School Reform

Eisenhower Professional Development Program (U.S. Department of Education)

Garet, M.S., Birman, B.F., Porter, A.C., Desimore, L., Herman, R., & Yoon, K.S. (1999). Designing Effective Professional Development: Lessons from the Eisenhower Program. Available online: http://www.ed.gov/inits/teachers/eisenhower/index.html

National Longitudinal Evaluation of Comprehensive School Reform (NLECSR) (U.S. Department of Education )

Aladjem, D. (2003). Measuring implementation across multiple interventions. Paper presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Annual Research Conference, Washington, DC.
Aladjem, D., Kurki, A., Taylor, J., Uekawa, K., & Zhang, Y. (2004). Compulsory school reform? What mandated program implementation means for district support for comprehensive school reform. Paper presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Annual Research Conference, Atlanta, GA.
Aladjem, D., Shive, J., Fast, E.F., Herman, R., Borman, K., Katzenmeyer, W., Hess, M., & Hoffer, T. (2002). A large-scale mixed-methods approach to studying comprehensive school reform (Available from the American Institutes for Research, 1000 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007).
Fast, E.F., Aladjem, D., Shive, J., Herman, R., & Carter, K. (2001, November). A Review of the Design of Eight Comprehensive School Reform Models. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Evaluation Association, St. Louis, MO.

National Evaluation of the Early College High School Initiative (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2005). Early College High School Initiative: Evaluation Year End Report: 2003–2004. This is the first year-end report produced as part of the on-going evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Early College High School Initiative. The program provides funding and support for the establishment of Early College High Schools, which are organized to allow all enrolled students the opportunity to earn a high school diploma and two-years of college credit in five years or less and at public expense. These schools also target students from populations underrepresented in higher education. This report provides results from the first two years of the initiative.
Report Available Online [pdf]
American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2004). Early College High School Initiative: Intermediary Summary Report, 2003–2004. This report also presents findings from the first two years of the Early College High School Initiative. However, the focus of the findings is on the work of the grantees, called intermediaries in this initiative. Findings are presented in four key areas: the degree to which the intermediaries and the foundation share a vision, intermediaries’ implementation strategies, typical implementation activities, and intermediaries' capacity.
Report Available Online [pdf]
American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2004). Early College High Schools: Early Recruitment and Selection Strategies. One of the primary goals of Early College High Schools is to enroll students who are underrepresented in higher education. This brief report describes the strategies ECHSs have used to recruit students from groups that are traditionally underserved and underrepresented in higher education and addresses the impact of the recruitment and selection strategies on the demographics of the ECHSs’ student enrollments.
Report Available Online [pdf]

National Evaluation of High School Transformation: National School District and Network Grants Program (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

The American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2004). The evaluation of the national school district and network grants program: Year 2 evaluation report. This interim report is a part of the ongoing evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's National School District and Network Grants Program.

Available online

The American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2004). Exploring assignments, student work, and teacher feedback in reforming high schools: 2002-03 data from Washington state.This report is the first in a series of reports on teaching and learning in Foundation-supported schools. In this report, we take a careful look at instruction and students' academic work. In a subset of reforming schools, we examine whether students are exposed to challenging learning opportunities and whether challenging learning opportunities open the door to intellectually complex student work. We study samples of the assignments student tackle and the work that they produce. We examine the rigor and authenticity of assignments and the quality of the resulting student work. The data are coupled with information from jurisdiction-sponsored standardized tests and data from the broader evaluation.
Report Available online [pdf]
Technical Appendix Available online [pdf]

The American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2003). High time for high school reform: Early findings from the evaluation of the national school district and network grants program.This report, like the other reports on this page, is one of a series that will be produced as part of the ongoing evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's National School District and Network Grants Program. The program provides funding and support for the establishment of new small high schools and the conversion of large high schools into smaller learning communities. This report, reflecting results from the program's second year, focuses on the design and early implementation of new and converting schools, examining what it takes to bring small school visions into practice.
Executive Summary Available Online [pdf]
Report Available online [pdf]
Shear, L., & Smerdon, B. (2003). Mapping the Terrain: Year 1of the Evaluation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’snational school district and network grants program. This paper is based on data from the first year of the National School District and Network Grants Program evaluation. The paper describes the initiative's goals and strategies, introduces its grantees, and describes the grantees' experiences and challenges in their first year as they embark on their mission of small school reform. This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
Available online [pdf]
The American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2003). Charting a Course: Evaluation Design of the
National School District and Network Grants Program. "Charting a Course" discusses the theory of change and conceptual framework for the evaluation of the National School District and Network Grants Program. It also describes the sampling, data collection, and analysis designs of the program evaluation, of an examination of teaching and learning in foundation-supported classrooms, and of a longitudinal study of the secondary and post-secondary experiences of students in participating schools.
Available online [pdf]
The American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2001). Evaluating the Gates Foundation national school district and network grants program: Foundation theory of change.
Available online [ppt]
The American Institutes for Research and SRI International (2001). Targeted literature review of major constructs and their components: Evaluating the national school district and networks grants program.
Available online [pdf]

