At Expeditionary Learning Centers, teachers, students, administrators, parents, and community members create a school culture that embodies ten design principles and key program components. That Work initiative is the nation's largest and fastest-growing effort to combine challenging academic courses and modern vocational studies to raise the achievement of high school students. The initiative was established in 1987 by the SREB-State Vocational Education Consortium, a partnership of states, school systems and school sites. The Modern Red Schoolhouse seeks to make all students high achievers in core academic subjects by building on the virtues of traditional American education and by incorporating modern technology, research evidence on how students learn best, the wisdom of teachers, and the involvement of parents who understand the needs of their sons and daughters. The National Center on Education and the Economy is the nation's leader in standards-based education.
Roots refers to strategies designed to ensure that every child meets world class standards.
Wings refers to improvements in curriculum and instruction designed to let children soar. The School Development Program, developed by James P. Comer, M.D. of the Yale Child Study Center at Yale University in 1968, is a systemic school reform strategy currently being implemented in more than 82 school districts in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia. This highly successful model is currently in use in 750 schools in 37 states. The Talent Development High School, unlike many schoolwide innovations, is based not only on research-based principles that guide school improvement, but also on specific organizational and curricular components that schools can apply to operationalize the principles. The Talent Development model provides a comprehensive package of specific high school changes in school organization, social relations, and instruction for students placed at risk, based upon research on student motivation and teacher commitment, that can be reliably implemented with adaptations to meet local circumstances.