EDUCATION

      COMPENSATION REFORM              PERFORMANCE BASED COMPENSATION            STANDARD BEARER SCHOOLS
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT       ORGANIZATIONAL ASSESSMENT SURVEYS       STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES

INSTITUTE FOR COMPENSATION REFORM AND STUDENT LEARNING

Community Training and Assistance Center (CTAC) works to enable urban school systems to function systematically on behalf of all children by providing technical assistance, conducting research and evaluation, and supporting public policy initiatives.

Technical Assistance
CTAC’s on-site assistance supports the systemic reform of urban school districts serving diverse and at-risk populations. CTAC’s core initiatives build the capacity of school districts, unions and states to analyze the conditions that help or hinder performance, find their causes, and create and implement improvement strategies, which address those causes and increase student achievement. Working on site with teachers, parents, principals, students, administrators, boards of education, business and community leaders – as well as with state education authorities – CTAC conducts capacity-building projects that are comprehensive and improve student achievement through accountability, site and district planning, and strategic management.

CTAC has assisted diverse school systems such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, Austin, Texas, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, Christina, Delaware, Cleveland, Ohio, Decatur, Illinois, Denver, Colorado, Duval County, Florida, Jackson, Mississippi, Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties in California; Newark, New Jersey, Salt Lake City, Utah, Seattle, Washington and those in many other parts of the country. CTAC has also provided training to leadership teams from more than 40 state departments of education.

Research and Evaluation
CTAC conducts research studies addressing critical issues in education, in order to improve practice and inform decisions at the local, state, and national levels. Recent studies have examined the impact of performance pay for teachers, professional development for teachers, district-wide reform initiatives, state takeovers of urban school districts, federally approved school reform models, site-based management of schools, and nonprofit capacity.

Public Policy
In addition to framing and examining public policy issues, CTAC has promoted public policy improvements at the state and national levels based on the needs of urban children and families by sponsoring special initiatives. For example, CTAC established the National Urban Reform Network, a broad-based collaboration of urban school districts and communities that combined forces to inform national public policy in elementary and secondary education.