Comprehensive School Reform

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) is one of ten regional laboratories and has a mission to help pre-K–16 educators use the best available evidence to make decisions leading to improved student achievement and reduced performance gaps. REL-NEI places a special emphasis on helping states, districts, and schools build capacity to use their data effectively; forming and conducting high-quality research and evaluation through new “research alliances”; and helping regional education stakeholders incorporate data-based inquiry practices into their decision-making.

As part of an effort to increase the participation of South Sudanese in the peace process and now the civic life of their new nation, the Sudan Radio Service provides access to balanced and useful information through radio-based education, news, and entertainment programs presented by local presenters in nine languages. Independent research found that Sudan Radio Service has approximately one million listeners.

Sudan Radio Service also builds the capacity of Sudanese journalists through its Certificate in Broadcast Journalism program and through on-the-job training.

The Literacy, Language, and Learning Initiative (L3) helps Rwanda’s Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) develop and implement new national standards for literacy (in English and Kinyarwanda) and numeracy, aiming to improve students’ reading and mathematics skills in grades 1 to 4, as well as their English language proficiency. In partnership with MINEDUC, L3 works with preservice and inservice facilitators to introduce proven reading and mathematics teaching strategies and with community volunteers to support struggling learners.

The Benin Teacher Motivation and Training (TMT) Project is working to improve training and performance of teachers. TMT consists of a number of simple interventions focused around a key theme—a set of clear expectations for teacher performance based on international standards of excellence. The use of this clear and universal set of standards will ensure that all systems meant to support and motivate teachers are focused on the same issues—improving teachers’ and thereby students’ chances of success.

The Teacher Professional Development Program is a three-year, nationwide program supported by the United States Agency for International Development that focuses on strengthening primary school education. The program will assist the Ministry of Education set policy and management of the overall education system, improve teacher performance through certification, accreditation, and supervision, develop the Unified Curriculum for teachers, improve gender equity in the education system, improve English language skills, and provide training and learning resources.

The Southern Sudan Interactive Radio Instruction (SSIRI) project is a program of the Southern Sudan Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST). Four SSIRI activities provide learning opportunities for children, adults, and teachers in South Sudan.

• THE LEARNING VILLAGE: IRI programs based on the Southern Sudanese Primary School Syllabus.

GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) is a program funded by the U.S. Department of Education to give all 8th grade students the skills, encouragement, and preparation needed to pursue post-secondary education. The program includes teacher professional development in Math, Language Arts, and Technology Integration, help with school work, week-long summer and day-trips to area universities, as well as career and college financial planning information.

The Mali Education Decentralization Program (EDP) helps the Government of Mali realize its vision of a decentralized system that provides quality education for all Malian children. Working within Mali’s education sector program, EDP finances system-level investments to define new roles and responsibilities; formulates, tests, and adopts new processes and procedures; and creates and uses management and information tools to support planning on multiple levels.

The Wallace Foundation is launching a $75-million initiative to help six urban school districts develop a much larger corps of effective school principals and to determine whether this improves student achievement across the district, especially in the highest needs schools. EDC will work with each district to assess the quality of its leader training programs using a tool previously developed by EDC with Wallace support. Based on that assessment, EDC will recommend ways to improve principal training to each district and its training programs.

The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU), located at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College, is identifying practices and policies that make some high schools more successful than others at improving outcomes for low-income and minority students. Once researchers identify these effective practices, they will develop ways to transfer them to other schools in the same systems. The center is working with district leaders and teachers in the Dallas (Texas) Independent School District and Broward County (Florida) Public Schools.