**PROFILES OF THE REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL**

**LABORATORIES**

**BUILDING HIGH PERFORMING LEARNING**

**COMMUNITIES**

**2001**

**U.S. Department of Education\
Office of Educational Research and Improvement**

**U.S. Department of Education**

Rod Paige

*Secretary*

**Office of Educational Research and Improvement**

Grover J. Whitehurst

*Assistant Secretary*

**Office of Reform Assistance and Dissemination**

Peirce Hammond

*Director*

August 2001

This publication was funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The
content does not\
necessarily reflect the views of the Department or any other federal
agency. This publication

is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in
part for educational

purposes is granted. Full text of this publication is available at the
Department's Web Site

(http://www.ed.gov).

Foreword

As we enter the 21st century, we realize more than ever that our
nation's vitality and continued strength rests on the shoulders of our
children, and that we can provide them with a sound footing to meet that
future by providing a high quality education. Many students are already
receiving such an education; we read about the increasing availability
of advanced placement courses and international baccalaureate programs.
Often, these students attend schools amply provided with resources most
predictive of high quality---well-prepared, experienced teachers,
effective administrative and support staff, safe and healthy learning
environments, up to date textbooks, well-stocked media centers, and
access to technology.

But what is the nature of the education being provided to students in
other schools across America? States have begun identifying
low-performing schools; a recent estimate puts the number at 10,000.
What do we know about such schools? We know only that these schools post
lower than desirable (according to performance standards) student
achievement results year after year after year. We know that these
schools do not possess some or all of the resources predictive of high
performance. We know that students attending these schools often face
challenges in their lives---at home, in their communities---that can
affect the manner in which they learn. But, most importantly, we also
know that every student can achieve and that we cannot fail these
students, or the staff in the schools they attend, or the communities
whose children and schools these are.

Background on the Regional Educational Laboratories

The Regional Educational Laboratory Program, administered by the Office
of Educational Research and Improvement, is the U.S. Department of
Education's largest research and development investment designed to help
educators, policymakers, and communities improve schools; its statutory
mission is "to promote knowledge-based school improvement to help all
students meet high standards and to help the nation meet the National
Education Goals" (Public Law 103--227, enacted in 1994). Since their
establishment in 1965, the Regional Educational Laboratories have been
conducting high quality, useful, cutting-edge research, or preparing
summaries and syntheses of research to inform the educational policy and
practice. Laboratories have also, in partnership with schools,
districts, and states, been developing, field testing, and refining
processes, strategies, and tools designed to solve difficult and
pressing educational problems.

The Laboratories' knowledge of their regions and ties to national
networks, their understanding of the informational needs of policymakers
and educators, and their involvement in the field enable them to link
the worlds of research, policy, and practice. The products and services
developed by Laboratories have helped schools, districts, and state
education agencies take advantage of the latest and best research and
proven practices to improve schools. Program indicator data for Fiscal
Year 2000 contain a few key statistics regarding the contributions of
the Laboratories to educational improvement:

• products supplied to 1,635,492 clients;

• direct services provided to 127,162 clients;

• hits on Web sites totaling 35,828,628; and

• intensive research and development work with 630 school, district, or
state sites that involved 545,612 students; 34,923 teachers; 5,029
administrators; and 13,024 parents.

Work of the Regional Educational Laboratories

This handbook includes a brief description of each of the 10
Laboratories to acquaint you with Laboratories' past accomplishments,
current work under the 2000--05 contract period, and upcoming events.
More extensive information about Laboratories' programs of work and
products are provided on their Web sites, several of which have won
national awards for content and design. Those Web addresses, as well as
other contact information, are included in this handbook. You are also
welcome to contact the U.S. Department of Education's program officers
(included in the contact information) for further information about the
Regional Educational Laboratory Program.

In 2000, a competition was held resulting in the award of new 5-year
contracts under the Regional Educational Laboratory Program. The Request
for Proposal (RFP) articulated the following general purpose that
constitutes the context for all proposed work:

> To advance the procedural knowledge ("know how" based on rigorous
> research and expert practice) about transforming low-performing
> schools into high-performing learning communities (communities that
> successfully organize or develop the values, beliefs, and technical
> skills of its members to help students achieve at high levels); and to
> promote the use of that procedural knowledge in policy and practice to
> help increase the number of high-performing learning communities.

The RFP also established the following 10 principles meant to
characterize all proposed work:

• based on high priority regional needs;

• focused on well-defined problems;

• built upon existing knowledge coming from the research and practice
communities;

• designed with attention to rigorous standards of quality related to
the conduct of work and the quality of all resulting products;

• conducted with special attention to the needs of rural areas as
required by statute;

• attentive to students most at risk of failure due to barriers of
language, culture, or poverty;

• characterized by appropriate use of both widely used and emerging
technologies;

• noted for extensive use of partnerships and networks across a wide
spectrum of organizations at local, state, regional, and national
levels;

• designed to forge a stronger Laboratory system, including
encouragement to make wider use of strategies, products, and services
created by other Laboratories; and

• noted for its impact on policy, procedure, and practice within its
region and, in certain circumstances, across the nation.

Laboratories have proposed a 5-year plan for work designed to meet the
purpose of transforming low-performing schools into high-performing
learning communities and adhere to the principles for Laboratory work
by:

Addressing Critical Problems in their Region

> Schools face critical problems that make it difficult for all students
> to learn to high levels of achievement. Schools and school districts
> also have difficulty finding and using the informational resources
> they need to create high-performing learning communities, and will
> continue to fall even farther behind if the knowledge base is not
> expanded and information is not widely disseminated. Guided by
> governing boards that represent the constituents in the regions,
> including teachers, researchers, and high-level policymakers, the
> Laboratories will use rigorous applied educational research practices
> to assist in solving site-specific problems and use those experiences
> to develop generalizable solutions.

Serving as a National Leader

> Each Laboratory is taking a leadership role in a significant education
> issue area that can make a contribution to the procedural knowledge
> required to build high-performing learning communities. Leadership
> work includes synthesizing research-based information, disseminating
> the information, and applying the information in ways that transform
> policy and practice. The National Leadership Areas include: Assessment
> of Educational Achievement, Curriculum and Instruction Related to
> Reading and Language Mastery, Educational Leadership, Educational
> Technology, Expanded Learning Opportunities, Family and Community
> Involvement, Re-engineering Schools for Improvement, Standards-Based
> Educational Practice, and Teaching Diverse Students.

Serving as Part of a Laboratory Network Program

> Each Laboratory is participating in collaborative activities with
> other Laboratories to optimize the uses of Laboratory resources,
> create nationwide resource collections, and apply experience across
> the Laboratory network to specific problems.

Contact Information

For more information about the Regional Educational Laboratory program
please contact:

*Carol Chelemer Deborah Williams*

Director, Team Leader,

State and Local Services Division Regional Educational Laboratory
Program

Phone: (202) 219--2235 Phone: (202) 219--2204

Fax: (202) 219--2198 Fax: (202) 219--2198

E-mail: carol.chelemer@ed.gov E-mail: deborah.williams@ed.gov

Or visit:

**Regional Educational Laboratory Network Web Site:** maintained by the
Laboratories and contains highlights of their activities, entry to each
Laboratory's Web Site, and a place to search and request Laboratory
publications (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/).

**U.S. Department of Education Laboratory Program Web Site:** maintained
by the U.S. Department of Education. It provides information about
Laboratory program events and publications, and links to other
Laboratory Sites (http://www.ed.gov/prog_info/Labs).

Contents

Foreword iii

The Regional Educational Laboratory at AEL Inc. (AEL) 1

Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown

University (LAB) 5

Laboratory for Student Success (LSS) 9

Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) 13

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) 17

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) 21

Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) 25

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) 29

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE (SERVE) 33

Western Regional Educational Laboratory at WestEd (WestEd) 39

The Regional Educational Laboratory at AEL Inc.

**Address:** P.O. Box 1348

Charleston, WV 25325--1348

**Phone:** (304) 347--0400, (800) 624--9120

**Fax:** (304) 347--0487

**E-mail:** aelinfo@ael.org

**Internet:** http://www.ael.org

**CEO:** Allen Arnold

**Director:** Doris Redfield

**States Served:** Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia

**OERI Program Officer:** Mary Campbell, (202) 219--2130,
mary.campbell@ed.gov

Mission

*AEL is a catalyst for schools and communities to build lifelong
learning systems that harness resources, research, and practical
wisdom.* To contribute knowledge that assists low-performing schools to
move toward continuous improvement, AEL conducts research, development,
evaluation, and dissemination activities that inform policy, affect
educational practice, and contribute to the theoretical and procedural
knowledge bases on effective teaching, learning, and schooling.
Strategies build on research and reflect a commitment to empowering
individuals and building local capacity.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

AEL's work is integrated by focusing all work on four
constituent-identified areas of need relative to low-performing schools
and the contexts within which they operate: developing school capacity,
improving teaching quality, promoting school-community connections, and
providing policy-relevant information services.

***Developing school capacity*** (staff contact: Sandra Orletsky). A
central problem confronting low-performing schools is their lack of
capacity to envision, plan, implement, and sustain changes that could
transform them to high-performing learning communities. AEL views school
capacity as incorporating the level of knowledge, skills, and
dispositions possessed by school leadership and staff; the strength of
the school's professional community; and the coherence of the total
school program. AEL's strategy for building school capacity within the
region is to develop, test, and refine an effective model for providing
intensive assistance. This will be accomplished with the help of experts
on low-performing schools, researchers on school change in rural and
minority communities, and experts on collaborative action research.
These experts will be convened and consulted in collaboration with Andy
Hargreaves of The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto, Canada. AEL will assess and refine its assistance
model as it works in intensive sites collaboratively selected with the
region's chief state school officers.

***Improving teaching quality*** (staff contact: Jim Craig). The
National Commission on Teaching and America's Future reports that higher
and more rigorous accountability standards do not appear to result in
improved student outcomes absent attention to issues of teaching
quality. In approaching this issue, AEL does not equate *teaching
quality* with *teacher quality*, but defines its work in terms of
individual and organizational factors that support or enable individual
teachers to be highly effective, particularly in low-performing schools.
Strategies for developing teaching quality are designed to provide
information to enhance policy and practice at all levels of the system,
including K--12 and higher education. These strategies include
supporting a regional database of information relevant to teaching
quality, investigating ways that identification of individual strengths
can be used as tools for teacher development, examining the
effectiveness of a high school-higher education collaborative model
(supported by technology and research) in promoting teaching quality
specific to work with disengaged students, engaging in collaborative
research on teaching quality, and using resulting information in the
reform of teacher educator development and practice. Fifteen
institutions of higher education constituting the AEL/Institutions of
Higher Education (IHE) Co-Venture are participating in the research.

***Promoting school-community connections*** (staff contact: Ray
Thornton). School-community partnerships are particularly necessary in
the region served by AEL, which is predominantly rural and where schools
often represent the single highest concentration of resources. AEL's
strategies for promoting school-community connections are to work with
schools and communities to enhance proactive community relations so that
the community develops increasing ownership for its schools and becomes
more accountable for student and school performance; document what is
working in effective school-community partnerships; and work with
participants to codify their procedures, giving special attention to how
the resources of the community are used for engaging student learning.
Intensive sites for developing proactive community relations---at least
one in each state---will be identified by each chief state school
officer. AEL will also work with members of the faith community in
Charleston, West Virginia, to identify strategies they have found
effective in fostering development of the whole child, including
academic performance.

***Providing policy-relevant information services*** (staff contact:
Pamela Lutz). While improvements in school and student performance are
achieved at the local and individual levels, the conditions that support
or hinder those improvements are often found in the systems and
structures of state policy. AEL delivers to state policymakers research
and development-based information that honors their state context and
enhances capacity to create and sustain high-performing institutions for
teaching and learning. To increase policymaker access to and use of
timely, focused information in policy decisionmaking, AEL employs
face-to-face, print, and electronic formats to convene role-alike
groups, report state-specific data whenever possible, and provide policy
analysis and interpretation around specific issues such as rural
sustainability and research on improving low-performing schools.
Partners include the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute at
Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Stephen Ross of the Center for
Research in Educational Policy at the University of Memphis, and the
National Rural Education Association.

