The NCLB legislation requires that schools with CSR funding use “high-quality external technical support and assistance from an external partner with experience and expertise in schoolwide reform and improvement.” Specifically, the assistance provider should help the school implement effective, research-based strategies. While expertise is often available within schools and districts, technical assistance by external providers — such as regional educational laboratories, comprehensive assistance centers, model developers or universities — broadens the pool of knowledge from which schools can draw. Research-Based Strategies to Achieve High Standards: A Guidebook on School-wide Improvement by WestEd (http://www.wested.org/csrd/guidebook/toc.htm) explains the importance of external assistance as follows:
The incorporation of external support and assistance into CSRD [now CSR] recognizes that school-wide reform is an extremely difficult, challenging, and lengthy undertaking. There are no magic formulas to turn around low-achieving schools, and success comes only after years of careful planning and effort. Providers of external technical support and assistance are highly skilled in assisting schools as they grapple with the challenges of comprehensive reform. No matter how committed and idealistic they are, school administrators and staff should not be expected to carry out comprehensive school-wide programs on their own.
External assistance from people with experience implementing CSR allows the exchange of lessons learned from other sites and enables the school to save precious resources. Some external providers also create networks of schools with similar needs and goals. To help this initiative along, the legislation also specifies that states must ensure that funded programs are supported by qualified technical assistance providers that have a successful track record, financial stability, and the capacity to deliver high-quality materials, professional development for school personnel, and on-site support during the full implementation period of the reform.
Best Practices
In selecting an external assistance provider schools know their ultimate goal, improvement in student levels of achievement through CSR, but they may not know exactly what to look for in comparing different sources of assistance. A study of New American Schools models, (Lessons from New American Schools' Scale-Up Phase: Prospects for Bringing Designs to Multiple Schools), by RAND highlights key features of external assistance that schools should look for to achieve greater implementation. RAND conducted an evaluation of seven CSR models in 40 schools. Schools were rated on their level of implementation after two years as not implementing, planning, piloting, implementing or fulfilling their vision. "Higher levels of implementation were associated with design teams that
- Had a stable team with the capacity to field qualified personnel to serve growing numbers of schools
- Effectively communicated their designs to schools and avoided school staff confusion
- Effectively marketed to districts and gained the resource support required for the design
- Emphasized the core elements of schooling common across the designs: curriculum, instruction, student assignment, assessments, and professional development
- Supported implementation with whole-school training, facilitators, extensive training days, quality checks, and materials" (p.76).
See http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR942/ for the full report.
Question from the Field: "Where can I find the list of approved models?"
Many people have sent messages to AskNCCSR requesting "the list of approved models." No agency or organization has created a list of approved models. While the CSR legislation encourages schools to examine successful externally developed models, it does not require schools to adopt a model as part of its reform program. In practice, the comprehensive reform programs being implemented by schools receiving CSR funding represent a wide range of externally and locally developed models. Schools looking for information on models may wish to begin their search with the following mechanisms:
- The Southwest Education Development Laboratory maintains a data base of CSR schools with information on models these schools have selected.
http://www.sedl.org/csr/awards.html
- Descriptions of more than 30 models can be found in the NCCSR and NWREL co-produced Catalog of School Reform Models. Although not an approved list of models, the designs in this catalog must meet four criteria before they are accepted:
1) Evidence of effectiveness in improving student academic
achievement
2) Widespread replication, with organizational capacity to continue
scaling up
3) High-quality implementation assistance to schools
4) Comprehensiveness
http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/catalog/index.shtml
Resources
- The Spring 2002 edition of NCCSR’s Benchmarks Newsletter, High-Quality Technical Assistance, examines what constitutes high-quality technical assistance and how states, districts, schools and technical assistance providers can work well together.
http://www.csrclearinghouse.org/pubs/bench/benchsp02.pdf
- Making Good Choices (2002) by the North Central Regional
Educational Laboratory is a tool for planning and implementing school reform that helps schools select an externally developed reform model that meets their school needs. The appendices offer guiding checklists for and approaches to the selection of a model.
http://www.ncrel.org/csri/choices/makegood/mgc.pdf
- Model Key Features–Guiding Questions for Teachers (1998), by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, helps teachers interact with model developers to learn how a model impacts classroom practice and school governance. The questions provided cover a range of issues important to teachers, including the model’s content, materials, assessments and proven track record of success with student populations.
http://www.nwrel.org/csrdp/questions.PDF
- The Guide to Working with Model Providers has been produced by the Regional Educational Laboratories to assist schools and districts in making the most of these partnerships. It includes information on everything from negotiating a contract, through implementation and evaluation, to the end of the contract. Tools are included that can help to clarify services and costs, identify gaps between school needs and the model, define the district role in implementation, and conduct evaluations.
http://www.ncrel.org/csri/tools/gwwmp/
In addition, the following organizations provide external technical support and assistance for CSR schools and can be contacted for more information:
- Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) - The RELs are 10 technical assistance, research and development, and information dissemination organizations funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Each has both a specific geographic region to serve and a specialty on which it offers national leadership.
http://www.relnetwork.org/
- Comprehensive Assistance Centers (CCs) - The U.S. Department of Education has funded 15 regional CCs to work primarily with states, local education agencies, tribes, schools and other recipients of funds under the No Child Left Behind act. Priority for services is given to high-poverty schools and districts, the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and NCLB recipients implementing schoolwide programs.
http://www.ed.gov/programs/compcenters/index.html
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