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From MDRC:
The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC, now called Springboard Schools) in San Francisco, California, is a grant-making organization that supports districtwide efforts to improve the quality and equity of student outcomes.
This report discusses the "focal strategy," which targeted selected "focal districts" in the Bay Area, beginning in the 2002-2003 school year, and was designed to increase the intensity of earlier BASRC reforms by creating more opportunities for district and school administrators to interact with BASRC staff.
Instead, it promotes a vision of culture change, relying on three key features: coaching of district and school leaders; evidence-based decision-making at all levels of the system; and networking within and across schools to share experiences and lessons.
It compares progress in the focal districts during the three years of the strategy's implementation to progress in a set of carefully chosen comparison districts in the same area over the same period.
The evident lack of a substantial, pervasive association between the BASRC focal strategy and student achievement may not be surprising given that the strategy primarily targeted district leadership, was not sustained at the school level, and did not specify particular instructional practices or supports at the school or classroom level.
Overall, the implementation research suggests that, in practice, the intensity of the intervention, the consistency of focus on improving teaching and learning, and the connection between the district-level focal reforms and changes in daily school life were not sufficiently realized.
Findings from this report indicate that the BASRC focal strategy had limited capacity to improve student performance and close achievement gaps beyond trends that were already in motion.
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Posted on December 6, 2006 08:40 PM
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