site assistance to school districts and states.  Several examples drawn from CTAC's extensive national experience with districts follow.

Albuquerque Public Schools (New Mexico)
CTAC provided five years of assistance to the Albuquerque Public Schools, the 25th largest district in the United States.  Outcomes include: (1) a landmark system of site-based reform was implemented at all of the district's 120 schools.  Extending far beyond a change in governance, this reform was directly tied to school improvement planning.  Academic achievement increased markedly during this time, with improvements at more than 70% of the elementary schools, all of the middle schools and national recognition for achieving the highest ACT scores of any large district in the country; (2) the Comprehensive Human Services Collaborative was implemented on a pre-K through grade 12 continuum. Significant improvements resulted, including increased academic achievement, attendance and family involvement at the schools, lower dropout rates and a higher rate of early identification of problems; (3) Albuquerque became the only district in the nation to include parents as equal partners with district leadership and the union in managing systemwide reform; (4) more than 1,000 parents were trained and then filled active leadership roles on school and community issues; and (5) the reform was sustained and broadened through two administrations.  This is the very definition of institutionalizing responsive change. 

Camden Public Schools (New Jersey)
CTAC provided four years of assistance to the Camden Public Schools, the fourth poorest city in the nation.  Outcomes include: (1) a system of K-8 "Family Schools" was created to address the substantial educational and non-educational needs of children and families in the city, and the alarming dropout rate previously experienced in the district's middle schools.  This produced improved learning conditions and created better results in attendance, student achievement, family participation and discipline issues; (2) the Family School model became the basis for Camden's designation as one of only six urban National Empowerment Zones by the President of the United States; (3) the Family Schools reform was adopted by New Jersey as the prototype for the State's 30 special needs districts; (4) the entire central delivery system was reorganized, which resulted in greater support to the Family Schools in the areas of curriculum, instruction and professional development; and (5) the creation and implementation of Family Schools, coupled with the launching of Camden's first successful school/community health and human services collaborative, provided the framework for generating an additional $26 million of investment in Camden.

Christina School District (Wilmington and Newark, Delaware)
CTAC provided more than two years of assistance to the Christina School District, the largest school system in Delaware. After conducting and presenting an assessment of readiness and capacity, CTAC provided assistance through the systemic initiative, New Directions in Christina. Accomplishments include: (1) a comprehensive reform of school planning was implemented in two phases, with 13,742 participants active in analyzing organizational conditions at the Standard Bearer Schools – the model for planning that focuses on addressing the root causes of student achievement; (2) the teachers and administrators at the Standard Bearer Schools indicated, to a statistically significant extent, improvements in conditions related to teaching and learning, organizational support and alignment, school planning and human resource practices; (3) more than 3,900 parents were active in school planning and more than 2,900 annually assessed the accountability and effectiveness of the reform; (4) district capacities in data, research, instructional support, organizational development, professional development, fundraising and corporate involvement were strengthened markedly; (5) student achievement increased as evidenced on three major independent assessments; and (6) the most significant improvements in student achievement were among African American and Hispanic students – for the first time ever in this district.

Cleveland Public Schools (Ohio)
CTAC provided four years of assistance to the Cleveland Public Schools.  Cleveland is a city of marked poverty; the austere fiscal condition of the district resulted in a court-induced state takeover.  Outcomes include: (1) Standard Bearer Schools, based on CTAC's Framework for Reform, were implemented in three coordinated phases. This was the first site-based, school improvement initiative in Cleveland that showed sustained performance improvements; the Standard Bearers outperformed the rest of the district in three out of four areas in which the state conducted proficiency testing and had school suspension rates more than 100% lower than the rest of the district;  (2) the Standard Bearer Schools became the vehicle for guiding and expanding reform through major leadership transitions – from one superintendent, through an interim, to the appointment of the receiver.  (3) Moreover, Standard Bearers were the model for expanding credible reform, despite the district's severe financial straits, during the state takeover; (4) the Principals' Performance Support System was developed and implemented.  This innovative system tied the evaluation of principals directly to the success of students in the schools. In response to requests, this new principals' system was disseminated to twelve urban districts, nationwide; (5) CTAC guided the reorganization of the central administration.  This helped build the district's capacity to allocate scarce resources to address the recurring issues at the sites which most affect student learning.  Targeted areas included curriculum, instruction, budget and accountability systems.

Decatur School District 61 (Illinois)
CTAC conducted a comprehensive assessment of the district’s readiness and capacity. This included analyzing the readiness to undertake a pathway of systemic reform and its capacity to do so. Further, CTAC evaluated the longitudinal impact on student achievement of the district’s multi-year implementation of six federally-approved school reform models. 