National Leadership Area

***Educational technology*** (staff contact: Tammy McGraw). Since 1995,
the United States has made a considerable investment in educational
technology and its use in the classroom; estimates of combined federal
and other funding total more than a billion dollars. Yet recent
improvements in school technology will be wasted if teachers and school
leaders are not prepared to use new tools effectively. AEL has
identified five goals for promoting effective use of educational
technology:

Goal 1: Explore innovative ways that current and emerging technologies
can be used to address specific education problems, particularly as they
relate to disadvantaged and underserved populations. AEL, Inc. recently
established the Institute for the Advancement of Emerging Technologies
in Education (IAETE) to integrate the organization's efforts.

Goal 2: Design and develop high-quality research-based products and
services to address the documented needs of low-performing learning
communities. Recent products include *Principal Connections,* an
interactive CD-ROM and companion Web site that help school principals
build technology leadership skills; and *Distance Based and Distributed
Learning: A Decision Tool for Education Leaders*.

Goal 3: Maintain a collection of the most relevant research related to
educational technology and its use. To guide this work, a panel of
distinguished advisors with diverse expertise will be convened annually,
to include Chris Dede of Harvard University and Mark Schlager of
Stanford University, among others.

Goal 4: Collect and disseminate promising practices and exemplary
strategies from throughout the United States and beyond. As demonstrated
in *Patterns of Promise,* AEL products are designed to help schools
understand the discrete elements necessary for replication in other
settings.

Goal 5: Facilitate communication and resource sharing throughout the
regional educational laboratory network. AEL is developing an electronic
environment that will support the collection, organization, and
dissemination of research, artifacts, media objects, and procedural
knowledge.

Key Accomplishments

AEL is continuing two strands of work that have proven effective in
improving low-performing schools: partnering with state departments of
education and school districts to identify/develop effective processes
and practices, and developing and testing tools for aligning curricula,
instruction, and assessment with state standards.

***Partnering with state departments of education to identify/develop
effective processes and practices.*** AEL has developed and tested a
process for working with state departments of education to improve the
status, including student achievement, of low-performing schools and
school districts. The processes include engaging school and community
members in developing a vision and action plan for improvement and
delivering professional development that targets challenges at the
school and classroom levels. Test scores improved in the pilot district,
which resulted in the district's removal from probationary status.

***Developing and testing tools for aligning curricula and instruction
with state standards.*** Through additional pilot sites, AEL will
continue refinement and development of tools that can be used by
educators to improve school and district performance. Early data
indicate increases in student achievement and community involvement.

Upcoming Products and Events

*Colloquium on inquiry and improvement in low-performing schools.* AEL,
in collaboration with Andy Hargreaves and Amanda Datnow from the
International Center for Educational Change, will sponsor a colloquium
involving researchers from the United States, Canada, and England, as
well as the chief state school officers from each of AEL's states. Its
purpose is to lay the groundwork for a continuing and collaborative
research agenda around issues of sustainable school reform *(Summer
2001, Arlington, Virginia)*.

*TransFormation,* a new research briefing, will communicate the latest
policy-related implications from research on improvement in
low-performing schools. The publication's editor is Dr. Stephen M. Ross,
director of the Center for Research in Educational Policy at the
University of Memphis. To request a subscription, or to access the
briefings online, contact AEL at
**http://www.ael.org/transform/index.htm** *(two issues per year)*.

Northeast and Islands Regional Educational\
Laboratory at Brown University

**Address:** 222 Richmond Street, Suite 300

Providence, RI 02903--4226

**Phone:** (401) 274--9548 or (800) 521--9550

**Fax:** (401) 421--7650

**E-mail:** info@lab.brown.edu

**Internet:** http://www.lab.brown.edu

**Director:** Mary-Beth Fafard

**States Served:** Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New
York,

Rhode Island, Vermont, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands

**OERI Program Officer:** Annora Bryant, (202) 219--2087,
annora.bryant@ed.gov

Mission

The LAB promotes educational change that provides equitable
opportunities for all students to succeed. We advocate for populations
whose access to excellent education historically has been limited or
denied.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

The work of the LAB is organized into three program areas:
Student-Centered Learning, Teacher Development, and Collaborative
Leadership. Problems underlying each program area and the focus of work
in each area are briefly described below.

***Student-centered learning*** (staff contact: Joseph DiMartino). The
disengagement of many secondary school youth interferes with their
school performance. Many high school students, especially those living
in poverty, perform poorly on state standardized assessments, dropout of
school at high rates, and leave school ill prepared for either further
education or the workforce. In many high schools in both urban and rural
areas, outdated programs, curriculum, and instruction are ill suited to
changing demographic and economic realities. Most American high schools
have not been able to adapt to social changes and demands for
accountability. They have historically resisted change rather than
embracing it. At the heart of these challenges is the failure to adapt
the institutional environment to the individual learning needs of
adolescent students.

The LAB will address this problem by creating more student-centered
structures, models, and practices that result in a reduction in the
disengagement of secondary school youth. We will investigate the effects
of a major national model for transforming urban high schools, collect
and share information from research and practice on personalization of
student learning, and collect and share information from research and
practice on content area, literacy instruction for secondary students.
This will be accomplished with the help of personalization researcher
John Clarke and literacy expert Julie Meltzer, among others. In
addition, the LAB will work with the New England Association of Schools
and Colleges, an accreditation body, and with the National Association
of Secondary School Principals. Researchers, practitioners, and others
will be convened to develop a personalization rubric to measure the
extent to which schools have student-centered practices in place.

***Teacher development*** (staff contact: Charlene Heintz). Teacher
development has received insufficient attention relative to the volume
and pace of education reform. It rarely takes into account the
challenging subject matter, the demands of statewide assessments, the
need for literacy development across grades, and the need to connect to
schools' overall vision for student success. Much of it is short-term.
To increase student learning in low-performing schools, we must help
schools and teachers create strategic, long-term, inquiry-based
professional development opportunities that are part of teachers'
day-to-day culture. We must design and sustain working environments that
foster creative thinking and risk-taking.

The LAB's program of work in this area is designed to identify the
barriers to conducting teacher development in an inquiry-based,
collaborative environment. We will examine the policies, interventions,
and procedures needed to support teacher opportunities for continuous
improvement. The work is organized into four major activities:
structuring the collaborative design and implementation of school-wide,
outcomes-based teacher development plans; creating online teacher
development capacities to deliver and support teacher learning;
connecting teacher practice to how students develop subject-based
literacy and comprehension in academic disciplines; and using statewide
assessments to inform practice and improve literacy in low-performing
schools. Partners in this work include state departments of education
throughout our region; local boards of education; district teacher
unions; the Center for the Enhancement of Science and Mathematics
Education (CESAME); and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL).

***Collaborative leadership*** (staff contact: John Correiro).
Standards-driven and accountability-focused reform, coupled with the
increased attention to underperforming schools in our region, has
increased the pressure on leadership at all levels of the educational
system. Policymakers agree that a "leadership problem"---shortages of
leaders, increased expectations for leaders, and ineffective
professional development of leaders in education---affects high-poverty
settings and districts where large-scale improvement has not taken hold.
For active, collaborative leadership to take hold among teachers,
principals, central office personnel, school boards, and parents---all
who seek to play leadership roles need new knowledge, skills, and
attitudes. They also need to work together over time to understand
issues and concerns, plan, and cooperate.

The LAB will address its region's educational leadership challenges by
partnering with Connecticut to study and support schools identified as
low performing, and by working with a regional support system center in
Rochester, New York, to study and advance that state's support network.
The LAB will also facilitate shared inquiry with teams of leaders
working in urban settings. In addition, the LAB will expand its
successful work with leadership networks---the Superintendents'
Leadership Council, the Principals' Leadership Network (partnering with
National Association for Elementary School Principal and National
Association for Secondary School Principals), regional leadership teams
consisting of representatives from secondary and postsecondary
institutions (in a project led by our partner Jobs for the Future), and
regional State Education Agency (SEA) policy seminars.

National Leadership Area

**Teaching diverse students** (staff contact: Maria Pacheco). Through
the Education Alliance's Center for Equity and Diversity and its
national advisory panel, the LAB will pursue three programmatic
strategies in addressing its national leadership area on teaching
diverse students. These strategies are summarized below:

• Identify and synthesize studies on teaching diverse learners including
those that integrate research on human development, culture and
language; culturally responsive pedagogy; exemplary program models and
practices; assessment policy; and teacher recruitment, retention, and
development. These syntheses will advance the procedural knowledge
regarding effective practices and policies at local, regional and
national levels, especially in terms of its application in the context
of low-performing schools.

• Establish a national academy for cultural and linguistic diversity to
encourage discussions across role groups on key issues for the teaching
of diverse learners. In addition, provide professional development and
support to existing and aspiring teachers and administrators who work
with diverse learners, promote greater diversity among teachers and
educational leaders, and communicate the results of national research
studies to educational leaders.

• Develop and disseminate information to ensure widespread distribution
of research results, promising models, and effective practices among
educational practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and members of the
community.

Key Accomplishments

***Student-centered learning.*** The New England Association of Schools
and Colleges (NEASC) affects 700 high schools (95 percent of the public
high schools in New England). In the past, the LAB conducted a 3-year
study of the accreditation process of the Commission on Public Secondary
Schools of NEASC. This study provided the research support and technical
assistance needed by NEASC as it developed the new standards and
procedures for accreditation, which were adopted for implementation in
January 2000.

When NEASC substantially revised its accreditation process, it
significantly increased the regional focus on standards, quality of
instruction, and student-centered learning environments. High schools in
New England must now demonstrate that they support all students in
meeting the same high standards of academic, civic, and social
achievement. Each year, NEASC will visit 70 schools, and the LAB will
provide technical assistance in analyzing the information gathered. In
addition, the LAB will conduct regional conferences to assist high
schools facing an accreditation review.

***Northeast Superintendents' Leadership Council*.** The LAB has a
history of developing long-term partnerships with groups of educational
leaders. The Northeast Superintendents' Leadership Council (SLC), an
organization of superintendents that promotes equity and excellence in
American schools, was founded in 1989 by the Education Alliance at Brown
University. Considered a model for organizations promoting development
of educational leaders, the SLC has advanced its work through a variety
of studies and targeted projects, and most notably through its annual
leadership institutes. The SLC's success has led the LAB to further
develop and support leadership networks and activities that serve
principals (Principals' Leadership Network), and state education
agencies (SEA policy seminars). In addition to helping committed
educational leaders develop their knowledge, skills, and collegial
support, the LAB's work with leadership networks provides an ongoing
source of insight into emerging issues in regional education and an
important pathway for developing and sharing knowledge.

Upcoming Products and Events

***Keep Talking***, a discussion guide, offers school leaders a tool for
engaging families and communities in school reform. For 3 years, the LAB
has studied family partnerships in several New England schools. Based on
its study, the LAB has developed a five-part conversation guide that
will help school principals facilitate discussions about family
partnerships. It is designed to encourage teachers, parents, and
administrators to talk about family and community partnerships in a
different way *(Summer 2001).*

***Diversity kit*** will help teachers learn about culturally responsive
classroom practice. The kit will include a tool for personal and
professional inquiry by providing both current research and relevant
examples that lead teachers to reflect, discuss, and revise their
classroom practice *(Winter 2001).*

***Education Notes*** will include short articles---updates on major
events, commentary on current issues in education reform, descriptions
of recent publications and valuable online resources, and brief
summaries of crucial issues in educational research. Issues planned for
this year will deal with collaborative models of educational leadership,
secondary-school reform, and equity and diversity *(three issues per
year: Summer/Fall, Fall, Winter).*

***First Annual Conference on Teaching Diverse Learners.*** LAB will
host this conference as part of its National Leadership Center work.
Through a variety of activities---keynote addresses, individual and
panel presentations, videos, and brainstorming sessions---participants
will engage with researchers and practitioners in discussions about
effective, research-based practices designed to meet the needs of
English language learners *(Summer 2001, Providence, Rhode Island).*

***Second Annual Northeast Principals' Summit.*** The Summit is
sponsored by the Principals' Leadership Network, a regional consortium
of K--12 principals supported by the Education Alliance and LAB at Brown
University, the National Association of Elementary School Principals,
the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the
American Federation of School Administrators. Together, this partnership
is collecting data, developing action research projects in the field,
and publishing results in user-friendly formats around selected issues
of regional and national significance to school principals *(Fall 2001,
location to be announced).*

Laboratory for Student Success

**Address**: Temple University Center for Research in Human Development

and Education

933 Ritter Annex, 13th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19122--6091

**Phone:** (215) 204--3000, (800) 892--5550

**Fax:** (215) 204--5130

**E-mail:** lss@vm.temple.edu

**Internet:** http://www.temple.edu/lss

**Director**: JoAnn B. Manning

**States Served**: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Washington, DC

**OERI Program** **Officer**: Susan Talley, (202) 219--2129,
susan.talley@ed.gov

Mission

The primary mission of the Laboratory for Student Success (LSS) is to
bring about lasting improvements in the learning of the mid-Atlantic
region's increasingly diverse student population. The ultimate goal of
LSS is to establish a system of research, development, and dissemination
that connects schools, parents, community agencies, professional groups,
and higher education institutions; gradually expands improvement efforts
in the region to transform low-performing schools into high-performing
learning communities; and is part of a national system of information
exchange.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

LSS's scope of work focuses on a coordinated and integrated approach
that affects several areas from the classroom to the statehouse. Four
key problem areas to be addressed include: improving teacher quality;
building and sustaining comprehensive school improvement; developing
school-family-community connections; and integrating technology as a
catalyst for high-performing learning communities.

