EDUCATION

     

Technical Assistance

  Research & Evaluation

  Public Policy
CTAC works to enable urban school systems to function systematically on behalf of all children. To achieve this goal, the professional staff at CTAC:
 
 
To scroll ahead to specific projects, click below:

Technical Assistance

CTAC enables school districts to improve student achievement through accountability, site and district planning, and strategic data-informed management.

Working on site with teachers, parents, principals, administrators, boards of education, business and community leaders -- as well as with state education authorities - CTAC conducts capacity-building projects that are comprehensive and often long-term, lasting three to five years. CTAC's professional staff assists educators to increase their capacities to be effective and to implement improvements.

  Leadership for Student Achievement

CTAC assists superintendents and urban school systems to develop viable models for reform, manage the political barriers to school improvement and nurture effective working partnerships with educators, parents, youth, health and human services sectors and the corporate community.

The following districts have participated: Albuquerque, New Mexico (5 years); Camden, New Jersey (4 years); Cleveland, Ohio (4 years); Jackson, Mississippi (4 years); Newark, New Jersey (4 years); Salt Lake City, Utah (3 years), Denver, Colorado (5 years and ongoing), and numerous districts in northern and southern California. For more information on an overall strategic framework, see article in The Executive Educator.


Using Data to Inform Decisions

During the new era of No Child Left Behind, it is critical for school systems and communities to thoroughly understand the achievement of their students and the effectiveness of their teachers and schools. This requires being able to understand the progress of students, not just overall, but by individual child, by subgroups of students, by classroom, by program, and by school.

With a clear and detailed picture of student achievement, educational leaders can pinpoint resources to needs, and build on pockets of success that are often hidden in aggregated results.

Frequently, however, the district infrastructure for accurately analyzing and disaggregating student achievement data is not sufficient. Furthermore, the interpretation of student achievement data - upon which school and district strategies and priorities should be based - is often superficial and flawed. Pressed to respond quickly to publicly released reports of student achievement, too many officials jump to conclusions on the basis of data that is suggestive but not conclusive, or fail to see clear trend lines or troubling comparisons that should lead to action.

For more than a decade, CTAC has been building districts' capacity to use data to improve classroom instruction, strengthen school improvement planning, and inform management decision-making.

This initiative began with the school districts of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Des Moines, Iowa; Long Beach, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Savannah, Georgia. It has been extensively implemented in school districts in northern and southern California. See the monograph, Informed Decision-Making: An Introduction to Student Achievement and Teacher Data Comparisons.


California Accountability Project

CTAC implemented a model initiative with five school districts, along with the County Offices of Education in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties. The initiative fundamentally changed how schools improve educational services to children, and generated substantial student gains in reading and mathematics achievement, by focusing on three primary components of school improvement:
  1. Comprehensive District Accountability that thoroughly assesses and disaggregates student performance, student factors, and contributing school conditions at each individual school;


  2. School Improvement Planning and implementation that engages the entire school community in examining conditions and their causes at each school, builds on strengths and corrects weaknesses, and ties accountability to real improvement in student achievement; and


  3. Strategic Management of the district that allocates resources based on identified school needs and recurring school issues, and that holds professionals accountable for contributing to improved student learning.
Through a consortium of school districts, the County Offices of Education, and CTAC, the project created a model for accountability-driven reform that reaches beyond current practice both in California and nationally. For more details, see CTAC's article published in Thrust for Educational Leadership.

Interventions in Underperforming Schools

CTAC worked with five severely underperforming schools in California in the state-sponsored Immediate Intervention/Underperforming School Program (IIUSP) program. CTAC conducted comprehensive assessments of student achievement, current conditions, instructional strategies, and parent involvement. Then, CTAC assisted each school to develop a plan to address the issues identified and to increase student achievement in the following year. This enabled schools to achieve significant and in many cases rapid school-wide improvement in test scores.

Teacher Compensation and Student Achievement

CTAC builds the capacity of school districts to develop teacher compensation systems that are based, in part, on student achievement. CTAC assists districts to forge and build union-management collaboration, district data infrastructure, professional development support systems, and community support - all in order to increase student achievement and learning. Click for research and evaluation of teacher performance pay.

Building State Capacity for Interventions

Based on its experience with multiple school districts under receivership, and with state interventions leading up to takeovers, CTAC provides technical assistance to state education authorities regarding state takeovers and state interventions to improve student achievement. Click for research and evaluation of state takeovers and interventions.

Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT): Analysis and Report of Pupil Achievement in the Berkeley Unified School District.

