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Teach For America (TFA), founded in 1989, has grown to become one of the largest providers of educators in the country for high-needs, under-resourced schools. TFA recruits high-performing college graduates and professionals and prepares them for teaching during five to seven weeks of intensive pre-service training at one of its regional or national summer "institutes" before their first teaching job. During their first year in the classroom, the new teachers (called "corps members") then receive ongoing in-service training from regional TFA teams. About 43 percent of TFA's corps members receive their pre-service training at a national institute, followed by in-service training from a regional team. The rest of the corps members receive both their pre-service and in-service training regionally. As TFA has grown, and in particular with its introduction of a redesigned national training model in 2016, the regional in-service training has not always aligned well with the pre-service training offered at the national institutes. In 2017, TFA was awarded a Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create and implement what it called the "Handoff," intended to strengthen the alignment between the national pre-service training and the regional in-service training. The project emphasized three aspects of the in-service training: (1) Providing continued programming for new teachers (called "corps members") focused on creating and maintaining a productive "learning environment"; (2) Deepening corps members' knowledge, skills, and mindsets with regard to "diversity," "equity," and "inclusiveness"; and (3) Tying these two ideas together to strengthen their practice as aspiring "culturally relevant practitioners." MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, was chosen to be the independent evaluator of the Handoff, as part of TFA's SEED grant. The study of the Handoff had two objectives: (1) to examine how it was implemented and how well it succeeded in aligning the in-service and pre-service training, and (2) to examine the effects of the Handoff on the short-term outcomes of the first cohort of corps members to participate in it. This report explains that there was quite a bit of variation in the implementation of the Handoff among and within the TFA regions, and it suggests that receiving more training on diversity, equity, and inclusiveness and on maintaining a productive learning environment is associated with better practices by corps members in those areas.

In summer 2015, roughly six years after the Great Recession of 2007-2009 ended, the American media began reporting on an emerging teacher shortage. Public schools were reinstating programs and classes that they had cut during the recession, and student enrollment was increasing. Meanwhile, enrollment in teacher training programs was decreasing. Teacher shortages are especially problematic for schools serving mainly students from low-income families and communities of color. Teach For America (TFA), founded in 1989, has grown to become one of the largest providers of educators in the country for high-needs, underresourced schools. In 2015, TFA was awarded a Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant from the U.S. Department of Education to redesign its summer training for new teachers, or "corps members" (CMs). In summer 2016, TFA piloted a redesigned training model, developed specifically for adult learners, that incorporated more rigorous academic standards and training methods and practices with an eye toward college and career readiness. This report presents the findings from a study that examined how the redesigned training was implemented in a TFA training site (program group) and how it compared with the usual training at other TFA sites (comparison group). It also examined the promise of the redesigned training to improve the short-term outcomes of the first cohort of TFA teachers to receive it -- that is, CMs' use of the new instructional strategies and teaching practices, their perceptions of the value of the training, their commitment to teaching and to equity, and their retention rates in the TFA program. The lessons from this study have helped TFA address the challenges that were encountered during implementation and to strengthen the redesigned training model.

