School, Family & Community Partnerships
Systemic Supports for School Reform
The most important predictor of student success in school is readiness to learn to read. Unfortunately, many children from high-poverty homes enter school with limited readiness skills.
Until we do a more successful job in educating children who have been placed at risk of failure, their communities and our society, in general, will fail to cultivate a substantial reservoir of human talent that will be greatly needed in the years ahead. This CRESPAR research program focuses on:
In many respects, the battle of urban education is lost during the middle grades. It is here that the absence of strong curricula and lack of well-prepared teachers are most severe. It is also during early adolescence that many students become disengaged from school and fail to receive the academic preparation they need to succeed in high school.
A significant proportion of the nation's non-selective high schools enrolling poor and minority students are failures. It is not unusual for more than half of the students who enter the ninth grade in these schools to drop out before the twelfth grade. More than one-quarter of the students may be absent on a typical day, and nearly three-quarters will miss more than a month of school during the year. Academic achievement scores are low, with many students failing even minimum competency tests. Few students are ready to pass the more demanding high school assessments that are being instituted in many states.
New research-based models are urgently needed so high schools can produce learning environments where all students will master a common core curriculum of high standards, even when many of them begin high school with weak prior academic preparations. This CRESPAR research program focuses primarily on the development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of three whole-school reform models:
Other research studies focus on retention, dropout prevention, and dropout recovery.
School, Family & Community Partnerships
Families and communities are crucial assets in the education of students placed at risk, but in order to improve student success, these resources must be activated by school policies, programs, and practices.
This CRESPAR research program develops, imple- ments, evaluates, and disseminates models of school, family, and community partnerships that help students succeed in school, achieve at high levels, and develop social and emotional competencies. Two projects focus on:
The two projects also link to Talent Development Elementary, Middle, and High Schools, thereby ensuring cross-CRESPAR connections of school, family, and community partnerships with the talent development models.
Systemic Supports for School Reform
The long-term success of school improvement efforts require systemic supports. The goal of this CRESPAR program is to advance research and development in support of teachers, schools, school districts, and reform designs in improving the achievements of students placed at risk. Projects include: