School and Program Profiles
Report (PDF)April 23, 2013
This interactive video profile of the Quakertown Community School District (QCSD) is the first of a series providing readers with a real-life, practical story about how district and school leaders are working to improve student learning outcomes through the effective use of digital learning. It examines how QCSD—a small, K–12 public school district in rural southeastern Pennsylvania—worked with important partners, including its local teachers’ union, to improve student outcomes using effective applications of technology and blended learning strategies. Throughout the interactive profile, there are short videos from district practitioners describing how they addressed specific issues.
A Profile of the Striving Readers Program: The Memphis School District Project (TN) Case Study (PDF)
July 2009
In 2006, Memphis City Schools was awarded $16,074,687 for a five-year period (2006–11) for the Memphis Striving Readers Project, in collaboration with the University of Memphis and Bellarmine University (KY). It employs the Memphis Content Literacy Academy model as a schoolwide strategy and Scholastic’s READ 180 for targeted intervention. The project serves more than five thousand students in eight middle schools.
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A Profile of the Striving Readers Program: The Springfield/Chicopee School, Massachusetts, Districts Project Case Study (PDF)
July 2009
In 2006, Springfield Public Schools and Chicopee Public Schools were awarded $16,655,483 over five years for the Springfield/Chicopee Striving Readers Project. Both districts are located in southwestern Massachusetts and have a history of partnering on initiatives to improve student achievement. The Strategic Instruction Model Content Enhancement Routines for Teachers (SIM-CERT), developed by the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas, was used as a whole-school intervention strategy in the five participating high schools. For targeted interventions, Scholastic’s READ 180 and the University of Kansas’s Xtreme Reading were both implemented. The project originally targeted seven thousand students in grades 9–11, and has since expanded to serve twelfth graders, as capacity has allowed.
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Sustaining Whole School Reform Efforts: A Profile of Granger High School (WA) Case Study (PDF)
May 2009
Research has shown that strong leadership support for whole school reform is critical to the successful turnaround of low-performing schools. Yet there is little discussion of how to successfully maintain changes in teaching, learning, and student outcomes when there is a changeover in school leadership. This profile highlights the efforts of Granger High School in Granger, Washington, to sustain and build upon reform efforts throughout such a leadership transition.
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Communities in Schools’ Performance Learning Centers: Utilizing Student Supports and Alternative Settings for Dropout Prevention (Georgia, USA) Case Study (PDF)
April 2009
For more than thirty years, Communities in Schools (CIS) has been dedicated to giving every child a chance to graduate by targeting those factors that are most likely to cause a student to drop out, and providing what it sees as the “five basics” for student achievement: a caring relationship with an adult; a safe place to learn and grow; a healthy start and a healthy future; a marketable skill to use upon graduation; and a chance to give back to peers and community. As part of this far-reaching effort, CIS developed Performance Learning Centers (PLC), an innovative alternative high school model that focuses on providing the five basics to struggling students within a nontraditional learning environment, as opposed to a traditional high school setting.
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Sustaining Whole School Reform Efforts: A Profile of Granger High School (Granger, WA) Case Study (PDF)
May 2009
Research has shown that strong leadership support for whole school reform is critical to the successful turnaround of low-performing schools. Yet there is little discussion of how to successfully maintain changes in teaching, learning, and student outcomes when there is a changeover in school leadership. This profile highlights the efforts of Granger High School in Granger, Washington, to sustain and build upon reform efforts throughout such a leadership transition.
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San Diego City School District’s Small School Successes: The Stanley E. Foster Construction Tech Academy and the School of International Business (San Diego, CA) Case Study (PDF)
February 2009
San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) is the second-largest school district in California and the eighth-largest district in the United States. As is often the case in large cities, too many of the district’s students were leaving high school without preparation for success. In early 2000, to improve these unsatisfactory outcomes, SDUSD implemented a comprehensive reform initiative. Over the next few years, SDUSD devised and implemented a new strategy for improving high school outcomes that would provide students with a portfolio of high schools designed to engage them in a personalized environment that supports their academic and social needs. As is the case in many large districts implementing districtwide reform, SDUSD has faced considerable challenges and hurdles to conquer in implementing a new initiative. Yet overall, the district is seeing promising results including improved test scores, attendance, graduation rates, and engagement with the community. This case study provides a brief description of two of SDUSD's schools that have received national recognition for their approaches and successes: the Stanley E. Foster Construction Tech Academy and the School of International Business.
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Leveraging Title I: A University-District Partnership to Improve K–12 Literacy (TX) Case Study (PDF)
November 2006
In an initiative designed to help teachers meet the Highly Qualified Teacher requirement of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the Arlington Independent School District (AISD) in Arlington, Texas has partnered with Texas Woman’s University (TWU) to offer a master’s degree in reading to any teachers working in Title I schools. This initiative is intended to help uncertified teachers gain state certification, qualify as “highly qualified,” and to attract highly qualified teachers to work in Title I schools in Arlington. The program began in 2001 and is funded with monies from Title I, a federal funding stream for schools with a concentration of low-income students.
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