***Improving teacher quality*** (staff contact: Frederick McCoy).
Teacher quality and supply is one of the largest barriers to successful
implementation of educational improvement initiatives in the five
mid-Atlantic states. The intense relationship between teacher quality
and student achievement becomes clear when addressing the "capacity"
concerns of transforming low-performing schools into high-performing
learning communities. Three key areas of LSS's work in this area
include: re-engineering schools and colleges of education to increase
the region's capacity to improve learning, both for children at rural
and urban schools and for preservice teachers; developing a regional
database that will detail the similarities and differences between
states with regard to licensing, recruitment, and certification
practices; and formulating policies that will support an intensive
common approach to these issues. This work will be accomplished through
the leadership and collaborative efforts of LSS, the Mid-Atlantic Deans
and Superintendents Network, the Council for Basic Education, and the
Maryland State Department of Education.

***Building and sustaining comprehensive school improvement*** (staff
contact: Roy Dawson). The work in this area advances the knowledge base
needed to transform low-performing schools into high-performing learning
communities. The following design principles guide LSS projects that
address this critical area: resilience research, both on individuals
(e.g., students and teachers) and institutions; collaboration with
"strategic partners" to provide information and technical assistance for
informed decisionmaking and planning for implementation to meet reform
needs; and networking to contribute directly to capacity building at all
levels to ensure student success in meeting state and local standards,
and utilize the procedural knowledge to scale up school reform efforts
focusing particularly on low-performing schools with a high
concentration of students from educationally and economically
disadvantaged rural and urban communities. An alliance of groups
including a network of universities led by Fairleigh Dickinson
University, the Public Sector Labor Management Committee, and
Educational Research Service are participating in this work.

***Developing school-family-community connections*** (staff contact: Ron
Taylor). The emerging structures in many communities that closely link
the work of schools, parents, and community agencies will become
increasingly important in the years ahead. Problems of many children and
families transcend the capacity of the school or any single agency to
serve them effectively. Their problems are often very deep, tied to
issues of economic disinvestments and joblessness in whole
neighborhoods, and of child abuse and neglect in individual homes.
Schools can only succeed to the extent that broader community efforts in
health, economics, and safety also succeed. The very process of bridging
as it occurs in communities, schools, universities, and elsewhere, and
making the most of the resulting connections will be a key area of study
at LSS. Collaborators in this work include the Academic Development
Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Pennsylvania State
University.

***Integrating technology as a catalyst for high-performing learning
communities*** (staff contact: Johann Sarmiento). The work in this area
is designed to generate new opportunities to critically analyze and
advance procedural knowledge concerning why, when, and how technologies
can support, enhance, and transform teaching, learning, and the
leadership of educational organizations. The Advanced Technologies for
Learning (ATL) Lab at LSS serves as an in-house and regional
interdisciplinary think-tank for effective integration of advanced
technologies and educational initiatives. Broadly stated, four goals
guide ATL work: foster the innovative and effective integration of
digital technologies into K--12 teaching and learning; support informed
decisionmaking on the part of regional K--12 educators, schools,
districts, and state-level educational agencies in selecting, using,
maintaining, and evaluating educational technologies; provide innovative
sustained professional development activities for and with teachers,
technology coordinators, administrators, and other educators; and create
and sustain networks and repositories of shared expertise and material
resources within the region. Collaborators in this area include the
Network of Technology Demonstration Schools, the Learning Technology
Support Group of the School District of Philadelphia, a selected group
of Educational Technology Training Centers in New Jersey and
Intermediate Units in Pennsylvania, as well as the Mid-Atlantic Regional
Technology in Education Consortium and its State Officers Network.

National Leadership Area

***Educational leadership*** (staff contact: Roy Dawson). As the lead
Regional Educational Laboratory for educational leadership, LSS has
identified three focus areas that will result in a program of
cross-disciplinary applied research, development, and dissemination
activities.

First, educational leadership requires capacity building at all levels
to promote student learning and higher performance. LSS aims to advance
procedural "know how," but focuses on providing technical assistance and
evaluation support at the state and district level to develop policy
initiatives, refine existing practices, and assess the impact of reform
on teaching and learning. At the school-site level, the work of the LSS
Services to the Field unit will greatly expand the knowledge-based
professional development and outreach program in the region and
nationally.

Secondly, widespread consensus on outcome-based accountability has
created new challenges for educational leadership. Policymakers and
practitioners have yet to agree on a common strategy to transform
low-performing schools into high-performing learning communities. LSS
focuses on leadership development through principals and small learning
communities that focus on content knowledge and pedagogy that promote
student-learning success. These advances include the use of best
practices in curriculum and instruction from early childhood through
high school; broadening parental and community engagement to foster a
supportive learning environment for at-risk students; as well as
strategies to raise student engagement, reduce apathy, challenge their
academic interests, and facilitate ongoing support for teachers'
knowledge development and collegial exchange.

Finally, as public education enters the 21st Century, the public
increasingly looks for more efficient and equitable ways of providing
schooling services that meet their high expectations. In some locales,
city and state governments have taken over the public schools.
System-wide sanctions and support strategies are applied to hold schools
and students accountable for their performance. In other states and
cities, charter schools within the public sector have been encouraged.
Parental preferences and school autonomy are seen as the driving force
to improve low-performing schools. Regardless of one's position on these
emerging alternatives, there is an urgent research need to find out
whether and how these new strands of service delivery are working. LSS
aims to synthesize the existing knowledge base on these reforms and
gather firsthand information on the design and implementation of
alternative governance practices.

Key Accomplishments

***LSS National Invitational Conference Series.*** These series address
emerging issues of national importance and formulate next-step
solutions. A major goal of the series is to cull from research and
practical knowledge on what works and what does not work to
significantly improve this nation's capacity to achieve healthy
development and educational success of children and families. A major
outcome of the series is the opportunity to exchange information and
viewpoints mutually beneficial to the design and implementation of
classroom practice, research priorities, and identify pressing technical
assistance and professional development needs. Conference participants
evaluated the series and indicated that LSS provided effective and
high-quality products and services that continue to meet the
ever-changing needs and goals of educational reform.

***Community for Learning* (CFL).** The CFL program is a whole-school
improvement model that connects the school, the family, and the
community to implement a coordinated approach to achieve student
success. At the core of CFL is an integrated design framework that
emphasizes the implementation of a powerful instructional program and a
collaborative process that links the resources and expertise of schools
with other learning environments, including homes, churches, libraries,
public- and private-sector workplaces, and postsecondary institutions.
Education programs conducted in these environments are coordinated with
those of various government agencies, such as health and social
services, housing, and law enforcement. These programs are connected
with community revitalization efforts to create a broad-based commitment
to improve learning and competence of children and youth and the adults
who serve them---in short, a Community for Learning. Findings from an
evaluation of CFL indicated that the program was making a difference in
student achievement and provides a model for consistent school and
classroom practices.

Upcoming Products and Events

***School choice vs. best systems*** provides an overview of research
and practical applications of innovative school reforms being
implemented across the nation *(Spring 2001).*

***New teachers for a new century*** takes stock of the preparedness and
quality of the present and prospective teaching force and examines ways
to improve the quality of instruction in the nation's classrooms
*(Summer 2001).*

***Improving educational productivity*** utilizes new econometric
methods to examine the relations between educational funding and the
production of student outcomes, exploring such relevant issues as state
aid, teacher quality, and school efficiency *(Fall 2001).*

***LSS Spotlight on Student Success Series*** is a two-page research
brief series that provides a summary of research findings based on the
work of LSS researchers. To request copies or to access the series
online, contact the LSS Web Site (http://www.temple.edu/lss).

***A national invitational conference on successful reading
instruction*.** LSS will host a conference aimed at identifying ways to
translate important research findings in reading and reading instruction
into practice *(Fall 2001, Washington, DC*).

Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning

**Address:** 2550 S. Parker Road, Suite 500

Aurora, CO 80014--1678

**Phone:** (303) 337--0990

**Fax:** (303) 337--3005

**E-mail:** info@mcrel.org

**Internet:** http://www.mcrel.org

**Director:** J. Timothy Waters

**States Served:** Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota,
and

South Dakota, Wyoming

**OERI Program Officers**: Joe Wilkes, (202) 219--2186,
joe.wilkes@ed.gov

Irene Harwarth, (202) 219--1756, irene.harwarth@ed.gov

Mission

To make a difference in the quality of education and learning for all
through excellence in applied research, product development, and
service. In carrying out its mission, McREL works collaboratively with
its clients to improve educational policy and practice through the
application of knowledge from research, development, and experience.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

McREL is engaged in applied research, development, service, and
dissemination initiatives designed to provide educators with the
procedural ("how-to") knowledge they need to create high-performing
learning communities. McREL's work in the Central Region is organized to
address four critical problems:

• the lack of capacity to use standards to reform classroom practice;

• the declining availability of quality teachers;

• the lack of leadership capacity to build high-performing learning
systems; and

• the failure to adequately support reform efforts.

***Lack of capacity to use standards to reform classroom practice***
(staff contact: Lou Cicchinelli).

McREL is helping states and districts in the Central Region develop and
adopt standards-based curricula, instruction methods, and classroom
assessments. Specifically, McREL is developing a process that districts
and states can use to create grade-level benchmarks. McREL is also
creating exemplary standards and instructional units linked to the
standards to help teachers address more than one standard or benchmark
with a single lesson unit. In addition, McREL is researching what
practices and structures are most effective in creating standards-based
classrooms in "beat-the-odds" schools.

At the state level, McREL is designing a process for evaluating the
structure of state assessments and accountability systems against new
national standards for accountability created by the Center for Research
on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing and the Center for Policy
Research in Education. As an outgrowth of this work, we will begin
designing guidelines and models for comprehensive state accountability
systems that balance local and state responsibility as appropriate to
the region. Furthermore, we will continue to provide training and
technical assistance in accountability and assessment systems to local
education agencies.

***The declining availability of quality teachers*** (staff contact: Lou
Cicchinelli). The work in this problem area is designed to address two
broad elements of teacher quality: teacher qualifications and
preparation, (including preservice learning and in-service teacher
learning), and support in the workplace; and teacher instructional
practices. McREL is identifying the necessary elements to prepare
teachers who positively affect K--12 student learning in standards-based
classrooms. In addition, McREL is analyzing the incentives states are
using to encourage districts to adopt effective professional development
programs and studying the impact of these policies on the quality and
availability of teachers in the region. McREL also plans to research
teacher compensation issues and needs prior to developing a pilot,
exemplary teacher compensation system. Finally, McREL will provide
technical assistance to build the capacity of intermediate service
agency staff in the region to provide professional development on topics
related to standards-based education.

***The lack of leadership capacity to build high-performing learning
systems*** (staff contact: Lou Cicchinelli). To foster increased
leadership capacity in districts and schools in the region, McREL is
hosting academies providing follow-up training for leaders of high-needs
schools in the region. McREL is also bringing together networks of urban
superintendents, rural educators, and chief state school officers to
facilitate the sharing of best practices, procedural knowledge, and the
creation of learning communities. In addition, through its rural
initiative, McREL will be creating a Web site providing resources
designed specifically to address the needs of rural schools. Finally,
McREL will conduct research studies to examine the relationships among
different variables of leadership capacity and student achievement.

