Provides services and technical assistance for students so they benefit from research-based curricula taught in safe environments.

Adult Education & Literacy Children's Mental Health District Consulting Education Evidence & Indicators Early Childhood Education Finance Education Technology Higher Education School Reform Special Education

Produces and disseminates information to provide motivation and tools to enable individuals to make informed decisions about health issues.

Communications & Social Marketing Research & Policy Analysis Conference Services, Technical Writing & Clearinghouse/Call Center Management Technical Assistance & Training Informatics, Web Site Development & Information Management

Develops and implements education testing programs that benefit students, parents and public officals.

State Student Testing Computer Statistical Services

Works with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government's primary source for collecting and analyzing data about public education.

Helps to provide all children with access to a quality education, and empowers people, organizations, and communities to bring about social change.

Is committed to helping clients improve the effectiveness of their workforce through a wide range of management, organizational, and business improvement efforts.

Equity Analysis Organizational Performance Skills Assessment Team Performance Usability Engineering

Produces, maintains and disseminates systematic reviews of the effects of social and behavioral interventions.

YOU ARE HERE: Home > Projects & Clients > Adult Education & Literacy

School District Consulting

The School District Consulting Group seeks to serve four main client groups by delivering whole system consulting support to these targets groups:

1. Large and mid-size urban school districts – There are roughly 200 school districts in the country that are generally considered to be "urban." Their typical characteristics include: large size, significant minority populations, a major media market, high concentrations of poverty and immigrants, and historically low student achievement.

• Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC: AIR recently completed a major study of the governance and management strategy of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) on behalf of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). The task force was launched in hope of unifying business and community leaders in an effort to improve the district. AIR conducted a broad-based review of CMS's management strategies and recommended a number of approaches to reform for the district to pursue. In addition, AIR conducted a series of interviews, focus groups, town hall meetings, and community surveys to provide CMS stakeholders with the opportunity to share their opinions and suggestions regarding the future of CMS. AIR analyzed these data and provided recommendations to the Task Force about changes to the management and governance structure of CMS.
  
  A copy of AIR's report highlighting the study's findings is available at the Foundation of Carolina's website: http://www.fftc.org/news/taskforce/. To access Education Week's story, "Major Change Eyed for Charlotte, N.C." published on January 4, 2006, click on the following link: http://www.air.org/news/documents/EdWeek20061nc.htm.

• San Diego: AIR is the Gates and Carnegie foundation intermediary in the San Diego Unified School District and provides guidance and support on district-wide reform strategies at the secondary level. AIR has assisted in the development and implementation of a portfolio management approach to address the mission of each high school to successfully prepare students for college/work options. AIR assists in designing and assessing the effectiveness of differentiated change strategies that include the establishment of small learning communities, common achievement benchmarks, recent conversion of three underperforming comprehensive schools into 14 small independent high schools, and supporting other models such as charter schools creation. AIR also assists in strengthening the quality of instruction by ensuring that professional development is organized and aligned with a focus on academic rigor through new units of study, personalization with advisories, and relevant, project-based learning experiences for students. The San Diego Unified School District, in partnership with AIR, is taking steps to become more proactive in building community support and ownership of the reform efforts.
  

• Texas High School Project: AIR is the lead consultant to the Texas High School Project (THSP) based in Austin, Texas. THSP is a large nonprofit organization jointly created by the Texas Education Agency, the Gates Foundation, and the Dell Foundation to coordinate all three organizations' high school reform efforts in the state. AIR has been retained by THSP to provide a package of consulting and implementation support services to a set of urban districts that are currently recipients of major THSP grants. Over the course of the next several years, AIR will work closely with the districts to develop and implement a set of district-level reforms to support a broad-based high school reform strategy.
  

• Chicago, IL: AIR worked in tandem with the Boston Consulting Group and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to develop a vision and plan for high school reform for the 100+ high schools in CPS. Ongoing access to AIR's district consulting practice and other AIR research staff was provided for the duration of this project. These AIR staff provided expertise and resources on various aspects of high school reform and district-level initiatives. AIR's expertise was provided through informational interviews, exchange of documents, and face-to-face meetings.
  

2. State departments of education – The department of education of every state has a responsibility under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to intervene in school districts whose student performance does not meet NCLB standards on a persistent basis. Many do not have the organizational or human capabilities to meet this responsibility. As a result, they contract with AIR to assist them in assessing and intervening in low performing districts.

• Ohio: AIR has been retained by the Ohio Department of Education to provide technical assistance services to low-performing school districts under "academic emergency". In 2004, an AIR team conducted a comprehensive review of the Mansfield City School District, which had been designated as an academic emergency district. The review identified key leverage points related to student performance and targeted areas for improvement in terms of students' academic skills. Data were gathered through structured observations of school and district practices; interviews with key personnel; observation of classroom instructional practices; and a review of schools and district assessment data, documents, and artifacts. A report of findings along with key recommendations for a district improvement plan was provided to the district.