CTAC has been engaged by FCMAT to assess pupil achievement in the Berkeley public schools. CTAC is evaluating the degree of implementation of more than 70 standards representing key requirements for the education of California youth. Based on data collected in interviews, student assessments, demographic analysis, artifacts and documents, and classroom observations, CTAC staff is reporting findings, developing improvement plans with six-month benchmarks, and conducting on-going monitoring through 2005. Funding and authority for this intervention was provided to FCMAT by the California legislature.

Advocating for Community Support

Most districts organize to run levy campaigns, but few districts organize to win levy campaigns. CTAC helps district leaders to understand how to use community organizing methods to identify concerns of various groups, find a common voice, build a united constituency in pursuit of something positive, and understand their role as community leaders in a broad and powerful light.

With staff members known nationally for their expertise in community involvement, CTAC has implemented landmark initiatives in this area including an initiative that involved an unprecedented 9,200 parents in the Newark schools, as well as partnerships between corporate and education leaders in the setting of comprehensive school improvement initiatives.


Research and Evaluation

CTAC conducts educational research studies addressing critical issues in education, in order to improve practice and shape significant decisions at the regional, state, and national levels.

Recent studies have examined performance pay for teachers, state takeovers of urban school districts, site-based management of schools, and regional school to work initiatives.

  Rewarding Teachers for Student Achievement

CTAC has completed a four-year comprehensive study of the impact on student achievement of Denver's Pay for Performance pilot, intended to link teacher compensation with student achievement. Catalyst for Change: Pay for Performance in Denver is CTAC's final report of the pilot study.

Rewarding teachers for improvements in student achievement can focus attention on results. When well implemented, it can have the salutary effect of causing a district to operate in a more effective and efficient fashion in support of student learning. Changes in district practice that are necessary to advance financial rewards for teachers also tend to support quality teaching and enhanced learning.

State Takeover of Urban School Districts

CTAC conducted the nation's only comprehensive study of the impact of a state takeover of a public school district. This yearlong study of the Newark, New Jersey takeover, Myths and Realities: The Impact of the State Takeover on Students and Schools in Newark, documents the takeover's impact on schools and on student achievement. It also describes areas of improvement, indicates factors that have contributed to that improvement, identifies barriers to school and district success, and outlines next steps for the district and the state.

Collaborative Decision-Making (Site-Based Management)

The Denver Public Schools began implementing a comprehensive new strategy for school and district management in 1991. This strategy, Collaborative Decision-Making (CDM), was embodied in the contract between the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and the Denver Public Schools. Denver asked CTAC to conduct a comprehensive study of CDM. The study included an extensive, multi-lingual survey of more than 4,000 respondents, individual and group interviews of several hundred people, and the thorough analysis of school by school student achievement, improvement plans, training materials, and related records. CTAC assessed the correlation between customer satisfaction, perceived effectiveness and actual student performance, and presented a full report to the Denver community. The report, Advise and Consent: A Study of Collaborative Decision-Making in Denver, is helping guide the development of CDM in Denver.

School to Work

CTAC studied school to work programs and plans in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the surrounding region. In the report, Best Practices in School to Work: Lessons Learned, CTAC reviewed regional school to work efforts throughout the country, and provided a summary of factors that have tended to enhance success. The report, The Challenges of School to Work: A Regional Assessment, evaluates the efforts of a strategy to develop and coordinate school to work efforts throughout the region.


Public Policy

In addition to framing and researching public policy questions, CTAC has shaped public policy by sponsoring the National Urban Reform Network, a collaboration of fifteen urban school districts and communities that combined forces to influence substantive national public policy issues.


  National Urban Reform Network

CTAC convened the National Urban Reform Network, a fifteen-city coalition focusing on national and state public policy. The Network was organized to (1) directly link effective reform initiatives with key local practitioners to shape public policy; (2) focus the actual practices of school reform and health/human service integration on outcomes that strengthen student academic and social growth; and (3) provide an activist forum through which cities implementing reform can interact.

The National Urban Reform Network has emphasized the better use of existing funds rather than the creations of new funds, and has demonstrated the influence that can be created when school and community leaders, health and human service providers, corporate executives, parents, and activists all advocate for the same priorities in a unified, non-partisan coalition.

Participating cities have included Akron, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Des Moines, Iowa; Indianapolis, Indiana; Jackson, Mississippi; Long Beach, California; Louisville, Kentucky; Newark, New Jersey; Sacramento, California; Salem-Keizer, Oregon; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Savannah, Georgia.




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