***The failure to adequately support reform efforts*** (staff contact:
Lou Cicchinelli). McREL's fourth problem area focuses on helping states
and schools develop capacity to transform low-performing schools into
high-performing learning communities. To this end, McREL is working with
state education agencies to help them address issues of organizational
policy and program structures, fragmentation, and lack of focus at the
state level. At the local level, McREL is providing technical assistance
to schools that have adopted comprehensive school reform models to help
them successfully implement and sustain these programs. Likewise, McREL
is forming consortia of low-performing schools in South Dakota and
Kansas. These schools will share lessons learned and receive technical
assistance from McREL to help them become high-performing learning
communities. Lastly, McREL is continuing to develop and field test a
comprehensive process for integrating technology into school curriculum,
which in turn, becomes an avenue for districts to improve instruction
and foster systemic reform.

National Leadership Area

***Standards-based instructional practice*** (staff contact: Lou
Cicchinelli). The cornerstone of McREL's strategy for developing the
national leadership area of standards-based instructional practice is
facilitating a media-supported and technologically sustained national
dialogue on education, known as the *National Dialogue*, in
collaboration with strategic partners from across the nation. Given the
backdrop of the current environment surrounding standards---where a
movement that arose from concern for children often has been mired in
division, polarization, and politicization---we are attempting to raise
the quality and productivity of public discourse on education reform.
The purpose of the *National Dialogue* is to move the country beyond
debate and contention to a point where the public can begin to share
success stories and ways to use standards-based reforms to benefit all
students.

The *National Dialogue* will take place over the next 2 years and will
be a collective, cumulative process. In other words, no single event is
"the Dialogue." The first of a series of national, regional, state, and
local opportunities for dialogue took place in April of 2001 at the
Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. The *National Dialogue*
Web Site (http://www.nationaldialogue.org) serves as both an information
repository for the Dialogue and a forum where participants take part in
ongoing, real time "virtual" dialogues.

In addition to the Dialogue project, McREL is monitoring and
synthesizing research literature related to standards-based instruction.
We will compile this data into a research report as a well as a
user-friendly publication, which will be disseminated across the region
and nation.

Key Accomplishments

Two accomplishments from the last contract help set the stage for
McREL's current focus on procedural knowledge and improving
low-performing schools.

***Online standards database*.** This database
(http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks) helps to address the
regional problem area of the lack of capacity to use standards to reform
classroom practice. It makes accessible the work in *Content Knowledge:
A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K*--*12 Education*, which
synthesizes information from more than 137 documents and reports that
address what students should know and be able to do. During 2000, over
280,000 people connected to the standards database. In addition, many
organizations---including Achieve, Inc.; Scholastic, Inc.; and the New
York Times---use the database to support their work to improve
educational practice. The site also provides classroom activities linked
to standards and benchmarks. They are designed to help educators
implement standards by providing them with exemplary lesson and unit
plan ideas. During 2000, over 44,000 educators accessed these
activities.

***Research into Practice Series*.** This program prepares staff
development providers to conduct a series of workshops to improve
classroom practice and thus, student achievement. The trainings focus on
four key areas: Implementing Standards in the Classroom; Classroom
Assessment, Grading, and Record Keeping; Effective Instructional
Practices; and Enhancing Reading Development. Collectively, the series
helps to address the problem area of the failure to adequately support
reform efforts by providing low-performing schools with research-based
training on how to boost reading achievement and use assessment data to
guide instruction. The modules were pilot tested with over 300 regional
educators---75 percent of whom said they increased their understanding
of the subject area as a result; more than 90 percent said they planned
to use the information in their schools or districts.

Upcoming Products and Events

***Policy forum.*** McREL continues to host annual forums bringing
together key policymakers from the Central Region. Participants share
experiences and gain insights from education research on issues of
mutual concern (*Summer 2001, Denver, Colorado)*.

***Online toolkit for school leaders.*** This site
(http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit) provides information about systems theory
as well as brief discussions of key education topics and a list of
related resources. The site will be expanded and reoriented to better
meet the needs of low-performing schools in transition (*Winter 2001).*

***Leadership academies.*** McREL is working with nationally recognized
principals to develop and provide leadership academies for principals,
teachers, and other leaders in low-performing schools and districts in
Kansas and South Dakota *(the initial academy is scheduled for the
Summer 2001)*.

***Meta-analysis of classroom management strategies.*** To employ
effective instructional techniques, teachers also need to know how to
effectively manage student behavior in the classroom. In response to
this need, McREL is conducting a meta-analysis of classroom management
strategies that have been shown to have positive impacts on student
achievement. A final report will be available after the conclusion of
this study *(Winter 2001).*

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory

**Address:** 1120 East Diehl Road, Suite 200

Naperville, IL 60563--1486

**Phone:** (630) 649--6500 or (800) 356--2735

**Fax:** (630) 649--6700

**E-mail:** info@ncrel.org

**Internet:** http://www.ncrel.org

**Director:** Gina Burkhardt

**States Served:** Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio,
and Wisconsin

**OERI Program Officer:** Gregory Dennis, (202) 219-2187,
gregory.dennis@ed.gov

Mission

To improve the performance of all parts and levels of the K--12
educational system from the classroom to the state by:

• making research-based knowledge useful to and usable by educators,
policymakers, and the wider community;

• integrating research, policy, and practice around issues of
transforming schools into high-performing learning communities; and

• providing regional and national leadership in applying technology to
improve student learning.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

Working with its constituents to synthesize and assess the needs of the
region has enabled NCREL to identify three areas of critical and
enduring concern:

*1. Educational technology*: Too many educators lack the procedural
knowledge or support required to integrate technology effectively into
teaching and learning.

*2. Literacy*: Too many students, especially those in high-poverty and
minority groups, are poor readers and writers.

*3. The use of data in making decision*s: Educators lack access to and
the capacity to use high-quality, well-organized data to inform their
professional decisions.

NCREL's programmatic work to address these problems is distributed
across two centers: the Center for Curriculum and Technology and the
Center for Data Systems and Development. Designed to support the efforts
of constituents, NCREL's activities are integrated across research,
policy, and practice and are intended to advance and promote the
procedural knowledge about high-performing learning communities.

***Educational technology*** (staff contact: Gilbert Valdez). With the
integration of technology into every aspect of the workplace, the
integration of technology into teaching and learning is essential.
However, educators have insufficient professional development
opportunities in technology use; there are inadequate or misaligned
technology policy and governance structures in place; there is a clear
need for systemic integration into school practice and reform; and
access to educational technology resources is too often inequitable.

NCREL's Center for Curriculum and Technology provides school leaders
with more and better access to the procedural knowledge necessary to
apply technology to learning across the educational system. NCREL's
research-driven publications and Web-based tools provide educators,
especially those in high-need urban and rural areas, with high-quality
professional development resources related to the application of
technology to learning. In addition, policy staff members work directly
with policymakers and administrators to align governance and
administration around technology integration with the goal of promoting
the development of high-performing learning communities. Valuable
intensive sites and partners include the region's state departments of
education, Mahnomen Public Schools on the White Earth Indian Reservation
in northern Minnesota, National School Boards Association, Metiri Group,
North Central Mathematics and Science Consortium, and North Central
Regional Technology in Education Consortium.

***Literacy*** (staff contact: Gilbert Valdez). Literacy truly is the
gateway skill to all other academic achievement, yet assessment results
continue to show that too many students have inadequate skills. K--12
teachers are not prepared to teach all students to be successful
readers. They do not have easy access to tools and resources that can
support their knowledge and skill development. In addition, national,
regional, and state literacy initiatives have not been effectively
coordinated to leverage resources, share research and best practice
data, support the development of knowledge-based tools and services for
teachers, or inform policy and practice.

NCREL's Center for Curriculum and Technology provides teachers and
administrators---through preservice and in-service professional
development opportunities---with the knowledge, instructional tools, and
resources to help them understand how students learn to read and develop
literacy skills. NCREL staff help teachers choose and use
resources---including technology---that are appropriate for the specific
needs of the students in their classrooms. NCREL provides teachers with
mechanisms to measure student progress and results in order to improve
instruction and individual student literacy development. Another
critical part of NCREL's literacy work is the synthesis and
dissemination of literacy education research and best practice across
the region---as well as the nation---via the Internet and other outreach
vehicles. Partnerships include the state education agencies; Center for
the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement; Center for Research on
Education, Diversity, and Excellence; Council of Chief State School
Officers; and National Center for Adult Literacy.

***Use of data*** (staff contact: Scott Jones). As the gap between low-
and high-achieving students continues to grow and the implementation of
high-stakes, performance-based accountability systems becomes the norm,
more informed educational decisionmaking has become increasingly
important. At the same time, educators lack access to and the capacity
to use high-quality, well-organized data to inform their professional
decisions, particularly around the issues of content, capacity, culture,
and consequences.

The Center for Data Systems and Development strives to understand how
improved data and better decisions can help schools close achievement
gaps between groups of students. NCREL's focus is not just on data, but
also on *how* data are being used by decisionmakers. NCREL is developing
repositories of these important data, providing analyses of trends, and
bringing together various stakeholders to discuss solutions to this
challenge. NCREL's research work investigates the impact of current
preservice training and professional development opportunities on the
capacity for data use and continuous improvement in schools. NCREL also
works closely with policymakers and educators to provide more accessible
data and the capacity for analysis. Partnerships and intensive sites
include the Minority Student Achievement Network, Council of Chief State
School Officers, TIMSS-R Benchmarking Study states and districts,
Illinois Institute of Technology Center for Research and Service,
Education Commission of the States, Michigan State University, and state
education agencies.

National Leadership Area

***Educational technology*** (staff contact: Gilbert Valdez). Educators
are not yet effectively integrating technology into teaching and
learning, and still struggle with evaluating its effectiveness for
students is a national problem. Although technology continues to advance
at a rapid pace, the heart of NCREL's work and vision remains the same:
Integrating technology into instructional approaches will increase
student achievement by improving the quality of curricula and
instruction.

NCREL provides leadership to educators through:

*• Applied research and development*, including research syntheses and
studies, Web-based knowledge resources and tools, and technology-based
professional development tools.

*• Networking and dissemination* activities, including establishing an
expert panel on emerging technologies in education, sponsoring an annual
invitational conference on educational technology, and disseminating
information and resources from research and development activities
through NCREL's Web Site and publications, REL system outlets (e.g.,
*Gateway to Educational Material*, *Knowledge Loom*, REL Web Site) and
other appropriate national vehicles (e.g., journal articles, newspaper
editorials).

NCREL is fortunate to host and work closely with the North Central
Mathematics and Science Consortium to provide direct technical
assistance to state education agencies, intermediate educational units,
and school districts; and the North Central Regional Technology in
Education Consortium to help schools and districts integrate technology
into teaching and learning.

Key Accomplishments

***Technology.*** NCREL will continue to extend the breadth and depth of
its work in the field of educational technology. One key focus of the
Lab's work is the impact of technology on student learning, an issue
that continues to grow in national importance. *EnGauge* is a Web-based
framework for effective technology use developed in a partnership with
the Metiri Group. The *enGauge* Web Site offers technology improvement
teams a one-stop resource for studying, measuring, and improving the
effective use of technology in the educational system. The development
process for *enGauge* was guided by frequent focus groups and external
reviews. Based on these reviews, the parameters of an online survey were
established, as well as guidelines for database design and
functionality, user interface design, and reporting structures.
Constituents in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa are currently using the Web
site, and NCREL continues its development.

***Data retreats.*** NCREL also is scaling up the practice of hosting
Data Retreats for school improvement teams throughout the North Central
region and the nation. Working closely with Judy Sargent, Ph.D., of the
Cooperative Educational Service Agency No. 7 (CESA 7) in Green Bay,
Wisconsin, NCREL brings district and school-level leadership teams
together to analyze and discuss student data, and to develop a databased
improvement plan. During these 2- to 3-day retreats, participants define
problems and goals, develop strategies, and make a commitment to using
data. District and school staff analyze patterns of data and develop a
plan that has true meaning for school change.

Upcoming Products and Events

***NCREL's National Invitational Educational Technology Conference.***
This year's conference is entitled "High-Performance, High-Technology
Learning Communities: Preparing Our Students for the Future" *(Summer
2001)*.

***ETCNet (Educational Technology Center Network) Web Site*** will pull
together NCREL's growing wealth of educational technology resources and
provide a single entry point for easy access *(Winter 2001)*.