• New Jersey: AIR's work in New Jersey represents a three-year effort to provide external technical support to build the instructional leadership capacity of district and school staff in New Jersey's high-need "Abbott" districts. AIR provides hands-on, research-based instructional leadership support to assist New Jersey educators in closing the achievement gap. The support occurs in three phases:
  
  
  • Phase I: Collaborative Needs Assessment - The consulting team conducts a comprehensive needs assessment in each district to guide the implementation of workshops to build the capacity of instructional leaders to provide rigorous and engaging curriculum and instruction for all students.
  • Phase II: Executive Coaching and Workshop Sessions - AIR consultants provide educators with instructionally focused accountability planning and one-to-one coaching for instructional leaders. Coaching includes professional development for principals and teachers that focuses on school-wide instructional improvement and leadership coupled with central office coordination and support for these activities. A web-based reporting tool is used by the consultants to record their activities in client school districts.
  • Phase III: Routine evaluation of progress and accountability planning - AIR provides technical assistance to the districts to build school-wide accountability systems and instructional leadership capacity to positively impact teachers' practices.

  Outcomes of AIR's partnerships with the New Jersey school districts include: 1) increased leadership capacity on the part of the district and school staff, 2) an increased capacity of educators to use student data to drive decision-making, 3) a clear articulation of and adherence to a Theory of Action for raising student achievement, and 4) the formation of professional learning communities. The project is funded by a combination of the New Jersey Department of Education, local school district funds, and the Prudential Foundation.

3. Federal Government

AIR has a deep history of serving the federal government, particularly the U.S. Department of Education. AIR provides a wide range of research, evaluation, and technical assistance to the Department. Currently AIR is the prime contractor for the National High School Center, the Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center, and the What Works Clearinghouse. These projects draw upon our experience in working with schools and school districts in identifying effective practices.

• The National High School Center: AIR has recently been awarded a grant to establish the National High School Center for the U.S. Department of Education. The Center's mission is to serve as the nation's central source of information and expertise on high schools and to support the national network of TA centers. The Center will be the catalyst for change in high schools throughout the country through three overarching services: (1) creating a comprehensive, usable knowledge database on effective strategies for improving high schools; (2) synthesizing research into useful products and tools; and (3) providing a variety of high-leverage TA services to meet the diverse needs of the Federal Regional Centers (RCs) nationwide. The National High School Center will contribute toward increasing knowledge among the RCs of evidence-based practices that will ultimately be used to build capacity for improving high schools and fostering needed systematic change. In turn, the RCs will provide needed high school improvement support services to states, districts, and schools in their regions. The Center is funded for five years. For additional information about the National High School Center, click on the following link: www.betterhighschools.org



• Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center: Since 2003, we have been funded by ED's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to create and operate a Comprehensive School Reform Quality (CSRQ) Center. The center provides timely and reliable tools and TA to support urban and rural educators and education decision makers in choosing the highest quality comprehensive school reform (CSR) models and approaches to meet locally defined needs. Specifically, the CSRQ center produces and makes widely available AIR Reports, an extensive series of "consumer-reports" -like reviews and supplemental guidance on the effectiveness and quality of the leading elementary, middle, and high school CSR programs; develops partnerships with education, parent and family, community, and policymaker organizations, state and district level educators, and TA providers to ensure that AIR Reports meet needs at the state and local levels, are accessed and used widely, and help consumers use the findings of reviews as effective decision-making guides; and provides TA to selected states, districts, and schools to help support an increased capacity to use the reports and guidance produced by the project, and to act as a model for other state education agencies (SEAs), local education agencies (LEAs), and schools undertaking comprehensive school reform efforts. The CSRQ center helps raise student achievement and improve other important student outcomes by helping education decision makers identify and apply "what works" in the area of comprehensive school reform. For additional information about CSRQ, click on the following link: www.csrq.org



• What Works Clearinghouse: The What Works Clearinghouse provides decision makers with the clear, comprehensive information about what really works in education through a set of easily accessible web-based reports and databases. Clearinghouse resources will include reviews of potentially replicable interventions that are intended to enhance student outcomes, information about the evaluation studies on which intervention reviews have been based, and a listing of outcome evaluators (individuals and organizations) willing to conduct evaluations of educational interventions based on What Works Clearinghouse standards. For additional information, click on the following link: www.whatworks.ed.gov

4. Foundations

• Microsoft Foundation: AIR advises the Microsoft Corporation regarding the development of their corporate philanthropic strategy regarding K-12 education. An AIR consulting team assisted Microsoft develop a strategy focused on middle school reform in the areas of math and science. We are currently supporting the initial roll-out of this strategy focused on eight school districts in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. One early product of our work with Microsoft is the publication of "The Gateway to Student Success in Math and Science: A Call for Middle School Reform-The Research and Its Implications"



• GE Foundation: The GE Foundation has awarded AIR a grant to support their College Bound District Initiative through evaluation and technical assistance. The GE Foundation's initiative is designed to facilitate systemic and fundamental district change in targeted GE communities and aims to increase college readiness of students. GE has developed a systemwide strategy to support school districts and provide students with a challenging K-12 academic experience. The initiative has been launched in Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, KY and additional districts will be added to the initiative throughout the year. The framework of the College Bound District Initiative contains five key components: 1) constituency engagement, 2) management capacity building, 3) professional development for teachers, 4) math and science curricula reform, and 5) GE leadership and volunteer engagement. AIR is working with the GE Foundation and the districts to determine the indicators and evaluation strategies that will effectively capture change over time in each of the components. The main audiences for information about the evaluation are the GE Foundation Board, GE Foundation staff, the targeted districts, and any potential new districts.

back to top