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Research Accountability Evaluation of the America’s Choice Comprehensive School Reform Design 
Sponsoring Agency: National Center on Education and the Economy
Research Team: Jonathan Supovitz (University of Pennsylvania); Henry May (University of Pennsylvania)
In 1998, CPRE was contracted by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) to conduct the external evaluation of the America's Choice school design. Each year, CPRE designed and conducted a series of targeted studies on the implementation and impacts of the America's Choice design. The purpose of CPRE's evaluation was to provide formative feedback to NCEE and America's Choice schools about emerging trends in the implementation of the design, and to seek evidence of the impacts of the design using accepted high standards of evaluation design and analysis methodologies.
CPRE's evaluation of America's Choice was guided by three overarching evaluation questions. First, is America's Choice being carried out in the manner envisioned -- that is, how are teachers and school administrators understanding and implementing the many facets of the reform design? Second, as a result of teachers' implementation of America's Choice, are their instructional practices changing in ways that would improve student learning? Third, to what degree can improvements in student achievement be attributed to the design? Within this framework, annual evaluation studies targeted specific aspects of the America's Choice design for more in-depth investigation.
To address these questions, the CPRE evaluation team gathered a broad array of qualitative and quantitative data to develop a rich and valid snapshot of the implementation process over time and to capture the impacts of the design on students and teachers. After data collection, CPRE research team members analyzed the data using appropriate qualitative and quantitative research techniques in order to identify patterns of intended and unintended consequences and to detect effects of the design on students, teachers, and schools. The results are reported in a series of thematic evaluation reports that were released each year.
Reports:
America's Choice Comprehensive School Reform Design: First-Year Implementation Evaluation Summary (Tom Corcoran, Margaret Hoppe, Theresa Luhm, and Jonathan A. Supovitz, February 2000)
The Heart of the Matter: The Coaching Model in America's Choice Schools
(Susan M. Poglinco, Amy J. Bach, Kate Hovde, Sheila Rosenblum, Marisa Saunders, and Jonathan A. Supovitz, May 2003)
Impact of America's Choice on Student Performance in Duval County, Florida (Jonathan A. Supovitz, Brooke Snyder Taylor, and Henry May, October 2002)
The Impact of America's Choice on Writing Performance in Georgia: First-Year Results (Henry May, Jonathan A. Supovitz, and Joy Lesnick, July 2004)
Implementation of the America's Choice Literacy Workshops (Jonathan A. Supovitz, Susan M. Poglinco, and Amy Bach, April 2002)
Instructional Leadership in a Standards-based Reform (Jonathan A. Supovitz and Susan M. Poglinco, December 2001)
A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of America's Choice on Student Performance in Rochester, New York, 1998-2003 (Henry May, Jonathan A. Supovitz, and David Perda, July 2004)
Mapping a Course for Improved Student Learning: How Innovative Schools Systematically Use Student Performance Data to Guide Improvement (Jonathan A. Supovitz and Valerie Klein, November 2003)
Moving Mountains: Successes and Challenges of the America's Choice Comprehensive School Reform Design (Jonathan A. Supovitz, Susan M. Poglinco, and Brooke A. Snyder, March 2001)
The Relationship Between Teacher Implementation of America's Choice and Student Learning in Plainfield, New Jersey (Jonathan A. Supovitz and Henry May, January 2003)
Teacher and Coach Implementation of Writers Workshop in America's Choice Schools, 2001 and 2002 (Amy J. Bach and Jonathan A. Supovitz, November 2003)