***First Annual Regional Literacy Network Meeting*** will be hosted by
NCREL for teams from all seven states. The goal of the event is to
facilitate collaboration and information sharing, identify problems
related to low reading performance, and plan intervention strategies for
staff development *(2001).*

***NCREL's Learning Point Magazine*** will take an in-depth look at
closing the achievement gaps. The cover story will address the
dimensions of the gaps, demonstrate their link to the accountability
movement, and explore barriers as well as opportunities for closing the
gaps *(Fall 2001)*.

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory

**Address:** 101 S.W. Main Street, Suite 500

Portland, OR 97204

**Phone:** (503) 275--9500

**Fax:** (503) 275--0448

**E-mail:** info@nwrel.org

**Internet:** http://www.nwrel.org

**Director:** Carol F. Thomas

**States Served:** Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington

**OERI Program Officer:** Kathy Fuller, (202) 219--2281,
kathy.fuller@ed.gov

Mission

The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's (NWREL) mission is to
improve educational results for children, youth, and adults by providing
research and development assistance in delivering equitable,
high-quality educational programs.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

NWREL is using an integrated approach to address five priority problems
northwest schools face as they strive to become high-performing
institutions (staff coordinator: Steve Nelson).

***Re-engineering*** (staff contact: Alf Langland). Schools face the
problem of re-engineering themselves to plan, implement, and sustain the
capacity to become high-performing learning communities. Re-engineering
is the fundamental building block for school reform. Through
re-engineering, schools, districts, and their communities use quality
management principles to implement the structures, processes, programs,
and training necessary to renew themselves based on a shared vision,
changing context, student population, proven successful practices, and
community expectations and requirements. Re-engineering focuses on the
most challenging changes---changes in the culture of the school, changes
in what people do and how they do it, and changes in how people relate
to one another and work in teams. Since schools are embedded within
districts, communities, and states, how schools, parents, and districts
interact is part of the complex web of relationships that must become
productive.

***Quality teaching and learning*** (staff contact: Jerian Abel).
Schools face the problem of how to more effectively plan, implement, and
sustain quality teaching and learning that contributes to
high-performing learning communities. The quality of classroom
instruction is key to student achievement and is dependent on the
quality of the school staff. Changes solely to curriculum,
organizational structure, or piecemeal training in new strategies will
not bring about the changes needed to create high-performing learning
communities. Professional development, as the analysis of teaching and
learning, should focus on the role of the learner, the role of the
teacher, and how learning takes place. There must be a forward-looking
focus on several aspects of system, culture, customer needs, and quality
improvement. Transforming a school into a high-performing learning
community that requires the school and individuals in the school have a
shared vision, driven by student needs, to change their ideas and
beliefs of teaching and learning.

***Student assessment*** (staff contact: Dean Arrasmith). Schools face
the problem of more adequately assessing students' progress in achieving
high performance standards. Well-aligned, authentic, and continuous
feedback is needed to inform teachers, students, and parents of their
progress in meeting state standards. Teachers need to know how to
develop quality assessments for day-to-day work. Schools need to know
how to develop and use assessment information to guide decisionmaking.
Among educators and policymakers, there is a strong belief in the power
of standards-based assessments to motivate changes in teaching and
students' learning that is based in part on the power of assessments to
define what is important to learn. Assessment ultimately, and
specifically, defines what educators and the community want students to
know and be able to do. Assessment tasks translate academic standards
into specific meaning for students and teachers.

***Literacy and language development*** (staff contact: Rebecca Novick).
Schools face the problem of how to achieve high levels of literacy and
language development among all of their students. Educators need access
to research-based practices in language development and the ability to
make wise choices from the wealth of resource materials and programs
that exist to address the learning needs of their students and to meet
challenging literacy standards. During the early elementary years,
learning to read is the top priority; school success depends, in large
part, on how successful children are in learning to read. Literacy
remains the key to school success throughout a student's school years
and is critical for full social and economic participation in our
increasingly knowledge-dependent, technological society. Although in
middle and high school, teachers may view their primary responsibility
as conveying the content of their subject area, it is increasingly
understood by educators that reading in middle and high school is a
critical issue to be addressed.

***School, family, and community partnerships*** (staff contact: Steffen
Saifer). Schools face the problem of how to develop and sustain school,
family, and community partnerships that clearly contribute to high
levels of student performance. School staff tend to see family and
community partnership activities as peripheral to meeting standards,
rather than as central to achieving them. Assessments of children at all
levels and of all types tend to ignore cultural and family
considerations, attributes, goals, and strengths. The ultimate result is
that the current relationship between schools and families, in too many
cases, can be characterized as lacking in trust, mutual support, and a
commitment to a partnership for the benefit of the children. Schools
must work with families and communities in new and different ways if
every student is to achieve challenging standards. In addition,
communities must work with schools to create and extend learning
opportunities for children and adults in safe and engaging environments.

NWREL is using three interrelated strategies to help schools in each of
the five northwest states to overcome these problems in becoming
high-performing institutions:

*• Regional awareness and outreach activities* are conducted to engage
educators in an ongoing way in delineating problems, discussing their
resolution, and disseminating resource information.

*• Research and development services* are made broadly available to
educators across the region to apply existing procedural knowledge,
tools, and processes.

*• In-depth, long-term research and development services* are delivered
to 15 high poverty, low-performing schools across the 5-state region to
achieve high levels of student performance. These 15 schools are the
primary partner sites in developing and evaluating effective research
and development products and processes for schools to become
high-performing organizations.

National Leadership Area

***Re-Engineering schools for improvement*** (staff contract: Bob Blum).
NWREL's national leadership area in Re-engineering Schools for
Improvement extends and enhances its past successful work in its
national specialty on school change.

Re-engineering is the process of making things work. It means using what
has been learned about standards, school organization, comprehensive
reform, and other initiatives to help schools become high-performing
learning communities. However, it is conceptually distinct from past and
present reform movements, and addresses the needs and challenges schools
will face in the coming decades. This involves helping schools:

• implement structures, processes, and programs that have the greatest
potential for improving student performance;

• build the personal and organizational capacity necessary to support
intensive reform;

• create an organizational culture that promotes the values of
collaboration, shared responsibility,

• continuous learning by adults and students, and continuous improvement
in student performance;

• bring focus and coherence to efforts that sometimes address competing
demands (such as the demand for higher scores on multiple choice tests,
and the demand for learner-centered instructional strategies that foster
deeper understanding);

• negotiate the multiple challenges stemming from changing demands,
higher expectations, and greater ethnic and socioeconomic diversity; and

• figure out ways to reallocate resources---including time for staff s
to work, reflect, and plan together---in support of higher student
performance.

Work is being carried out in three components---research synthesis,
direct support to schools, and dissemination.

*• Research synthesis* products developed annually are: a topical
synthesis related to re-engineering, descriptions of research in
practice in schools or districts that have re-engineered successfully
and achieved results, and updated descriptions and new model
descriptions in the *Catalog of School Reform Models.*

*·• Direct support to schools* is delivered through: an annual National
Re-engineering Forum, Topical Institutes that are regional training
sessions providing focused interaction for school leaders, and training
and assistance for skill development of teams and individuals in
districts and schools.

*• Dissemination* includes print, media, and electronic activities.

This work is being carried out in collaboration with the American
Association of School Administrators, National Association of Secondary
School Principals, National Association of Elementary School Principals,
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Annenberg
Institute for School Reform at Brown, Consortium for Policy Research in
Education, Council of Chief State School Officers, and National
Clearinghouse on Comprehensive School Reform.

Key Accomplishments

NWREL "signature programs" of work conducted over two decades in
Trait-Based Assessment and Effective Schooling Practices provide a
research and development base for current work in the Student Assessment
and Re-engineering problem areas.

***Trait-Based Assessment**.* NWREL's trait-based assessment models in
writing, reading, oral communication, mathematics problem solving, and
bilingual language development provide teachers with powerful tools to
assess students' learning and to organize instruction. Assessment
literacy is a critical part of professional development activities for
teachers and school administrators to be able to make maximum use of
high-quality assessment results to guide student learning and to plan
effective school improvement activities.

NWREL's 6+1 Traits Writing Assessment Model has revolutionized writing
assessment and instruction in many thousands of classrooms across the
nation. The training associated with the 6+1 Traits Writing Assessment
Model is provided through workshops, training institutes, and training
of trainers institutes. The training of trainers institutes have led to
a large cadre of local and regional trainers who share the model beyond
NWREL's training activities. Writing has provided a model for other
language skills development work of NWREL. In the past 3 years
approximately 3,600 teachers have participated in nearly 40 Traits of an
Effective Reader training events. Most recently, assessment models have
been completed in Oral Communications and Spanish Writing. The
Mathematics Problem Solving Model toolkit includes all of the materials
and resources necessary to implement the model in schools and districts,
including a K--12 analytical trait scoring guide, student work samples
at all levels, anchor papers to guide teachers in assessing students'
problem solving, grade-level appropriate and standards-based tasks,
sample workshop agencies, handouts and overhead masters, classroom
observation tools, and problem solving video.

***Effective schooling practices.*** NWREL's syntheses of more than 30
years of educational research have identified and verified school- and
classroom-level practices that foster superior student performance
within a high-performing organization. This body of knowledge is used to
guide assistance to schools in such areas as safe and supportive school
environments characterized by agreed-upon vision and standards; sound
building and classroom management principles; improved student
performance; communication of high learning expectations; equity in
educational opportunities and outcomes; and community and parental
support of students' learning. Two NWREL landmark
publications---*Research You Can Use to Improve Results* and *Schooling
Practices That Matter Most*---are published by the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

These research synthesis resources provide the foundation for NWREL's
comprehensive school reform model, *Onward to Excellence (OTE).* OTE
engages the full school community in reform, including principal,
teachers, other staff, students, parents, community members, and central
office staff. Thirty-three schools across the country are using the new
generation model called OTE II to guide their comprehensive school
reform efforts and improve student learning. After only 1 year of
implementation, some of the schools are reporting improvements in test
scores.

Upcoming Products and Events

***Education Now and in the Future Conference*** is the northwest
region's major professional development event, drawing more than a
thousand participants each year *(Fall 2001, Portland, Oregon)*.

***By request booklets.*** Three booklets are developed each year on a
topic of frequently requested information. Each booklet contains an
explanation of the topic's relevance, a sampling of how northwest
schools are dealing with the issue, suggestions for adapting these ideas
to schools, and selected references and contact information. The first
2001 booklet was completed in May on the topic of *Supporting Beginning
Teachers.*

***Northwest Education* magazine.** Topics of quarterly issues in 2001
are charter schools, school building design *(both now available)*,
education standards *(October 2001)*, and teacher preparation and
induction *(December 2001).*

***Problem-focused resources.*** Process guides, research syntheses,
effective practices description, and training manuals being developed in
2001 in NWREL's five problem areas of work include:

• Re-engineering Schools: *Getting Started* process guide *(Fall 2001)*
and *Smaller Learning Communities* research synthesis *(Winter 2001).*

• Quality Teaching and Learning: *Sustaining Teachers' Motivation to
Improve Classroom Practice* research synthesis *(Winter 2001).*

• Assessment: Assessment Consumer Skills and Knowledge *(Winter 2001).*

• Reading and Language Development: Resource guide for teacher study
teams *(Winter 2001).*

• Family and Community Partnerships: Evaluation that Empowers training
manual *(Fall 2001).*

Pacific Resources for Education and Learning

**Address:** 1099 Alakea Street, 25th Floor,

Honolulu, HI 96813

**Phone:** (808) 441--1300

**Fax:** (808) 441--1385

**E-mail:** tomar@prel.org

**Internet:** http://www.prel.org

**CEO:** John Kofel

**Director:** Ronald Toma

**States Served:** American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana

Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae,

Pohnpei, and Yap), Guam, Hawaii, the Republic of the Marshall

Islands, and the Republic of Palau

**OERI Program Officer:** Stephanie Stoll Dalton, (202) 208--2497,
stephanie.dalton@ed.gov

Mission

To strengthen culture, increase literacy, and improve quality of life
locally, nationally, and globally.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

PREL serves 10 U.S. affiliated entities with varying political status
including a state, a commonwealth, a territory, and 4 independent
nations in free association with the United States. The region is spread
across 4.9 million square miles of ocean, islands, and atolls. It is
geographically vast and diverse, and many outlying areas are remote and
not easily accessible. Economic conditions in the region are typically
below U.S. poverty levels, and disproportionate percentages of the
population are undereducated and unemployed. Pacific languages are
predominant in most of the entities; thus, many people are
English-as-second-language learners.