To succeed in today's economy, students need both proficiency in the "three Rs" (reading, writing and arithmetic) and strong applied skills. Communication skills, team work, and critical thinking have long been at the top of employers' lists of applied skills they seek in employees. States are responding to employers' needs by putting in place new educational standards. These standards include not only higher levels of basic academic knowledge that students are expected to master but also applied skills pertaining to presenting information, explaining one's reasoning, and effectively collaborating in groups. As a result, teachers nationwide are having students work in groups more frequently. This report examines a recent large-scale effort to expand a cooperative learning program in middle schools. The change in standard instructional practices gives schools a chance to not only teach students applied skills, but improve students' academic learning, if they can help teachers turn "group work" into "cooperative learning teams." PowerTeaching, a structured cooperative learning program, was designed to do just that. Thus, the expansion of PowerTeaching through a federal Investing in Innovation grant offers the education field a unique opportunity to learn what it takes to help teachers create cooperative learning environments in their classrooms. This report presents the lessons learned from this scale-up effort and findings from a multiyear evaluation of it. It describes how PowerTeaching was implemented over the first few years, how classrooms with the program differed from those without it, and whether students in the program performed better in math. The evaluation found that while teachers who taught with PowerTeaching learned to place their students into longstanding mixed-ability groups, which are thought to be conducive to cooperative learning, teachers did not consistently use the program's instructional techniques that transform group work into cooperative learning. In turn, students' math performance did not differ significantly between schools using the program and schools not using it. A likely cause for the weak implementation was that the ongoing professional development, which is an integral part of the PowerTeaching program, mostly did not occur or focused more on teaching the new material required by recently adopted education standards rather than on cooperative learning techniques. The evaluation thus points to the importance of focused, ongoing training and support when trying to modify teachers' instructional practices. This report was written with Deni Chen, Ashley Kennedy, and Joseph Quinn.

PowerTeaching is an evidence-based, structured cooperative learning program. It aims to prepare students to meet the stringent demands of new state math standards, both the knowledge standards and the 21st-century skills standards, such as around communication and collaboration. Awarded a scale-up grant in 2012 by the federal government, the program expanded to more than 100 high-need middle schools to train their math teachers how to implement cooperative learning in their classrooms. The evaluation of this expansion effort found that while program teachers learned to organize their students into long-standing mixed-ability groups, which are conducive of cooperative learning, teachers did not consistently implement the instructional supports necessary to transform group work into cooperative learning. The experimental impact study found that students' math performance did not differ dramatically between program and non-program schools. A likely cause for the weak implementation was that the ongoing professional development that is an integral part of PowerTeaching mostly did not occur or was more focused on how to teach the new content required by recently adopted education standards rather than how to implement cooperative learning. The impacts were not large and significant (as earlier studies had found), in part because students in the control schools were also working in groups in response to the communication and collaboration standards embedded in the new standards. Indeed, this study is one of the first to document this shift toward group work. Given that prior studies have shown that cooperative learning teams increase the academic performance of students more than group work does, the evaluation points to the potential for increasing math performance if teachers, who are now routinely using groups, can be trained to consistently provide the supports needed to transform groups into cooperative learning teams. This type of ongoing support, missing in this trial of PowerTeaching, is likely to be key to shifting teachers' instructional practices. [This report was written with Deni Chen, Ashley Kennedy, and Joseph Quinn.]

Success for All (SFA), one of the best-known school reform models, aims to improve the reading skills of all children but is especially directed at schools that serve large numbers of students from low-income families. First implemented in 1987, SFA combines a challenging reading program, whole-school reform elements, and an emphasis on continuous improvement, with the goal of ensuring that every child learns to read well in the elementary grades. This is the third and final report from an independent evaluation of the scale-up demonstration of the SFA elementary school reading program. Both the demonstration and the evaluation have been funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. Conducted by MDRC--a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization--the evaluation examines SFA's implementation and impacts in five school districts over a three-year period (the 2011-2012 school year through the 2013-2014 school year). It also includes an analysis of program costs. Finally, it considers the scale-up process itself--the methods employed and the extent to which the Success for All Foundation (SFAF), the organization that developed and provides technical assistance to schools operating the program, achieved its scale-up goals. [This report was written with Emma Alterman, Herbert Collado, and Emily Pramik. For the executive summary of this report, see ED579090. For the Early Findings report, see ED545452. For the Interim Report, see ED546642.]

