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EXCELLENT SCHOOLS
POCKETS OF EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE
The goal is to understand what makes successful Abbott schools
successful – whether certain characteristics of students, schools or
communities are correlated with success, and, if they are, to create a
model of educational excellence based on those characteristics and a
strategy for replicating that model in less successful schools.
Pockets of Educational Excellence addresses the need for improvement in
New Jersey’s “special needs school districts,” its “Abbott districts,”
not by focusing not on their troubles or failures, but rather by
focusing on their strengths and the successes taking place in a number
of their schools – their “pockets of educational excellence.”
The Abbott remedies, a series of education reforms including parity
funding, whole school reform, high quality preschool, supplemental
programs to meet disadvantaged students’ special educational needs, and
funding for improved school facilities, were first instituted in
1997-98. These reforms are beginning to show results, with academic
proficiency levels in the elementary grades rising in the Abbott
districts at a much higher rate than in the state as a whole. But the
proficiency levels, and the rate of improvement in student performance,
remain widely divergent among Abbott districts and among schools in each
district.
Pockets of Educational Excellence is focusing on high-performing schools
in Abbott districts in an effort to learn from their success. The
objective is to determine whether those strengths and successes can be
replicated in other schools in Abbott districts and, indeed, elsewhere
in the state and the nation. IELP is examining student, school and
community characteristics of selected schools, and considering three
interrelated issues: (1) what characteristics of the students, their
families and their communities, are correlated with the schools’
success, and specifically whether demographic characteristics such as
ethnicity, English proficiency, or the date of immigration are
correlated with school success; (2) what school characteristics, such as
teaching staff qualifications or tenure, leadership style or
instructional program (including whole school reform model), are
correlated with success; and (3) the degree to which any of these
characteristics can be treated as elements of a successful school
program, and replicated in other schools that have been less successful
with comparable student populations. One aspect of the project is an
inquiry into whether any of the successes in the excellent schools can
be attributed to any of the Abbott reforms. But the project is broader:
its central question is whether excellent, high-performing schools in
Abbott districts can point the way toward successful systemic reform.
This will be part of a multi-year project, the ultimate goal of which
will be to work with less successful schools to implement the
replication model. If the project is successful and replication proves
feasible, the potential for educational improvement in New Jersey’s
Abbott districts and elsewhere would be enormous.
The project began in Spring 2005 and will continue through Summer 2006.
The project will culminate in a report setting forth the findings and
conclusions and, if possible, a model and strategy for replication. The
report will be shared with each of the schools included in the study as
well as their districts and the New Jersey Department of Education,
distributed to organizations and individuals with interests in education
issues, and publicized to the general public.
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