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As schools across the country continue to search for innovative practices to address pandemic-related learning loss and combat social isolation, experts are pointing to high dosage tutoring as a strategy worthy of consideration. Great Oaks Charter School Bridgeport in Connecticut offers an example of a high dosage tutoring model that has been refined and adapted to meet local needs. School and district leaders as well as policymakers interested in expanding access to high dosage tutoring should consider the following questions based on the GO-BPT model: (1) How could a service-year program expand staff capacity in high schools and scale the availability of high-dosage tutoring? (2) How might high-dosage tutoring and individualized, small-group instruction benefit all students? (3) How can tutors work with school faculty to maximize impact? and (4) What support and training are tutors likely to need?

The Title VI Indian Education Formula Grants program represents the U.S. Department of Education's largest investment in addressing the unique academic and cultural needs of American Indian and Alaska Native children. The program is aimed at supporting services that (1) are responsive to the unique cultural, language, and educational needs of American Indian and Alaska Native students and (2) help these students meet academic standards. School districts, tribes, Indian organizations, Indian community-based organizations, and Bureau of Indian Education schools receiving this grant are required to consult with parents and local tribes in the effort to shape grant-funded services that supplement and enrich regular school programs. This study examined the nationwide operations of the Title VI grants program to inform the field about the strategies grantees used in their implementation of the grant projects. Specifically, the study addressed the following questions: (1) What services do Title VI grants support?; (2) How do grantees work with stakeholders to identify program-eligible children and plan services to meet the needs of those children?; and (3) How do grantees measure progress toward their project objectives? [For the technical appendices, see ED602114; and for the brief see ED602214.]

This is the technical appendices for the report, "Implementation of the Title VI Indian Education Formula Grants Program." Three appendices are included. The appendices are: (1) Supplemental Exhibits; (2) Data Collection Instruments; and (3) Title VI Indian Student Eligibility Certification Form (ED 506 Form). [For "Implementation of the Title VI Indian Education Formula Grants Program. Volume I: Final Report," see ED602106; and for "Results in Brief: Implementation of the Title VI Indian Education Formula Grants Program," see ED602214.]

Writing is an essential skill for participating in modern American society. Although it is crucial to careers and civic engagement, student writing falls far short of national expectations (College Board, 2004; NCES, 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seek to increase the rigor of writing instruction students receive and also to increase the proportion of instruction focused on students' abilities to write argument and informational text because of their importance for success in college and careers (Calkins, Ehrenworth, & Lehman, 2012; Rothman, 2011; Cutler & Graham, 2008). With these new and loftier goals for student writing outcomes, practitioners and program developers are seeking guidance on how to help teachers work with students to obtain them. Teacher professional development is a logical approach. Well developed theory about instructional capacity (e.g., Cohen and Ball, 1999) suggests that student learning is produced by the interactions between teachers, students, and educational material. As a result, programs that combine professional development and aligned curriculum may be more likely to change teacher practice enough to improve student outcomes. In this context, the National Writing Project (NWP) won an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to provide professional development to secondary teachers in rural districts with the goal of improving teachers' ability to teach to Common Core writing standards and ultimately students' writing proficiency. This paper presents a district-randomized controlled trial that found positive impacts of the NWP's College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP) using a validated measure of students' text-based argument writing as the outcome measure. This study adds rigorous experimental evidence to a body of literature that indicates that professional development that focuses on more than one aspect of instructional capacity--in this case, CRWP attended to both teachers and instructional materials--is more likely to lead to meaningful student learning. As such, the findings presented here have important implications for practitioners, policymakers, and program developers. Tables and figures are appended. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]

Improving teacher effectiveness is a key strategy to ensure student readiness for college and careers and to address achievement gaps and persistent low performance. In response to the new Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) the National Writing Project (NWP) created a professional development (PD) program to support third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade teachers with their writing instruction. In partnership with the NWP, researchers sought to study the implementation of the program, estimate its effects, understand how context affected implementation, and provide formative feedback about the program. This study had four primary research questions: (1) Was the PD program implemented with fidelity?; (2) What impact did the PD program have on teacher practice?; (3) What impact did the PD program have on student writing?; and (4) How did contextual factors influence teachers' uptake of new ideas in their classrooms? The NWP is a network of approximately 200, university-based Local Writing Project (LWP) sites that deliver PD throughout the country. LWP sites share a common model that includes university faculty working in collaboration with K-12 expert teachers. The NWP received a Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant in 2012. The NWP issued an RFP to LWP sites interested in participating in the SEED program and evaluation and actively recruited sites that had a track record of providing intensive in-service PD with elementary teachers and experience in high-need schools. NWP launched the program in partnership with 14 LWP sites, located in 13 states, including 7 in the South, 3 in the Midwest, 2 in the West. The evaluation was designed as a cluster randomized controlled trial in which schools were assigned to either the treatment or control condition. LWP sites identified at least one pair of high-poverty schools, defined as a school in which at least 50% of students are from low-income families. The 14 LWP sites recruited 22 pairs of elementary schools for the study. During the winter of 2013, one school attrited; researchers dropped its matched pair, resulting in a final sample of 13 LWP sites and 42 schools (21 pairs). The SEED program targeted all third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade teachers in program schools. To measure program impacts on students, researchers administered on-demand writing prompts to all students in mainstream third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes in both program and control schools in the fall of 2012 and spring of 2013. Despite the research-based attributes of the SEED PD (see Yoon et al., 2007) and its influences on program school teachers' instructional practices, SEED PD did not impact student argument writing as measured by on-demand prompts scored on the National Writing Project's AWC. Tables and figures are appended.