This is the second of three reports from MDRC's evaluation of the Success for All (SFA) scale-up demonstration, funded under the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) competition. The report presents updated findings on SFA's implementation and impacts in the scale-up sites participating in the evaluation. The i3 evaluation of SFA employs an experimental design, in which 37 schools in five school districts that are participating in the scale-up effort were assigned at random to a program group or to a control group. The two groups of schools were similar on all school-level characteristics at baseline, although they were not fully representative of all schools participating in SFA's i3 scale-up. The 19 program group schools received SFA. The 18 control group schools did not get the intervention and, instead, either continued with the same reading program that they had used previously or, in the case of some schools, adopted a new one. The study compares the experiences of adults and the performance of students in the two groups of schools. This second report tracks the literacy growth of the initial group of kindergartners as they advanced through first grade, and it also measures the reading skills of students in grades 3 through 5. Like the first report, this report uses quantitative and qualitative data from a variety of sources. Through teacher and principal surveys, implementation summaries completed by SFA staff, logs completed by teachers to describe the instruction that they provided to individual students, interviews and focus groups with school personnel conducted in the course of site visits, school district databases, and individual and group assessments of students' reading skills, it addresses three main questions: (1) To what extent were SFA's features implemented during the program's second year? (2) How distinct were the program group schools and the control group schools in various aspects of school functioning? (3) Did SFA continue to produce impacts on students' reading skills as the students progressed through first grade? In brief, the report finds that, during the second year, schools strengthened their implementation of SFA, and teachers were more at ease with it. Reading instruction in SFA schools continued to differ from instruction in control group schools in a number of respects, although in other ways the two groups of schools were similar. Finally, first-graders who had been enrolled in SFA schools since kindergarten significantly outperformed their counterparts who had been continuously enrolled in control group schools on two measures of phonetic and decoding skills, although not on measures of higher-order reading skills. At this point, the impact findings about the students' academic trajectories are consistent with those reported in the major previous experimental study of SFA. Four appendices include: (1) Data Sources and Response Rates; (2) Subgroup Impacts; (3) Full-Sample Impacts; and (4) Auxiliary-Sample Impacts. [This report was written with Emma Alterman and Emily Pramik.]

First implemented in 1987, Success for All (SFA) is one of the best-known and most thoroughly evaluated school reform models. It combines three basic elements: (1) Reading instruction that emphasizes phonics for beginning readers and comprehension for students at all levels, and that is characterized by a highly structured curriculum, an emphasis on cooperative learning, across-grade ability grouping and periodic regrouping, frequent assessments, and tutoring for students who need extra help; (2) Whole-school improvement components that address noninstructional issues that can affect student learning, such as behavior, attendance, and parental involvement; and (3) A set of strategies for securing teacher buy-in, providing school personnel with initial training and ongoing professional development, and fostering shared leadership in schools. This report, the first of three, examines the program's implementation and impacts in 2011-2012, the first year of operation. Thirty-seven kindergarten through grades 5 and 6 (K-5 and K-6) schools in five school districts agreed to be part of the scale-up evaluation; 19 "program group" schools were randomly selected to operate SFA, and 18 "control group" schools did not receive the intervention. The analysis compares the experiences of school staff as well as the reading performance of a cohort of kindergarten students in the SFA schools with those of their counterparts in the control group schools. Subsequent reports will examine the reading skills of these students as they progress through first and second grades and will also measure the reading skills of students in the upper elementary grades. Data sources for the report include principal surveys, teacher surveys, and teacher-completed logs describing reading instruction, which were administered at all schools; "School Achievement Snapshot" forms completed by the Success for All Foundation (SFAF) coaches to report on the extent of program implementation; assessments administered to kindergartners at the beginning and end of the school year; and administrative records obtained from the districts. During spring 2012 site visits, researchers also conducted interviews with principals at SFA schools and control group schools as well as interviews with SFA facilitators and focus groups with teachers at SFA schools. This report finds that while teachers initially expressed concerns about implementing this new, complex, and demanding initiative, by the end of the first year, almost all the program schools had reached what SFAF considers a satisfactory level of early implementation, and many teachers were beginning to feel more comfortable with the program. Reading instruction in SFA schools was found to differ in key ways from instruction in the control group schools. Finally, kindergartners in the SFA schools scored significantly higher than their control group counterparts on one of two standardized measures of early reading. The following are appended: (1) Data Sources and Response Rates for the Success for All Evaluation; (2) The Student Samples and Student Mobility; (3) Baseline Equivalence Tests for Additional Samples; (4) Scale Construction and Statistical Properties of Scales; (5) The Success for All Foundation (SFAF) School Achievement Snapshot; and (6) The Estimation of Program Impacts. [This report was written with Emma Alterman, Herbert Collado, and Emily Pramik.]

