Closing the Achievement Gaps Sites
Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative Duration: 11:20
The NEA Foundation has invested more than $9 million to support union-district collaboration districts with a high number of under achieving low income and minority students. With early results from local evaluative efforts showing significant and positive changes in teaching and learning, the Foundation has expanded the initiative and now supports additional sites in Lee County, FL, Springfield, MA, Omaha, NE, and Columbus, OH.
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Read more below about the individual efforts of each community.
Lee County, Florida
The Lee County collaborative partnership seeks to close the achievement gaps district-wide by replicating the joint implementation of two known turnaround models in nine high-need schools: the Sterling Quality model and the Glasser model for continuous improvement.
The Sterling model focuses on teachers’ and schools’ ability to define a mission, set goals, develop an action plan and monitor progress. The Glasser model emphasizes questioning students to encourage self-evaluation and responsibility, and re-teaching and re-testing until mastery has been achieved. Together, the models help teachers reflect upon and improve teaching strategies as they help students reflect upon and improve their approach to learning.
Springfield, Massachusetts
The Springfield partnership supports school-wide faculty training as well as embedded professional development through coaching. Professional development areas respond to the specific needs of participating schools, as determined through a broad-based, data-driven and democratic needs assessment led by an Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) in each school.
Springfield is also focused on expanding parent/teacher home visits. This effort is modeled on the Sacramento Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project, and requires participating teachers to be trained in visit protocols, overcoming cultural assumptions, conducting open discussions with students and families, and developing communication skills that build trust.
Omaha, Nebraska
The Omaha partnership has designed an impressive whole-school collaboration model in which teachers, administrators, and the community are engaged in the planning and design of school turnaround. The teacher role in both improving instruction and school decision-making has been vastly expanded through this model.
The partnership will evaluate the success of the specific reform models that have been collaboratively developed in each participating school, and identify which among them represents the strongest scale strategy for district-wide closure of the achievement gap.
Columbus, Ohio
The Columbus 100% Project partnership is focusing on improving instructional practice and effectiveness in two feeder patterns through: a pre-service residency conducted in conjunction with the Ohio State University to prepare teachers to teach in urban schools; the refinement of its well-regarded peer assistance and review program (PAR); and the implementation of high-quality Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in participating schools.
The highly focused work is facilitated by the Columbus Education Association (CEA) and Columbus City Schools' long and productive history of collaboration around substantive issues of teaching and learning. At the level of union and district leadership, CEA and Columbus City Schools entered into an agreement 21 years ago, creating the “Reform Panel,” a body composed equally of administrators and teachers that oversees proposals for reforms and innovations in Columbus City Schools.
Hamilton County, Tennessee
The Hamilton County initiative, named Middle Schools for a New Society, initially focused on strategies to improve student achievement in five of the county’s schools, but it was expanded to all of the district’s 21 middle schools with an additional $6 million in support from the Hamilton County-based Lyndhurst Foundation. The hallmark of the initiative has been the collaboration and creation of networks of teachers and principals from within and across the middle schools in the district to share strategies and practices to improve what students are learning in the classroom.
Seattle, Washington
In Seattle, the initiative is known as the Flight School Initiative. It is implemented in two cohorts, or flights, each consisting of elementary, middle, and high schools that form a feeder pattern. Altogether, 16 schools are part of the initiative. The initiative consists of three components: the alignment of curriculum and instruction, the development of professional learning communities and the engagement of families and community members. Based on work to increase teaching effectiveness in the 16 schools, this year the Seattle partnership is providing training district-wide to help all teachers reach the highest standards of instructional practice as set forth in nationally recognized frameworks.
The initiative focuses on neighborhood clusters to provide a coherent and aligned approach for students as they transition through the district's schools. In order to improve family and community engagement, the FSI schools have used several new strategies, including conducting home visits and sponsored family nights.
At Foundation-funded schools, the student achievement rates have surpassed the state's average in reading and math. Also, educators are reporting a positive professional climate and dramatically increased communication with parents. Approximately 77 percent of students' parents received a home visit by school educators in the past year.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
In Milwaukee, the initiative focuses on intensive professional development for teachers in 20 low performing schools. The schools have formed Learning Teams, who meet weekly to analyze data, develop the school’s Closing the Gap Action Plan and lead professional development within the school. As a result of this program, a comprehensive literacy and mathematics initiative was developed and is being implemented.
Related Initiatives
The Connecticut Alliance for CommPACT Schools
The NEA Foundation is partnering with the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education to fund and run the research component of the Connecticut Alliance for CommPACT Schools, a collaboration of six state educational organizations to help the state’s most challenged public schools close the achievement gaps by placing educators at the center of reform.
The NEA Foundation, the Neag team, and their local and state partners have been providing extensive support within and across the CommPACT network through research, assessments, and professional development for teachers.
The Ohio Appalachian Educators Institute
The Foundation awarded $175,000 in grants over three years to support the Ohio Appalachian Educators Institute's (OAEI) efforts to develop professional learning communities, promote student learning, and to build deeper partnerships with statewide policy and advocacy as well as potential funding partners to support two of the state’s poorest and lowest performing rural districts.
At least 75 percent of students in these districts are now meeting Ohio standards in reading and math and they have established a system of data collection and analysis to help them monitor their progress.