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Story posted April 17, 2009

Results:
• Most participants make significant gains in both district benchmark testing and class grades
• Students report greater interest in and understanding of math
• Teachers report increases in participants' attention to instruction and class participation

At Mechanicsburg Middle School, we recognized the need to help our lowest-achieving math students improve their skills. In addition, because many of these students had low confidence in their abilities based on past failures in Math, we knew we needed to provide a model that not only would be academically beneficial but also give the students an opportunity to view Math in a new light. Using collective teaching strengths, we created a model that has resulted in higher performance and an overall love of ...

Story posted April 2, 2009

Results:
• Consistently makes adequate yearly progress as defined by No Child Left Behind 
• Received an "A" on the New York City grading rubric, which is based on student progress and performance as well as parent, teacher and student opinions of the school

In 1996, then-New York City Schools’ Chancellor Rudy Crew created a “Chancellor’s District,” a non-geographic improvement zone of chronically underperforming schools. His goal was to increase those schools’ instructional capacity and academic outcomes. Beginning with 10 schools and growing to 58 schools by 2002 (the final year of the initiative), these schools were under direct control of the chancellor and received a number of capacity-building interventions.

East Harlem’s P.S. 30, Hernandez-Hughes Learning Academy entered the Chancellor’s district in 1999. P.S. 30 serves 395 kindergarten through sixth-grade students who are mostly African-American or Latino, with 76% eligible for free or reduced price lunch. For the prior decade, the school had performed poorly on standardized assessments and was in danger of being closed for failing to meet New York State academic standards. But after ...

Story posted February 26, 2009.  Results updated April 1, 2010.

Results:
• Between fall 2005 and fall 2009, the percent of students scoring proficient or better in mathematics on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) more than doubled, increasing from 14% to 31% 
• In fall 2009, 52% of students scored proficient or better in reading on the NECAP, up from 29% in fall 2005

Named after philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein, who is said to have established the first-ever public high school with community service as its theme, Alan Shawn Feinstein Elementary at Broad Street in Providence, Rhode Island, serves a largely Hispanic population, many of whom have emigrated from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Of the nearly 400 children enrolled, 90 percent qualify for subsidized meals, an indicator of the school's poverty level.

To serve these students, Principal Christine Riley and her staff  came up with a recipe for student success:

1. Use large measures of data-driven instruction, research-based teaching practices and ...

Story posted February 5, 2009

Results:
• School-wide increases in reading and math test scores for the past three years 
• In mathematics, the school has outperformed the district for the past two years, even though it serves a significantly higher portion of free and reduced-price lunch students

For decades, the Payne Phalen neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota, housed generations of immigrants and provided solid factory jobs. However, between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, the neighborhood lost more than 2,500 industrial jobs, and between 1980 and 1990, child poverty increased by 800 percent, according to the U.S. Census.

In the late 1990s, the city of St. Paul began efforts to revitalize the neighborhood through housing and business investment initiatives. As a part of this revitalization, St. Paul Public Schools decided to build a new elementary school where a high school had long stood empty. In partnership with ...