R&D Alert Archived Articles
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Three School Turnaround Principles for Success
With more than a decade of experience in school reform, WestEd's Fred Tempes knows how challenging it is for chronically low-performing schools to improve. He also knows that almost any can accomplish dramatic turnaround. It takes hard work around a core set of principles over an extended period of time.
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Regional SIG Conference Explores “Revamped” Turnaround Strategies
The Leading Successful School Turnarounds: Learning from Research and Practice conference empowered more than 250 participants with knowledge and strategies that encouraged them to use School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to take bold steps in making changes and reforms.
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Projected Need for Principals Varies Widely Across California
Effective school-site administrators play a key role in student achievement. As baby boomer administrators retire and student enrollment increases, California will be challenged to recruit enough well-qualified leaders.
While there is no shortage nationally of candidates earning administrative credentials, it can be difficult to attract highly qualified administrators to the schools that most need them: those with high concentrations of poverty-level students or English language learner students, or those located in rural areas. -
QTEL Instructional Coaching: Whole School Change, One Teacher at a Time
Instructional coaches from outside a school offer fresh eyes and needed expertise to school improvement efforts. But to be effective change agents, they must build a genuine partnership with each teacher they coach.
The WestEd Quality Teaching for English Learners approach defines three stages in a classroom lesson. Read on.
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Special Education Gains Shape Middle School Reform
Following an intensive reading intervention, the reading proficiency rate for sixth-grade special education students at Lennox Middle School in southern California jumped 35 percent in one year. In fact, they performed better than their general education classmates, whose proficiency rate was under 37 percent.
This dramatic achievement helped drive a schoolwide instructional improvement effort. It also redefined how the school's general and special education teachers worked with one another—and with students. -
Language-Rich Approach Boosts English Learner Skills
Teachers at International High School in Austin, TX, thought they were doing a great job. Visitors to the school for new immigrants often praised the faculty for working with such a diverse population of students, some of whom had no prior formal education. Aída Walqui's observation was different. The Director of WestEd's Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) told faculty members there was so much more they could do to engage students and accelerate their learning.
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Three-Way Partnership Transforms Arizona District
The struggling Creighton Elementary School District in Phoenix was approached in May of 2008 by WestEd and the Ellis Center for Educational Excellence, a Phoenix-based philanthropy, to participate in a districtwide reform initiative. Two years later, student achievement exceeded expectations, and the district itself has transformed the way it operates.
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Formative Assessment: Not Just Another Test
Formative assessment is comprehensive, interactive, and a model of mastery learning, in which a student develops skills and confidence under the guidance of a seasoned professional. New York's Formative Assessment Project aims to change how educators think about formative assessment.
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Alignment to Assure Learning for ELL Students
Many students who are English language learners are not being taught the academic language skills they need to fully understand and respond to the questions asked on standardized tests.
That is one of the key findings emerging from a collaborative study aimed at improving the achievement of English language learner students through better alignment between classroom instruction and state achievement standards and assessments. -
Simulations Signal a New Era in Science Assessment
A standardized science test might include a passage describing an underwater ecosystem and a series of related multiple-choice questions. But soon students could instead be asked to demonstrate how well they understand the way an underwater ecosystem works. SimScientists at WestEd is developing science test prototypes that feature computer-based assessment. The program encompasses five separate research projects examining the role science simulations can play in improving middle school science instruction, assessment, and optimum design.
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Culture and Assessment: Discovering What Students Really Know
How can we know what students know? The answer seems simple. We teach students new information, give them time to practice the concepts or skills, and assess their understanding with a quiz or test. We standardize the tests so that every student answers equally challenging questions. But what if the way we ask the questions unintentionally causes some students to fail? What if our assessments contain assumptions about language, culture, values, and experiences that these students don't share?
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Next-Generation Assessments
An unprecedented confluence of factors is causing many states to rethink their student-assessment programs. But careful thought and expert guidance will be needed if they are to avoid the problems of the past and take advantage of promising new developments.
This next-generation model will include differentiated roles for assessment at the federal, state, and school levels; the use of multiple measures; and assessments that support accountability programs focused on both growth and current status.
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What High Schools Can Do to Better Prepare Students for College
How can high schools help more of their students make it to college and be better prepared to do college-level work? Helping Students Navigate the Path to College: What High Schools Can Do, a practice guide from the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse, offers five straightforward recommendations.
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A New Focus on Interactive Learning at Community Colleges
The traditional emphasis on delivering content in community college classrooms through lectures may become less prevalent as teachers find better ways to help students engage in college-level learning. While lecturing may still have a role, it has significant limitations, especially for students new to college and those at risk of faring poorly. Enter the Strategic Literacy Initiative at WestEd's Reading Apprenticeship®, a research-based approach being adopted by a growing numbers of community college teachers.
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The Promise and Challenges of Dual Enrollment
California students who have historically been underrepresented at colleges are missing out on an opportunity to successfully transition to college, due in part to policies hindering them from earning college credit while in high school.
"Dual" or "concurrent" enrollment programs have long been offered to academically gifted students needing more intellectual rigor than their high schools could provide. Now such programs are also being successfully used to improve the college readiness of low-income minority students.
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