Proposition 227: Impact on The Education of English Learners, K-12 (California Department of Education)

In June 1998, California voters passed Proposition 227—an initiative designed to significantly alter how English learners are taught in California's K-12 public schools. Proposition 227 requires that English learners be taught "overwhelmingly in English" through structured English immersion programs during a transition period, and then in mainstream English-language classrooms. This reports have been produced as part of the legislatively mandated five-year evaluation of the effects of Proposition 227 implementation on the education of English learners. This study is being conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in collaboration with WestEd under contract to the California Department of Education.

Pérez, M., Esra, P., Parrish, T. B., Spain, A., Anand, P., Socías, M., Brock, L., Graczewski, C., and Linquanti, R. (2004) English Language Acquisition Program Evaluation Report (Year 4 report from the study Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners, K – 12). Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research.
This report evaluates the English Language Acquisition Program (ELAP), a funding stream available to schools with English learners; the program was established in 1999, following the passage of Proposition 227.

Available online [pdf]

Merickel, A., Linquanti, R., Parrish, T. B., Perez, M., Eaton, M., and Esra, P. (2003) Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners, K-12 (Year 3 Report). Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research. This report covers Year 3 of the study, during which we continued to evaluate the impact of this proposition, and focused, using a set of criteria, on examining schools across the state that appear effective on the basis of EL students’ test scores. Gaining insight into what factors appear to contribute to EL students’ academic performance in these schools may provide lessons for the education of ELs across the state.
Available online [pdf]
Parrish, T., Linquanti, R., Merickel, A., Quick, H.E., Laird, J., & Esra, P. (2002). Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners, K-12 (Year 2 Report). Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research.
This report summarizes the first two years of the evaluation. While the report builds on findings from the first year of study, it focuses primarily on findings derived from 1) analyses of state demographic, instructional, and individual student achievement data from 1998 to 2001 and 2) extensive surveys of school and district administrators, teachers, and Community-Based English Tutoring (CBET) program coordinators.
Available online [pdf]

Parrish, T. (2001). Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners, K-12 (Year 1 Report). Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research.
This report presents a set of themes related to the implementation and impact of Proposition 227 in school and district across California that emerged from the phone interviews and case study site visits conducted in the first year of study.
Available online [pdf]

Evaluations of Intervention Programs for Low Performing Schools in California

Passed in 1999, the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA) established a results-based accountability system in California with specific performance targets for schools. The PSAA created a system of rewards and sanctions for meeting or not meeting those targets, and assistance programs for low-performing schools, including the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP). In 2001, the High Priority Schools Grant Program (HPSGP) was established as part of PSAA, to provide additional funds to the lowest-performing schools in the state, taking the place of the II/USP. AIR conducted two evaluations of the II/USP and is currently evaluating the HPSGP.

Harr, J.J., Parrish, T., Socias, M., & Gubbins, P. (2007). Evaluation Study of California’s High Priority Schools Grant Program: Final Report.

Final Year 2 HP Report Available Online [pdf]
Final Year 2 HP Appendices Available Online [pdf]

Harr, J., Parrish, T., Socias, M., Gubbins, P., & Spain, A. (2006). Evaluation Study of California’s High Priority Schools Grant Program: Year 1.

Final Year 1 ReportAvailable Online [pdf]
Year 1 Appendices Available Online [pdf]

O'Day, J., and Bitter, C. (2003). Evaluation Study of the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program and the High Achieving/Improving Schools Program of the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999.

Evaluation Brief Available Online [pdf]
Full Report Available Online [pdf]

Bitter, C., Pérez, M., Parrish, T., González, R., Socias, M., Salzfass, L., Chaney, K., Gubbins, P., Anand, P., Dawson, K., Yu, V., Delancey, D., and Esra, P. (2005). Evaluation Study of the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program of the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999.

Final Report Available Online [pdf]
Appendices Available Online [pdf]