School Leadership

Schools to Watch, which was based at EDC from 1997 to 2005, is now an independent organization. Visit the Schools to Watch Web site for current contact information.

The National Science Foundation has funded the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Local Systemic Change (LSC) and Urban Systemic Programs in K–12 mathematics and science. EDC is performing an evaluation of the programs. The evaluation is formative, shaping the work of teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators, and summative, looking at the impact of the work on teaching, learning, and district policies.

Facilitator institutes prepare a national group of prospective facilitators to teach two Lenses on Learning courses, which help school and district administrators support standards-based elementary mathematics instruction. Institute topics include elementary mathematics, the nature of standards-based mathematics instruction, what administrators need to know, and how they learn it.

EdTech Leaders® Online enables state departments of education, school districts, regional educational service centers, colleges and universities, and other educational organizations to develop local capacity to provide online professional development for teachers and administrators and online courses for students.

The School Health Infrastructure Project (SHIP) is working with superintendents of large urban school districts and local health department commissioners to plan for and implement modern school health programs. Such programs integrate the resources of education, health, and social service agencies to improve outcomes around four types of goals to improve knowledge, health behaviors and outcomes, education outcomes, and social outcomes. They are systemwide initiatives that are based on collaboration of youth, families, and communities with school and health organizations.

CSA is the community-mobilization component of USAID/Ghana’s Quality Improvement in Primary Schools program, an initiative under Ghana’s Free Compulsory University Basic Education program. CSA aims to improve community participation in more than 300 primary schools throughout Ghana. This highly participatory effort strives to build an environment of mutual respect, responsibility, and action among community members, schools, and education administrators as they work to meet the learning needs of Ghanaian children.

The K–12 MCC provides a variety of services and products to support school districts around the country as they select and implement standards-based mathematics curricula. Implementation issues considered include transitions across grades K through 12, professional development, and building support for curriculum change. Resources include a series of seminars, print materials, (including a curriculum selection guide), case materials, and a Web site.

EDC is providing technical assistance to the National Center for Literacy through the development and implementation of a comprehensive dissemination plan for its early childhood literacy products and program materials. By bringing to bear our knowledge of diverse and complex early childhood education systems and their staff development and parent education efforts, we will reach thousands of stakeholders across the nation and provide them with essential information that they can use to advance early childhood education literacy policies and practices.

The project will create instructional materials, for use in seminar settings with teams of school and district leaders from middle and high schools, to support school and district leaders who are experiencing increasing pressure to improve the mathematics performance of students in their schools–at a time of raised expectations for all students’ enrollment in algebra and more participation in higher-level mathematics courses in high school.

EDC is designing and facilitating a process involving eight Roman Catholic seminaries in the development of assessment measures for seminarians. The project draws upon EDC’s previous work in developing skill standards and assessment tools based on those standards. The project will result in an occupational analysis, rubrics that integrate both the occupational responsibilities of priests and the behavior attributes promoted during seminary formation, and a framework for designing portfolios rooted in these materials.