PREL's Board of Directors (which includes the chief state school
officers from the 10 entities served by PREL) identified the top 3
critical problems challenging Pacific education as follows:

• Problem 1: In the Pacific, significant numbers of students are not
reading independently in either English or their home languages by the
end of third grade (staff contact: Tim Donahue).

• Problem 2: Low-performing schools in the region have difficulty
improving student learning in part because they lack adequate or
appropriate assessment systems and accountability processes (staff
contact: Don Burger).

• Problem 3: A significant percentage of teachers in the Pacific region
do not have the necessary content knowledge or pedagogical skills to
create high-performing learning communities (staff contact: L. David van
Broekhuizen).

PREL will use a holistic and integrated approach in addressing the
problem areas of reading, assessment and accountability, and
professional development. Working intensively with a small set of
schools to build procedural knowledge and document successful practices
and strategies, PREL will test that knowledge by transferring it to a
larger set of schools and promote the use of this knowledge broadly
throughout the region.

PREL will work with Pacific departments and ministries of education to
identify approximately 13 Co-Development Partner (CDP) Schools, at least
1 elementary school in each entity served by PREL, to serve as primary
research and development sites. PREL will work collaboratively with
these schools on an ongoing and sustained basis. Generating and
supporting site-based solutions to the problems identified as major
issues in the Pacific region, PREL will guide and support the efforts of
Pacific educators to create high-performing learning communities.
Support to each site will include the development of a school-based
school improvement plan focusing on reading and assessment, in-class
teacher guidance and support, development of first-language and/or
English reading materials and assessments, and additional professional
development.

PREL will also work with approximately 25 Collaborative Partner Schools
throughout the Region. These schools will have access to the learnings
from the work in the CDP Schools while also serving as pilot sites to
determine the efficacy and replicability of the strategies, practices,
and materials developed and implemented at the CDP Schools. The entire
school-improvement process will be driven by research and guided by
formative evaluation. It will include curriculum, instruction, and
assessment components focusing on reading and assessment and
accountability while adhering to PREL's quality-assurance protocols and
practices to ensure high-quality work.

PREL will partner and work collaboratively with the other
regional-educational laboratories as well as institutions of higher
education, national research centers (e.g., Center for the Improvement
of Early Reading Achievement, Center for Research on Education,
Diversity and Excellence, and Center for Research on Evaluation,
Standards and Student Testing) and professional agencies and
organizations (e.g., National Association of State Boards of Education,
American Educational Research Association, and the International Reading
Association), and state education departments and ministries, engaging
in meaningful and in-depth investigation of educational issues of
importance to school communities, not only in the Pacific region but
throughout the nation. PREL's most important partners are the schools,
communities, and educational professionals in the entities it serves in
the U.S. affiliated Pacific.

National Leadership Area

**Curriculum and Instruction Related to Reading and Language Mastery**
(staff contact: Tim Donahue). PREL's work in the national leadership
area of curriculum and instruction related to Reading and Language
Mastery will focus on improving reading and literacy instruction by
facilitating access to appropriate, high-quality teaching and learning
resources on the World Wide Web.

In response to the current problems associated with the overwhelming
amount of reading and language-mastery information now freely available
via the World Wide Web, PREL will design, develop, and maintain a Web
site that will find, organize, and interrelate information resources on
reading and language mastery. The Web site will feature a virtual
reference interview using natural language to match the user's interest
with the most appropriate information.

The Web site will be conceptually based and organized around a
two-dimensional matrix that features a user-friendly interface.
Teachers, administrators, curriculum specialists, and parents will be
able to easily access information and resources pertaining to:

• ensuring excellent learning environments that maximize reading
success;

• promoting the use of effective strategies in literacy development in
the early grades;

• increasing teachers' content knowledge and skills in providing reading
instruction; and

• accommodating the literacy needs of English language learners.

A panel of nationally recognized experts in the areas of reading,
assessment and accountability, professional development, and English as
a second language will ensure that all Web sites and pages included in
the matrix will provide high-quality, research-based information
resources.

Key Accomplishments

Learning from what has come before and building on that knowledge is a
powerful paradigm in the Pacific region. During the previous 5 years of
the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Program, PREL conducted
valuable and informative research that guided its efforts to support the
Region's education community in striving for excellence, while also
providing information leading to changes in education policy.

***PLUS Study***. One of the most important research endeavors of the
previous REL contract was the Pacific Language Use in Schools (PLUS)
Study. The PLUS Study examined literacy instruction and achievement in
Pacific languages and English. As a result of this study, a database
containing research and information on current reading instruction was
compiled. The database is a valuable resource that will inform the
literacy improvement efforts to be implemented during the current REL
contract. Additionally, Pacific-language reading assessments in nine
indigenous languages were developed for the study and are currently
being used as a measure of initial first-language literacy in several
Pacific entities. PREL's work in the development of these reading
assessments was groundbreaking. The majority of entities in PREL's
region did not previously have any measure of first-language reading
achievement. PREL's work in literacy in both English and Pacific
languages continues into the next REL contract. PREL staff will continue
to support the development of valid, reliable, and relevant reading
assessments both for classroom use as well as for entity-wide testing.

***Improving literacy***. During the previous 5-year contract, PREL
developed a series of print and multimedia products related to improving
literacy efforts in linguistically diverse contexts. PREL utilized a
combination of these products in schools, institutions of higher
education, communities for training, and other professional-development
endeavors related to literacy. The research series included Language Use
at Home and School, Teacher Diversity: Implications for Professional
Development, and Literacy in Indigenous Communities. Among the
multimedia products are the Reading Aloud to Children bilingual tapes,
which give parents guidance on how to read with their children, and the
Pacific Area Language Materials (PALM) CD-ROM, a compilation of hundreds
of stories, legends, and other literacy materials in Pacific languages.
In response to regional needs, PREL will continue to provide support in
the development of first-language reading materials and their use to
improve literacy instruction.

Upcoming Products and Events

***Pacific Educational Conference.*** The conference is one of the
largest gatherings of Pacific educators featuring hundreds of
presentations by regional practitioners *(Summer 2001, Guam)*.

***School renewal process.*** PREL will work to develop a school renewal
process that is research-based and designed and developed specifically
for schools in the Pacific region. This will include process templates
to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment with student-learning
standards *(Pilot in Fall 2001)*.

***Literacy series.*** The production of a monograph series on critical
topics addressing creation of literacy-focused high-performing learning
communities. These may include a framework for effective professional
development in the Pacific region, research papers on improving Reading
Outcomes in the Pacific region, and research papers on developing
quality Assessment/Accountability Systems in the Pacific region *(Winter
2001).*

***Early-reading guide.*** This guide will help assess a school's
early-reading program and will include templates for teachers to monitor
and track student progress in reading in the early grades; reporting
formats to communicate student progress in reading achievement to
parents; and a sampler of formative assessments for early reading
achievement in English as well as in the home language of bilingual
learners *(Pilot in Fall 2001)*.

***High-frequency word lists for the 10 predominant languages in the
pacific region.*** Lists in these languages are not presently available,
but are crucial to the development of early literacy. The lists will be
derived from the PALM CD-ROM developed during the previous PREL contract
*(Winter 2001)*.

Southwest Educational Development Laboratory

**Address:** 211 East Seventh Street

Austin, TX 78701

**Phone:** (512) 476--6861 or (800) 476--6861 (voice);

\(512\) 476--6861 x 304 (TT)

**Fax:** (512) 476--2286

**E-mail:** info@sedl.org

**Internet:** http://www.sedl.org

**Director:** Wesley A. Hoover

**States Served:** Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas

**OERI Program Officer:** Deborah A. Williams, (202) 219--2204,
deborah.williams@ed.gov

Mission

To find, share, and sustain effective solutions to educational problems
facing practitioners and decisionmakers in the southwestern United
States. SEDL's particular emphasis is on ensuring educational equity for
all students.

SEDL pursues this mission through diverse and interrelated funding and
project arrangements. The primary strategies are those of integrated
research, development, and dissemination.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

According to state data, more than 450 schools and districts in the
southwestern region are classified as low performing. The methods for
identifying these schools differ as do the characteristics of the
schools and districts and the nature of their performance. Despite these
differences, schools and districts in the region share some common
problems.

*• **All five states must improve student achievement in reading and
mathematics*** (staff contact: David Rainey and David Hill). Too many
students in all five states fail to meet state expectations in one or
both subjects, and students who are not successful in reading and
mathematics are unlikely to be successful in school or later in life.

*• **Nearly all low-performing schools and districts in the region lack
the "know-how" to make significant improvements*** (staff contact: David
Rainey and David Hill). Staffs in low-performing schools and districts
have little practice in translating their beliefs and expectations into
a coherent educational program, and in aligning curriculum and
assessments with standards. They need assistance in learning to collect,
analyze, and interpret data that would help them assess their current
practice, define their problem, and manage their work. Those staff s
also need help in finding strategies to improve their performance and
build their capacity to carry out such work.

*• **Assistance and support must be available at both school and
district levels*** (staff contact: David Rainey and David Hill).
Improvements at the school level alone will not be sustained without
support from the district level as well. In addition, districts that
learn to work successfully with one or two low-performing schools will
be able to transfer the knowledge and skills gained to work with other
low-performing schools.

· ***The technical assistance infrastructure in each state lacks the
capacity and/or resources to respond to the numbers of low-performing
schools and districts requiring assistance*** (staff contact: David
Rainey and David Hill). The five state education agencies in SEDL's
region acknowledge there are not enough resources available to provide
high-quality assistance to low-performing schools and districts in need.

• ***Limited research-based information exists on helping low-performing
schools and districts transform into high-performing learning
communities*** (staff contact: Shirley Hord for practitioners and
Catherine Clark for policymakers). The existing R&D knowledge base is
rich with advice on how to work on more isolated and limited improvement
problems, but lacks guidance on how to work more systemically and to
build a culture of continuous inquiry and improvement. Moreover, that
lack of knowledge exists across state, district, school, and classroom
levels of the system for practitioners and policymakers alike.

With its partner, the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas
at Austin, SEDL is addressing critical problems through its work to
assist low-performing schools and districts in becoming high-performing
learning communities. SEDL will work intensively with 20 sites, each
containing the district office and one or more low-performing schools.
The purpose is to help each build its capacity to consistently attain
high levels of student achievement, the essence of a high-performing
learning community. As part of this partnership with schools and
districts, SEDL will provide research-based, long-term technical
assistance in improving reading and mathematics instruction. SEDL will
start site work by helping the staff of each school and district assess
its needs, plan for improvement, and make strategic decisions to improve
teaching and learning.

As SEDL helps schools and districts adopt deeper, more systemic
approaches to the improvement of teaching and learning, they will also
build the capacity of the existing technical assistance infrastructure
in each state to support the transformation of low-performing schools
and districts. SEDL will identify at least one assistance provider at
each site. At the same time, SEDL will work with a larger group of
technical assistance providers in each state to reflect on findings and
share tools.

Besides deepening the skills of regional technical assistance providers,
SEDL will contribute to the body of procedural knowledge about how
practitioners and policymakers can work across levels and components of
the education system. This "know-how" will focus on the content, as well
as the relationships, linkages, and pathways that schools, districts,
and policymakers can follow to support transformations to
high-performing learning communities. To enrich the research base about
systemic approaches, SEDL will also translate that procedural knowledge
into new or modified tools and products to be used by technical
assistance providers, practitioners, policymakers, and community
members.

National Leadership Area

***Family and community involvement*** (staff contact: Catherine
Jordan). SEDL's National Center for Family and Community Connections
with Schools focuses on the problem of involving families and
communities in schools to promote student achievement, especially in
reading and mathematics. Specifically, the work of the Center addresses
three questions: how to involve families from diverse communities in
schools?; how to involve parents in preparing children to enter
kindergarten?; and how to involve community organizations in developing
high-performing learning communities in schools? The Center has
identified the following strategies to address these questions. The
strategies are:

• Build a national presence for the Center that provides a trusted
source for research and practice about connecting family and communities
with schools to support student achievement.