Researchers from MDRC and Johns Hopkins University partnered with Florida's Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) in 2009 to launch an independent evaluation of the district's initiative to implement Ninth Grade Academies (NGAs) in every district high school. An NGA is a self-contained learning community for ninth-graders that operates as a school within a school. With its own administrative leadership, space, faculty, and teacher teams, it is designed to offer ninth-graders a more personalized, engaging, and responsive learning environment. The study found strong district leadership at the outset and widespread uptake of core NGA components across the 18 high schools in the sample. The investigation also uncovered substantial variation in the overall quality and duration of NGA implementation across schools, however, with strong and sustained implementation of multiple components occurring in just three schools, even though many more had access to models of strong NGAs nearby. These implementation experiences in BCPS suggest that many schools will need more specific guidelines, on-site support, training for teachers, secure resources, and tools to guide practice and facilitate scheduling if they are to implement fully fledged, continuously improving, and self-sustaining NGAs. The following are the key findings from the study: (1) District leadership for the initiative was strong at the outset, but not sustained as district priorities changed; (2) While schools received some support through a cross-school professional learning community for NGA administrators, they did not receive any other technical or financial support for pro-gram implementation; (3) The district's definition of NGAs focused on structural components in each school--ninth-grade administrative leadership, dedicated ninth-grade space, dedicated ninth-grade faculty, and interdisciplinary teacher teams. Improving ninth-grade curriculum, instruction, and student supports were not a direct focus of the initiative. In fact, other reforms in these areas aimed at improving student outcomes competed with NGA implementation; (4) It was more feasible for schools to implement and sustain the administrative leadership and space components of NGAs than the dedicated ninth-grade faculty and interdisciplinary teaming components; and (5) Only three high schools achieved strong implementation. Ten achieved a threshold level of implementation, and five fell below threshold. Most schools did not improve from the first to the second or third year. The following are appended: (1) Sample Selection; and (2) Scoring Rubrics for Core NGA Components. [This report was written with Emma Alterman, Joanne Fennessey, and Janell Smith. A list of earlier MDRC publications related to high school reform, smaller learning communities, and the ninth-grade transition is included.]

The Instructional Leadership Study provides suggestive evidence that providing instruction-related professional development to school principals can improve teaching and learning in their schools. The study examines a theory of school change articulated by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. The IFL provides technical assistance to school districts, primarily through strategic planning, coaching, and professional development for district and school administrators; it has also enunciated a set of "Principles of Learning" about the ideas and practices that promote students' academic achievement. According to the IFL's theory, through leadership training, school principals learn about high-quality instruction and about actions that they can take to motivate and support their teachers. Principals then organize professional learning for their teachers and otherwise help teachers improve their classroom practices. With improved instruction, the theory maintains, student achievement will also improve. To test this theory, the researchers recruited 49 elementary schools in three districts that had been working with the IFL for one to five years at the time the study began. The study focuses on elementary schools because the researchers reasoned that the principal's role as an instructional leader would be especially pronounced in these settings. Researchers concluded that instruction-related professional development for principals was indeed linked to an increase in the frequency with which teachers received professional development at their schools; that these increased professional development opportunities for teachers helped them improve the quality of their instructional practices; and that higher instructional quality was linked to higher student achievement. (Contains 49 tables, 21 figures, and 21 boxes.)