In this document, its 11th annual report on the status of the teaching profession in California, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning focuses on current efforts to improve high school education and their implications for teachers. One overarching research question guided the study: To what extent are California high school teachers prepared for and supported in teaching in reform-oriented California high schools? This report, part of the Center's Teaching and California's Future (TCF) initiative, is intended to provide California policymakers with objective and timely data on the state's teacher workforce. Specifically the study sought to address the following seven questions by conducting a multimethod study that included a statewide survey, a review of current policies and practices, in-depth case studies, and analysis of secondary data sources. This report finds that California's teacher development system is not adequately aligned with high school reforms that seek to increase rigor, make instruction more relevant and foster more personal and supportive learning environments for students. The research further indicates that high school teacher knowledge and skills differ substantially by school poverty level. The report also includes the latest available data on demand, supply, qualifications and distribution of the state's K-12 teacher workforce. The report is organized into eight chapters, following an introduction. Chapter 2 provides basic descriptive information on trends in the overall teacher workforce, highlighting the pipeline of new credentials issued and addressing the issues of out-of-field teaching and underprepared teachers. Where possible, relevant trends for high school teachers are noted. Chapter 3 describes the nature of high school reform and redesign emerging across the state, while Chapter 4 discusses the implications of the various reform strategies for teachers' knowledge, skills, and understandings. Chapter 5 takes a look at the teacher development system and how teachers are supported (or not) in developing the necessary knowledge, skills, and understandings. Chapter 6 focuses on the central role of school leaders, including teachers, in shaping and supporting reform efforts. At the beginning of each chapter, the report highlights key findings from the research. Chapter 7 distills the lessons learned from this year's research, and Chapter 8 provides the Center's recommendations to policymakers and education leaders for future action. Appended to this report are: (1) Additional Teacher Supply, Demand, & Distribution Data; (2) Research Methods; (3) Source and Technical Information for Exhibits; (4) Source and Technical Information for Survey Data. (Contains 80 exhibits and 17 footnotes.) [Additional funding for this study was provided by The S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation.

Accountability stands at the center of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The logic of NCLB is straightforward: improving the nation's schools for all children requires the establishment of clear and high standards, the identification of schools in which students are not meeting those standards, options for parents of students in schools identified for improvement, support for struggling schools, and--for those schools that continue to perform poorly--increasingly rigorous interventions. This report presents the key findings over the three years of the study. Findings from 2002-03, the first full year of NCLB implementation, showed that states and districts were making progress in implementing accountability systems under NCLB but that big gaps remained between their existing systems of accountability and the NCLB vision of coherent systems that support all schools and all students to reach high standards. During 2003-04, educators at all levels of the education system continued efforts to implement the accountability provisions of NCLB closing the gap in some areas but not all as described below. The following are appended: (1) Methods; and (2) Additional Exhibits. (Contains 70 exhibits.)

"The No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB) aims to strengthen state Title I accountability systems to spur the improvement needed to reach the law's goals: that all students will reach proficiency by 2013-14. NCLB requires states and districts to report and act on student test results in a host of new ways. Among the many actions states and districts must take under NCLB's accountability system are identifying schools that repeatedly do not make progress, providing assistance to schools that need to improve, and offering more choices to parents. To understand how states, districts, and schools are implementing these accountability provisions, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned the "Evaluation of Title I Accountability Systems and School Improvement Efforts" ("TASSIE") beginning with the 2001-02 school year as a baseline year and continuing for two more years. The study has gathered data from educators in schools, district offices, and state education agencies through surveys and interviews and from parents through focus groups. This report covers the 2002-03 school year, and focuses on how the following key aspects of Title I accountability provisions in NCLB were carried out during the first year NCLB was in effect: (1) the assistance and interventions provided to Title I schools identified for improvement; (2) the steps these schools are taking to improve; and (3) public school choice and supplemental services offered to students in these schools. Overall, findings from 2002-03 showed that states and districts were making progress in implementing accountability systems under NCLB, but big gaps remained between their existing systems of accountability and the vision embodied in NCLB of coherent systems that support all schools and all students to reach high standards. [For findings from 2001-02, see "Evaluation of Title I Accountability Systems and School Improvement Efforts (TASSIE): First-Year Findings. Doc # 2004-01" (ED483058). For the Report Highlights, see ED613454.]

Local practitioners and state policymakers are focused on implementing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (P.L. 107-110), which in 2001 reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). At the same time, federal policymakers are working to help educators meet both the letter and the spirit of the law: to ensure that no child, regardless of background, is left behind by the nation's education system. This document reports the key findings from the first year of the 3-year Evaluation of Title I Accountability Systems and School Improvement Efforts (TASSIE), and the final year in which ESEA as it existed prior to NCLB, was still in effect. The data reported here will serve as a baseline against which to track the implementation of NCLB. Throughout, the document contrasts IASA (the Improving America?s Schools Act (IASA) of 1994) with NCLB and comments on the implications of the findings for the implementation of NCLB. Evaluation methods included surveys of districts and Title I schools identified as in need of improvement in those districts, as well as case studies of a set of identified Title I schools in districts in five states. (Contains 13 exhibits and 10 tables.) [Document produced by the Policy and Program Studies Service.]

As California has struggled through economic and policy shifts, the "Teaching and California's Future" initiative has worked to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the system of teacher development in the state and to provide policymakers with the data they seek to inform their decisions in strengthening schools. During the 2002-03 school year, SRI International launched a third comprehensive round of data collection. This work included a statewide survey of a representative sample of K-12 teachers, focusing on teachers' preparation, job search, induction, workplace support, and professional development. To complement the statewide data gathered through the survey, SRI conducted in-depth case studies of four local systems of teacher development. The local system of teacher development includes the organizations and programs that serve both teachers in the workforce and individuals preparing to enter teaching. Each local system studied typically included four schools, a central office, and the surrounding teacher preparation programs, county offices, and other providers of support to teachers. The findings from these data collection efforts and from continued analysis of secondary databases in the state constitute the bulk of this report. This document includes the main research findings of Teaching and California's Future and the detailed recommendations. This report is organized into five chapters. The first addresses the status of the teacher workforce, with a focus on shifts in the number and distribution of underprepared teachers. The second tracks the system of teacher preparation, including an extensive analysis of alternative pathways into the teaching profession. The third describes the study's findings on the system of induction into the profession for new teachers. The fourth concentrates on the professional development system. The final chapter summarizes the findings and includes recommendations. The three appendices provide information on data collection methods and analyses, technical information for figures and tables found in Chapters 2 through 5, and supplemental figures for Chapter 2. (Contains 34 figures and 6 tables.

Education Matters' working hypothesis in this report was that the quality of implementation of ILT (Instructional Leadership Teams) and LASW (Looking At Student Work) groups is related to the quality of implementation of other components of reform. Specifically, the authors anticipated that schools in which ILTs and LASW groups were well-established would show considerable evidence of a collegial collaborative culture--including teacher leadership--that focused on instruction. And, they proposed that such schools would be better positioned to implement additional components of reform, for example, performance assessments. The data analysis by the authors supports this hypothesis. Schools with high-functioning ILTs and LASW groups had better established collegial, collaborative, instructionally-focused cultures than did schools with lower-functioning ILTs and LASW groups. These schools demonstrated greater in-school capacity to take on the work of implementing performance assessments than schools with low-functioning ILTs and LASW groups. As a result of this analysis, in light of the theory of reform that guides Boston's school improvements work, these schools are now well-positioned to continue improving teaching and thereby, student learning and measured achievement. Appended are: (1) Boston Public Schools Plan for Whole-School Change; Boston Plan for Excellence Expectations for Performance-Based Assessment; (3) Boston Public Schools Assessment System Based on Learning Standards and High Expectations; (4) Self-Assessment Summary; (5) Phases Chart, 1998; and (6) Up-Date and Phases Chart, 2000. (Author/MA)

This paper examines the responses of four high schools to new accountability policies in two states, New York and Vermont. In each state, one school that was better positioned with respect to the policy and one that was a target of the policy were studied. New York's policy attaches high stakes for students though the Regents high school exit examination. In Vermont, school accountability is part of a broader policy of comprehensive finance equalization and a self-assessment action planning process. In both states theories of action assume that performance information from the accountability system will drive change. Schools were examined through interviews with key personnel, including teachers. The variations between the types of schools in response to the policies far exceeded the variation attributable to state policy design. In the high-performing schools, the policies in both cases put a spotlight on helping low-performing students. In the low-performing schools in both states there was a pattern of compliance without capacity with minimal meaningful or productive engagement on the part of the staff. The needs of the two low-performing schools suggest blind spots in the state policies with respect to theory, use of data, incentives, and short-term, school-level goals. The common patterns suggest that state policymakers need to rethink policy instruments for the lowest performing schools. (SLD)