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Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn

Sponsoring Agency: National Center on Education and the Economy
Research Team: Tom Corcoran (Teachers College)

CPRE evaluated the America's Choice middle and high school comprehensive school reform designs. The designs were developed and specified by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) while field-tested, and revised based on the experience in the field-test sites and feedback from the evaluation research team. This was not a straight-forward study of the implementation of a fully developed program, but a much more dynamic and complex study of the development, specification, implementation, and revision of new school designs.

The research team examined the designs from the perspective of the school (Does it meet our needs? Does it meet our expectations? Is it feasible? Is the support adequate? Does it produce the results we expected?, etc.) and from the perspective of NCEE (Is there commitment and capacity in the site? Is it being implemented as designed? Are there barriers to be addressed? Do components produce the desired results, etc.?). The following questions were among those of central interest to the research team:

• How well did NCEE's entry and engagement strategies work? Did these strategies engage faculty and build commitment to the design?
• How did faculty response to the designs and faculty engagement in the process vary across content areas, particularly among areas in which curriculum was provided and areas in which it was not?
• Did the NCEE designs provide adequate incentives, tools, training, assistance, and sequencing to support implementation? How were the enactment supports affected by local conditions? How did these changed over time, and why?
• To what extent were the schools able to implement the designs? Were some components more difficult to implement than others? What problems were encountered? How come? How did problems vary across the sites?
• How was implementation affected by the leadership structure and style in the school? How was leadership altered by the design?
• Were local adaptations made by the schools or NCEE so that the implemented designs varied significantly across the sites? Why? With what effects?
• Did educators feel that they had to make significant modifications to the design to meet the needs of all students? How did the presence of significant numbers of special education students or English language learners affect implementation?
• What factors affected implementation? Were there prerequisite conditions for implementation of the designs? What obstacles were frequently encountered, and how were they overcome?
• Did the design elements produce the envisioned professional culture and classroom practice?
• Did the designs produce the expected changes in school policy and organization?
• What was the impact on student achievement as measured by NCEE, the school, the district, the state, and the public?
• What was the impact of the design on other student measures: discipline, attendance, school completion, course selection, postsecondary participation, and so on?
• Did the design's impact on student outcomes vary across sites, and what factors accounted for this variance?
• Did the design elements produce the desired outcomes for all significant sub-groups of students?
• Could the design be replicated at reasonable costs and with reasonable probability of success?

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