• Synthesize emerging findings and resources so that an effective
database of research and best practices is available.

• Disseminate information through an annual conference, an annual
report, the media, and Web-based tools to help advance procedural
knowledge in the area of connecting family and community involvement to
student achievement.

• Work with such national partners as the Johns-Hopkins's Center on
School, Family, and Community Partnerships; the National Center for
Early Development and Learning at UNC, Chapel Hill; and the Public
Education Network, to gain expertise and leading edge knowledge about
building comprehensive family and community connections with schools to
support student learning.

• Provide training and networking across the Regional Education
Laboratory network for information exchange and understanding of the
field.

Key Accomplishments

During FY2001--05, SEDL will build on the procedural knowledge, which
was developed by two programs---Strategies for Increasing School Success
(SISS) and the Program for Refining Educational Partnerships (PREP)---to
address the development of professional learning communities and
sustained partnerships among home, school, and communities to support
student achievement.

***Development of learning communities.*** The SISS program was designed
to facilitate the development of professional learning communities in
schools for the improvement of student learning. SEDL staff examined
what was needed for schools to operate as professional learning
communities and what happened as schools undertook comprehensive school
reform. The project resulted in the creation of procedural knowledge
about the degree of readiness, organizational structures, and
administrative supports needed for schools to take a more systemic
approach to the improvement of student learning. SEDL found that five
dimensions, which are vital to the development of a professional
learning community, can help overcome barriers to implementing
successful school improvement. From this work, SEDL developed tools such
as *Leadership for Changing Schools* training program and a monograph,
*Professional Learning Communities: An Ongoing Exploration*. The tools
will be used as SEDL addresses the transformation of low-performing
schools and development of technical assistance capacity.

***Development of sustained partnerships to support student
achievement*.** Working with schools and community members, SEDL's
Program for Refining Educational Partnership developed and applied the
Collaborative Action Team (CAT) process in 22 sites across the
southwestern region. The partnerships were designed to be
self-sustaining over time to support improved student outcomes.
Evaluation data show the majority of partnerships have been sustained
from 1 to 4 years and indicate continued growth. SEDL created procedural
knowledge about how to focus on student achievement, create certain
organizational structures, and provide sufficient time so that schools
and communities can develop self-sustaining collaborative partnerships.
Based on the results of this program, SEDL developed print and
electronic resources including *Creating Collaborative Action Teams:
Working Together for Student Success*, which will be used with intensive
site work.

Upcoming Products and Events

***Regional policy forum.*** SEDL will hold the 2001 policy forum on
resource allocation. The forum will provide state-level policymakers and
key staff members with information on policy issues related to resource
allocation. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Joe Johnson, Director of
Compensatory Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education *(Fall
2001, Albuquerque, New Mexico)*.

***Insights on education policy, research, and practice**,* SEDL's
policy briefing paper series, is published annually and reports on
policy concerns in the southwestern region. The first edition of
*Insights* will report on current knowledge of resource allocation
practice and will offer perspectives on the issues and challenges facing
policymakers and practitioners. To access the *Insights* series online,
go to http://www.sedl.org/pubs/policy/ *(Fall 2001, Release of First
Edition).*

***Annual Forum on Family Involvement with Education**.* SEDL's National
Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools will convene
its first annual forum in conjunction with the National Community
Education Association (NCEA). NCEA's conference targets community
educators, teachers, administrators, policymakers, higher education
representatives, and community advisory committee members. SEDL will
convene a full-day preconference program focused on the Center's
research synthesis. The interactive session will engage participants in
deepening their understanding of issues they face when building family
and community connections with schools *(Fall 2001, Charleston, South
Carolina)*.

***Intensive site work.*** "Early Findings from the Field," will be
SEDL's first annual report about its intensive site work. The report
will describe activities of districts and schools transforming
themselves from low-performing schools to high-performing learning
communities, and document their progress in improving student
achievement in reading and mathematics *(Spring 2002).*

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

**Address:** 915 Northridge Street, 2nd Floor

Greensboro, NC 27403

**Phone:** (800) 755--3277

**Fax:** (336) 315--7457

**E-mail:** jsanders@serve.org

**Internet:** http://www.serve.org

**Director:** John R. Sanders

**States Served:** Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North
Carolina,

and South Carolina

**OERI Program Officer:** Sharon Horn, (202) 219-2203,
sharon.horn@ed.gov

Mission

To promote and support the continuous improvement of educational
opportunities for all learners in the Southeast.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

SERVE's program of work is targeted at a fundamental and pervasive
regional problem---closing the achievement gap, particularly in
low-performing schools. SERVE recognizes that it must address this
problem by attacking a variety of root causes; therefore, the work of
the Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE is organized around six
critical issues: transforming low-performing schools into
high-performing learning communities, advancing educator quality,
informing public policy, closing the achievement gap through early
childhood, promoting literacy, and implementing standards, assessment,
and accountability. The work focuses on the production and dissemination
of procedural knowledge---that is, the tools, models, procedures, etc.
for addressing these critical issues.

***Transforming low-performing schools into high-performing learning
communities*** (staff contact: Mary Apodaca). At the forefront of the
achievement gap are those schools each state has labeled
"low-performing" or in greatest need of reform. Addressing their needs
is a formidable challenge, requiring interventions designed to build the
capacity for continuous improvement. SERVE employs the following linked
strategies designed to help these schools:

• SuperSites, one of SERVE's signature works, has been in operation
since January 2000, when the first SuperSite was launched in the
Mississippi Delta in partnership with the North Bolivar School District
of Shelby, Mississippi, a rural, high-poverty area. Five
educator-mentors work one-on-one with teachers and administrators to
implement the state-mandated Corrective Action Plan by revising
curriculum, coaching in classrooms and at the school and district
levels, and assisting with leadership development and strategic
planning. Future sites are anticipated in other SERVE states. Current
research and preliminary results indicate that this intensive, sustained
intervention can accelerate reform and improvement in student
performance in low-performing schools dramatically.

• Procedural knowledge---it isn't enough to capture it; SERVE recognizes
the central importance of sharing the word with people who can use the
information to make a difference in classrooms, schools, and
communities. The SERVE Regional Forum on School Improvement and the
Southern States Seminar (on low-performing schools) are annual events
that illustrate how SERVE disseminates procedural knowledge to educators
and provides an opportunity to share successful practices and lessons
learned.

• Partnerships with state departments of education allow SERVE to expand
its significant work addressing the needs of low-performing schools and
districts. SERVE will partner with the Alabama Department of Education
on the Alabama Low-Performing School Project to research and develop
procedural knowledge and a systematic way to deliver services and
technical assistance to reach classrooms and students. SERVE will work
with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's Achievement
Gap Office to define best-practice strategies with the highest promise
for North Carolina schools.

• Addressing national problems and concerns, SERVE's National Center for
Homeless Education is a research and information resource that
disseminates referral information related to the complex needs
surrounding the education of homeless children and youth.

***Advancing educator quality*** (staff contact: Steven Bingham). With
increased retirements stemming from an aging workforce, higher licensure
standards, and implementation of decreased pupil-to-teacher ratios,
keeping a qualified teacher in every classroom is a continuous
challenge. Yet without an adequate supply of qualified teachers and
effective professional development, there is little hope of closing the
achievement gap. SERVE's strategy to address this challenge includes
providing a wide variety of teacher professional development, working
with school leaders through academies, identifying and sharing knowledge
about higher-quality teaching, and partnering to coordinate and expand
knowledge and support to teachers and leaders as they strive to increase
student achievement. For example, SERVE partners with the Georgia
Department of Education in implementing the Teacher Advancement Program
(TAP) developed by the Milken Family Foundation, and SERVE works with
the Southeast Center for Teacher Quality on a cross-state initiative on
teacher supply-and-demand issues and as part of a regional researcher
network on teachers and teaching. Montevallo University is a SERVE
partner working on the Teachers As Researchers Academy, and SERVE
Research Scientists are working with Fordham University on
groundbreaking research in superintendent turnover. The A+ Foundation,
affiliated with the Alabama Chamber of Commerce, has assumed a major
role in our Teacher Dialogue Forums.

***Informing public** policy* (staff contact: Helen DeCasper). The
southeast is arguably the nation's "hotbed" of state-level reform---a
testament to the understanding policymakers have of the need for
education reform in the southeast. SERVE recognizes that direct support
to schools, districts, and communities must be framed in the context of
state reform and state reform must be informed by local needs and
research-based information. SERVE has several policy-related efforts in
place to address these unique needs of its region, including a SERVE
senior policy research analyst located in each state education agency
and one at-large position serving the region to assist in synthesizing
policy and research information, developing policy options, and
conducting other policy or legislative analyses as requested. *Policy
Briefs* and reports are prepared to address research findings. SERVE
supports the development of research-based, objective state education
policy through a Policy Network composed of advisors to governors, chief
state school officers, state boards of education, legislators, and other
key policymakers. SERVE connects Network members through an annual event
and the ongoing use of technology.

***Closing the achievement gap through early childhood*** (staff
contact: Catherine Scott-Little). Early childhood research reinforces a
major tenet for closing the achievement gap---get children off to a
solid beginning through education; otherwise, at-risk children fall
farther behind. SERVE's Ready Children Project will increase the number
of children who enter school healthy and ready for success by increasing
the quantity and quality of early childhood school readiness programs
through research-based training, technical assistance, and other
resources for schools, childcare professionals, and parents. Serving
young children builds collaborative relationships among the early
childhood community to enhance nationwide education efforts for children
from birth to age eight. Staff conduct research, write publications,
host conferences, provide training, and offer technical assistance to
promote sound early childhood policies and practices. Also, an Early
Childhood Leadership Institute will be held in partnership with
Mississippi State University's Early Childhood Institute.

***Promoting literacy*** (staff contact: Paula Egelson). Research
emphasizes the foundational role literacy plays in education---reading
really is "fundamental" to academic success. SERVE's strategy to address
this problem focuses on Mississippi's critical need to improve literacy
and involves a partnership with the Mississippi Department of Education,
the University of Mississippi, and the Barksdale Foundation. Mississippi
school districts are chosen each year to receive training and technical
support to incorporate all components of the Mississippi Reading Reform
Model. Another 20 districts receive support to incorporate some of the
elements. SERVE will evaluate the Initiative and provide yearly reports
concerning the status of evaluation activities. SERVE will also assist
the Mississippi Department of Education in synthesizing the evaluation
findings and providing results of the synthesis to the public. The
Center for Educational Research and Evaluation at the University of
Mississippi is also a partner in this effort. Another SERVE literacy
effort (related to the Barksdale Reading Initiative) is the
Family-School Partnership Project designed to assist Mississippi
prekindergarten teachers in low-achieving schools to increase parent
involvement through family literacy activities. Work will include
identifying family literacy best practices, training for cohorts of
teachers in low-performing schools, and implementing the program in
classrooms.

***Implementing standards, assessment, and accountability*** (staff
contact: Wendy McColskey ). In the last decade, southeastern states have
implemented content standards, testing programs, and accountability
mechanisms as primary tools for raising student achievement. However,
without significant and coordinated efforts to build district, school,
and teacher capacities to organize teaching and learning around higher
standards, and to build cultures that use assessment to improve
learning, accountability initiatives will not be able to achieve the
goal of improved student outcomes for all students. SERVE's commitment
to support the capacity building needed to make higher standards in all
classrooms a reality includes work at all levels: state, district,
school, classroom, and higher education.

At the state level, SERVE is developing procedural knowledge about how
to improve state policies. At the district level, SERVE is studying how
low-achieving districts respond to state standards, assessment, and
accountability influences; developing tools for districts to use in
assessing the quality of students' opportunities to learn in classrooms
as a tool for school improvement and teacher growth; and supporting a
learning community of districts (called SERVE-Leads) committed to
developing procedural knowledge about the district role in leading
standards-based reform. At the school level, SERVE is developing a
template for an eighth grade culminating performance assessment. Its
purpose is to focus middle school students on demonstrating competence
in the skills needed to succeed in high school. At the classroom level,
SERVE is summarizing the emerging research on "best practices" in
classroom assessment and offering assessment skill training to teachers.
Finally, SERVE is working with higher education to finalize and scale-up
an assessment course for preservice teachers that will help them
graduate ready to take on the challenges of standards-based reform in
their classrooms.