Denver Public Schools (Colorado)
CTAC provided five years of assistance to the Denver Public Schools.  This included filling a dual role in Denver's Pay for Performance pilot for teachers – providing the technical assistance to ensure a pilot of quality and integrity as well as researching the impact of the pilot on student achievement, teacher quality and systems change.  Accomplishments include: (1) increased district capacity in teacher objective setting, relational use of student achievement and human resource data, professional development, teacher/administrator/community collaboration, fundraising and instructional alignment; (2) students whose teachers had excellent objectives showed increases in student achievement – greater than one year's gain – at all school levels as evidenced on two major independent assessments; (3) comprehensive research findings on pilot impact were based on more than 4.4 million data points related to student achievement and were the catalyst for substantive mid-course corrections; (4) approval of a groundbreaking new teacher compensation system by Denver teachers by a 3 to 2 margin; (5) approval of a $25 million tax increase by Denver voters by a 3 to 2 margin to support the costs of the new compensation plan; and (6) the national demonstration that linking what students learn to what professionals earn can be a major catalyst for systemic change that benefits both students and teachers.

Schultz Center for Teaching and Leadership and Duval County Public Schools (Florida)
CTAC conducted a broad-based professional development audit which examined the impact of literacy professional development on student achievement, classroom implementation and the perceptions of principals, teachers and instructional coaches. Moreover, CTAC tracked every financial allocation for instructional professional development in the district.

Seattle Public Schools (Washington)
CTAC conducted the project, "No Parent Left Behind," which focused on implementing the new requirements of No Child Left Behind, and involving immigrant and refugee parents as equal partners in school improvement. The initiative was conducted over a two year period and built parents’ capacity to understand school performance and teacher qualification data, and partner in school accountability and improvement. The project was conducted in nine languages.

Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team
The Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) is the arm of the state assembly that is responsible for state-to district interventions in California. With FCMAT’s support, CTAC has served the state in the area of improving pupil achievement. CTAC has filled this function for the state interventions in the Berkeley Unified School District and the Vallejo Unified School District.

State to District Capacity Building
CTAC has provided the technical assistance within state-to-district interventions in New Jersey, Ohio and California, with student achievement increases in all participating districts; trained leadership teams from more than 40 states on state-to-district interventions; and regularly serves as a policy resource to state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. 

B. NATIONAL URBAN REFORM NETWORK
CTAC provides policy support at local, state and national levels.  As an example, in one major national initiative, CTAC created and convened the National Urban Reform Network, an activist 15 city coalition linking effective reform initiatives and key local practitioners in order to shape and advocate for needed public policy.  The Network's accomplishments include:

The strength of the Network came from its base in urban communities, bringing together a diverse constituency from across the country.  Unlike interest-group advocates who speak for such individual groups as teachers, principals, or board members, the National Urban Reform Network brought all these constituencies together with corporate executives, health and human service leaders, community activists and parents to create a consensus around issues of importance to urban children and families.  The direct connection between legislators and people working in cities has been critical to the Network's success. 

The strength of the Network's connections with a broad range of constituencies in every part of the country – a strength valued in both Houses of Congress and with state legislatures – made it ideally suited to play this leadership role in advocacy for urban children and families.

C. COMPREHENSIVE DISTRICT ACCOUNTABILITY
CTAC created the national model, Comprehensive District Accountability, a system of assessment and accountability that enables states and districts to determine the performance and effectiveness of a school district: overall, school by school, grade by grade, classroom by classroom, and student by student.  Numerous school districts are implementing CTAC's accountability model. In so doing, they are developing concrete strategies to address the core issues affecting the academic performance of students and are able to assess the components of their reform initiatives against indicators of system success, as well the success of children at the schools.

Two primary goals appear in virtually every urban district.  They address (1) academic achievement – every student will meet high academic standards, sufficient to successfully enter and succeed in post-secondary schooling or the work force, and (2) safety and security – schools will provide a safe, secure learning environment for children.

The over-arching challenge of Comprehensive District Accountability has been to create and develop a system for measuring, through a range of indicators, how well programs, schools and the overall school district are performing in meeting these goals and helping children to achieve.  The means to assess programs, schools and school systems so that they can be compared with their own annual growth as well as with other schools, programs and districts with different student populations and conditions – and the ability to use the data to manage the district and to communicate with the community – has been developed in a realistic, preliminary assessment structure. 

This critical accomplishment has resulted from several inter-related strategies.  These include: 

As an example of subsequent phases, Comprehensive District Accountability became an anchor of CTAC's California Accountability Project. Through this demonstration initiative, CTAC provided assistance to five California school districts, the Los Angeles County Office of Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education. The results were marked: all participating districts met or exceeded California's Academic Performance Indicator targets for individual schools and districts.

Comprehensive District Accountability enables district leaders to identify, strengthen and perpetuate what is working, and to correct what is not.  This fundamental tool for skilled leadership has never before existed in public education.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
CTAC assists hundreds of non-profit organizations, public sector institutions, coalitions and networks throughout the United States.  Areas of focus include:

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Areas of focus include: