Search

The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) endeavors to promote both challenging academic instruction and more holistic aims--namely, intercultural understanding and respect. Throughout its history, the IB system has managed at least three ongoing tensions, which stem from its multifaceted aims and which the system has evolved to manage. These three tensions are between: (1) academic rigor and equitable access; (2) more traditional academic achievement and more holistic teaching and learning; and (3) providing supports to schools and teachers to promote fidelity of implementation and also permitting practitioners enough discretion for local adaptation. These tensions are especially apparent at three points in time throughout the IB system's reform journey: when IB began in the 1960s, when the Primary Years Programme was created in 1997, and when the PYP was enhanced in 2018. As enduring as these tensions may be, the IB system also offers policymakers lessons on how to manage them. [For the full report, "Transforming Education for Holistic Student Development: Learning from Education System (Re)Building around the World," see ED626329. For the technical report, see ED626330. For the other case reports in this series, see British Columbia (ED626332), India (ED626334), Iowa (ED626337), and Ireland (ED626338).]

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been developed in response to the criticism that students in the U.S. are graduating from high school without being college and career ready and that they are falling behind their counterparts in other countries in key subject areas. In this work, the authors report the results of an efficacy study that investigated the impact of Math in Focus: Singapore Math ("MIF")--developed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) that, according to the program developer, provides comprehensive support for CCSS. The research questions are as follows: (1) Is there a positive impact of MIF on student skills in mathematics problem solving?; (2) Is there a positive impact of "MIF" on student math procedural skills?; and (3) Is "MIF" differentially effective in its impact on student achievement depending on (1) the ethnicity of the student? (2) the incoming achievement level of the student? The research took place during the 2011-2012 school year across twelve elementary schools in one urban school district in Nevada. Ninety-three teachers of grades 3, 4 and 5 were recruited to participate in the study, with 41 teachers randomized to the "MIF" group and 52 teachers randomized to the control group. Rosters were provided for 2235 students in participating teachers' classrooms. The design was a group randomized trial lasting one year. A two-level hierarchical linear regression model to estimate the impacts of "MIF" on student achievement. The study gives preliminary evidence concerning the impact of one CCSS-aligned math intervention on student performance on two mathematics strands. Tables are appended.

We report on the scaling up of a high school content literacy framework, Reading Apprenticeship, over a period of four years as part of the independent evaluation of an Investing in Innovation grant from the U.S. Department of Education to WestEd's Strategic Literacy Institute (SLI). Our goal was to understand the school processes that support successful implementation and promote scaling of an innovation. We focused on teachers, principals and other school-level program leadership who were also the focus for SLI's innovation designed to support scale. Our work was guided by research literature that provided insights into scale-up as increasing local ownership and depth of commitment, as well as growth in numbers. We provided formative feedback to SLI while contributing to the empirical methods and evidence for studying scale-up processes. Over the five years of scaling up, the RAISE project (for Reading Apprenticeship Improving Secondary Education) reached approximately 533,000 students, and 1,719 teachers in 239 schools in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, and Utah. Surveys of teachers and principals, as well as records of participation in project activities provided a rich longitudinal dataset. In addition to survey analysis, four schools served as case studies where school leaders and program support staff were interviewed over two years to offer a concrete picture of decision processes and resources. We used descriptive statistics to track changes over time in features of program implementation, as well as resulting changes in attitudes and commitment among teachers. In the first year, teachers were successfully integrating Reading Apprenticeship practices and cited collaboration and support from other teachers as most effective for capacity building. We found that uptake of RAISE activities leveled off by the third year. We also found a greater spread in responses across schools by the third year, calling for further investigation into school-level processes and the characteristics of schools that may be associated with the gain or loss of RAISE participants over time. Regression methods were used to identify predictors of increased or decreased participation. We found that teacher participation in team meetings during the first year and school-wide commitment predicted the increase in number of teachers participating in a school. Increases were unrelated to demographics and resources available to the school. We hypothesized that a process, consistent with SLI's innovation for scaling Reading Apprenticeship, which involved a cross-disciplinary teacher team within the school, led to increased and sustained program participation. The scale-up study was conducted in parallel to a [randomized controlled trial] RCT in which 22 treatment and 20 control schools from Pennsylvania and California participated for three years. We used the predictors of increased participation in comparing the scale-up and RCT treatment group schools as contexts for the implementation and impact of Reading Apprenticeship. Scale-up schools had more of the characteristics associated with growth suggesting greater long term sustainability. We raise the issue of whether the implementation under the constraints of the RCT is a good model for measuring impact in the context of scaling up an innovation. The following are appended: (1) Detailed RAISE Scale-up Logic Model; (2) State Maps of RAISE Scale-up, By Year; (3) Results from GL Analysis; and (4) Survey Questions Used in Chapter 8.