For teachers to teach to higher standards, they must be held to a more
compelling and research-based vision of good teaching than is found in
many teacher evaluation systems. Thus, SERVE is field testing and
scaling up a teacher evaluation system that will encourage teachers to
strive toward higher professional standards.

National Leadership Area

***Expanded learning opportunities*** (staff contact: Catherine
Scott-Little). The formal boundaries of school-based education have been
expanding for many years. Head Start, 21st Century Community Learning
Centers, prekindergarten, and summer school are only a few examples of
programs, initiatives, and supplements to the list. SERVE's work in its
National Leadership Area is aimed to systematically bring order to this
important education issue. As part of its commitment to this national
effort, SERVE will conduct an assessment to determine the status of
research in the expanded learning field. SERVE's research agenda will
take a two-pronged approach. In the area of early childhood education,
SERVE is examining the plethora of benchmarks that have been developed
for preschool-age children. Results from this research will inform early
childhood educators on the skills and characteristics children need to
develop to be "ready" for school. The second research study examines
indicators of high-quality school-age programming, pulling together
current attempts to evaluate expanded learning programs and research on
the impact of these programs. Results from this synthesis will provide
information to guide schools and other providers as they design and
evaluate school-age expanded learning programs. SERVE is also organizing
a series of discussion groups, informal symposia, and conferences to
promote cross-organizational collaboration and dissemination of research
findings in the expanded learning arena.

Along with other key partners, SERVE is developing a plan for
coordinated technical assistance to schools. The technical assistance
plan will address support for schools and communities to facilitate
community collaboration (especially in rural areas or areas that often
receive the least help in developing services for children), provide
training on the school improvement/school reform knowledge base and
implications for quality afterschool and expanded learning programs,
encourage collaboration with the 21st Century Community Learning Centers
program to assist potential bidders (especially from rural,
limited-income, and/or culturally diverse communities) in developing
successful proposals, and offer assistance for schools and communities
in providing high-quality early education services.

Key Accomplishments

SERVE has developed products and provided assistance to states,
districts, and schools across the region. Among the many successful
efforts, two stand out as especially promising to positively impact
low-performing schools and to help close the achievement gap. They are:

***Senior Project Program***---In existence since 1994, Senior Project
links the development of oral and written communication skills for
secondary students and the creation of a culminating assessment for
12th-graders. Students produce a research paper on an approved topic of
their choice, develop a related product, and present their findings
before a community review panel. Today, over 60 high schools in the 6
SERVE states participate in the program, and a variety of support is
available to southeastern high schools that wish to implement Senior
Project. Priority will be given to low-achieving high schools in rural
areas. A hotline, electronic billboard, training, annual institute,
Senior Project research, and SERVE Senior Project products are available
to interested educators. Senior Project sites exist in all SERVE states:
Alabama (2), Florida (16), Georgia (3), Mississippi (8), North Carolina
(31), and South Carolina (3).

***Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) Program
Implementation Study***---SERVE began a 3-year study in 1999*--*2000 of
the progress of CSRD implementation in 38 schools across its 6-state
region. The study looks at a purposive sample of 10 percent of all CSRD
schools in the southeast that are implementing various self-contained,
externally developed, comprehensive school reform models, as well as
those integrating components from locally developed approaches. The
sample includes urban, suburban, and rural communities. CSRD sites exist
in all SERVE states: Alabama (4), Florida (12), Georgia (7), Mississippi
(4), North Carolina (6), and South Carolina (5).

Upcoming Products and Events

***The 2001 SERVE Forum on School Improvement: Sharing Knowledge,
Expanding Learning*.** The sixth-annual SERVE Forum will
convene teachers, administrators, community leaders, and national
experts for 3 days of dialogue, instruction, team-building, and sharing
*(Fall 2001, Charlotte, North Carolina).*

***Policy Colloquium*.** SERVE is cosponsoring with the BellSouth
Foundation and the Columbia Group a "Briefing of Southeastern
Congressional Delegations on Educational Research," focusing on research
conducted by the Rand Corporation on southeastern regional performance
and policy implications *(Spring 2001, Washington, DC).*

***Teacher of the Year (TOY) Advisory Committee Meeting*.** SERVE
biannually convenes current and immediate-past Teachers of the Year from
each of the six states as a powerful network and think tank on teaching,
learning, and educational policy *(Fall 2001, North Carolina Center for
Advancement and Teaching).*

***Tomorrow's Child: Benefiting from Today's
Family-School-Community-Business Partnerships*.** This *Sharing Success*
document provides descriptions of successful
family-school-community-business partnerships in early childhood
education *(Fall 2001)*.

***Building Babies' Brains: A Training for Infant/Toddler Caregivers*.**
This training guide is designed for presenting understandable
brain-based educational research to child caregivers *(Fall 2001)*.

***Virtual Libraries in the Southeast: A Guide to Online Databases
Available to Educators in the SERVE States*.** This Technology in
Learning document offers readers information on how to access licensed
databases in the southeast *(Fall 2001)*.

Western Regional Education Laboratory at WestEd

**Address:** 730 Harrison Street

San Francisco, CA 94107

**Phone:** (415) 565--3000 or (877) 4WestEd

**Fax:** (415) 565--3012

**E-mail:** dtorres@wested.org

**Internet:** http://www.wested.org

**CEO:** Glen H. Harvey

**Director:** Gary D. Estes

**States Served:** Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah

**OERI Program Officer:** Gil Narro Garcia, (202) 219--2144,
gil.garcia@ed.gov

Mission

*WestEd, a research, development, and service agency, works with
education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity,
and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.* WestEd's regional
educational laboratory brings R&D knowledge and processes to inform
policy and strengthen practice in a four-state region. A central goal is
to help under-performing schools become places where all children
succeed. Laboratory staff develop powerful tools and processes to help
bring that transformation about, conduct applied research, and make
knowledge and tools widely available through products and partnerships
with regional service agencies.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

Four dimensions identified by regional educators and WestEd's Board of
Directors as critical to reform are the focus of work in this 5-year
contract:

• Aligned standards-based accountability systems that support effective
practices and student achievement;

• School and district leadership that can build high-performing learning
communities;

• High quality teachers recruited and supported throughout their careers
to reach high levels of accomplishment; and

• Strong communities that support children by strengthening families,
schools, and other community institutions.

***Standards-based accountability*** (staff contact: Paul Koehler). As
the western states strive to put in place standards-based accountability
systems focused on results, they encounter many barriers: lack of
coherence across state, district, and school practices; poor alignment
across standards, assessments, and accountability measures; and
inadequate support mechanisms to build the capacity of students,
teachers, and administrators to meet the increased expectations.
WestEd's work focuses on helping policymakers create coherent systems
aligned at state and local levels, and on strengthening the capacity of
educators to use that system. WestEd provides expert policy assistance,
a series of Policy Briefs, and tools and processes that promote use of
student achievement data to guide school decisionmaking. Partners in the
development of data-use tools include the Regional Technology in
Education Consortium, the Eisenhower Math-Science Consortium, and local
service providers working with low-performing schools such as Utah's
Title 1 Distinguished Educators and California's External Evaluators.

***Leadership*** (staff contact: Kate Jamentz). Low-performing schools
need strong leadership to bring about real change. To be successful,
leaders need to learn how to guide school communities in setting common
high standards, support teachers to use student work diagnostically to
plan instruction, and promote collective action to improve student
performance. New forms of distributed leadership are essential. But
preparation for these new core competencies is hard to come by. WestEd
is working with districts and states to create effective infrastructures
that provide high quality professional development for school and
district leaders. Tools and strategies for developing core skills,
including protocols, facilitator training and video cases, focus on
community engagement and guiding standards-based practice. Key partners
include the California School Leadership Academy, Nevada's Professional
Development Networks, the Student Success Alliance in Utah, and the
K--12 Center at Northern Arizona University.

***Teacher quality*** (staff contact: Aida Walqui). The western states
recognize the critical importance of high-quality teaching and are
working to build support for teacher development across a continuum from
recruitment through preservice and induction to career-long learning.
But teacher shortages and the demands of high-poverty environments often
mean that the students who need the most help are in classrooms with
underprepared teachers. The need is especially urgent as it relates to
one of the fastest growing portions of the student population: students
who are not native English speakers and those whose home cultures differ
significantly from that of their teachers. WestEd's Teacher Quality
Initiative is working with states and teacher education stakeholders to
ensure that a coordinated system supports the professional growth of
classroom teachers through all stages of their careers. In addition, in
partnership with Stanford University and the New Teacher Center, staff
are developing multimedia products and processes to help teachers work
more effectively with English language learners.

***Strong communities*** (staff contact: Beth Ann Berliner). Recent
research clearly shows that what's needed to improve student achievement
is not limited to what goes on inside the schoolhouse doors and during
the customary school day. Educational success requires reversing the
effects of poverty by rebuilding neighborhoods into safe, thriving, and
desirable places that support families to live, work, raise, and educate
their children. In a multiyear innovative effort bringing together the
best ideas and practices from school reform, family support, and
community building, WestEd will work in partnership with a Community
Laboratory site to create a comprehensive approach to support children
by strengthening families, schools, and other community institutions.
This effort includes developing specific processes to enhance the
effectiveness and health of local service agencies and outreach to
families.

National Leadership Area

***Assessment of educational achievement*** (staff contact: Stanley
Rabinowitz). Major assessment issues confronting policymakers and
educators nationwide include: alignment of national, state, and local
assessments with content standards, technical adequacy of different
forms of assessment, efficiency so that the burden of assessment is
distributed across grades and schools, and flexibility and balance
across state and local levels. Complementing ongoing work in more than
20 states, WestEd will bring together quarterly a national group of
assessment and accountability specialists identified by state
policymakers. In collaboration with this National Assessment Work Group,
WestEd will: synthesize what is already known about key topics in a
series of Knowledge Briefs, identify the most relevant knowledge gaps
and research those gaps, and explore solutions to critical problems. A
topic theme will be chosen each year; the focus in year one is
high-stakes testing. An Annual Assessment Conference will be cohosted
each fall with the National Center for the Improvement of Educational
Assessment.

Key Accomplishments

***Guiding standards-based practice.*** Working intensively with
leadership teams in northern California districts and schools, the
Western Assessment Collaborative (WAC) developed a powerful strategy for
helping schools and districts really understand and engage in
standards-based practice. The strategy proved highly successful in
enabling schools to establish performance standards, use classroom and
schoolwide assessments to guide teaching and learning, develop new
instructional skills, and dramatically increase public engagement in
decisions about how to define, measure and improve school quality.
Student performance also improved; for example, 89 percent of project
schools met California's Academic Performance Index growth targets. This
work continues in the Leadership Initiative. To build the capacity of
district leaders and principals around the region to effectively
implement standards-based practice, additional tools and processes based
on WAC's work will be developed and disseminated.

***Data-driven decisionmaking.*** Making sense of data and using data to
guide planning for school improvement became easier for schools and
districts that worked with WestEd in the last contract. From workshops
on interpretation of test data to field-testing use of a Quality School
Portfolio process developed by Center for Research on Evaluation,
Standards, and Student Testing as part of their improvement planning,
educators found strategies to help them with an urgent need. As
accountability requirements increase, and as technology provides new
tools for database development and reporting of data, schools need
technical help, but even more so, they need to use these technical
skills to inform local planning. In the Standards-based Accountability
Initiative, staff and partners will build on this earlier work and
develop an expanded set of resources to support data use within a
framework of inquiry and planning.

Upcoming Products and Events

***Series of policy briefs*** on critical topics published quarterly.
*Time & Learning: Making Time Count* published April 2001.

***Series of knowledge briefs*** on high‑stakes assessment, addressing
topics such as intended and unintended effects of high-stakes testing,
technical adequacy, and the status of computer-assisted testing, to be
published throughout the year.

***Video that shows how teachers can analyze student work*** as evidence
of what students know and to guide instructional decisions *(Winter
2001).*

***Guide on how to build and sustain effective school leadership
teams*** that can mobilize the whole school community *(Winter 2001)*.

***Regional seminars on critical topics in teacher development*.** One
of this year's seminars will focus on supply and demand in teacher
development, new sectors, and the use of technology *(Spring 2001, San
Francisco, California).*

***Regional Superintendents' Institute*.** Network meetings for
superintendents and leadership teams of urban districts focused on
low-performing schools *(Inaugural meeting, Fall 2001)*.

***National Assessment Conference*** cohosted annually with the National
Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment *(Fall 2001)*.