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2018-07-05
RAND Corporation;
The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, designed and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to dramatically improve student outcomes by increasing students' access to effective teaching. Participating sites adopted measures of teaching effectiveness (TE) that included both a teacher's contribution to growth in student achievement and his or her teaching practices assessed with a structured observation rubric. The TE measures were to be used to improve staffing actions, identify teaching weaknesses and overcome them through effectiveness-linked professional development (PD), and employ compensation and career ladders (CLs) as incentives to retain the most-effective teachers and have them support the growth of other teachers. The developers believed that these mechanisms would lead to more-effective teaching, greater access to effective teaching for low-income minority (LIM) students, and greatly improved academic outcomes.
Beginning in 2009–2010, three school districts -- Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) in Florida; Memphis City Schools (MCS) in Tennessee (which merged with Shelby County Schools, or SCS, during the initiative); and Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) in Pennsylvania -- and four charter management organizations (CMOs) -- Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) Schools -- participated in the Intensive Partnerships initiative. RAND and the American Institutes for Research conducted a six-year evaluation of the initiative, documenting the policies and practices each site enacted and their effects on student outcomes. This is the final evaluation report.
2018-02-28
Memphis Music Initiative;
In Toward the Future of Arts Philanthropy, you'll find:
- A review of the historic landscape and lack of equity in arts funding;
- An overview of MMI's disruptive philanthropic approach rooted in equity; and
- A discussion of opportunities and challenges in implementing a disruptive philanthropic approach.
2016-09-07
RAND Corporation;
In response to research showing the critical role that teachers play in student learning and the inadequate job that districts have historically done judging teachers' effectiveness, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative. The initiative involves three school districts (Hillsborough County Public Schools [HCPS] in Florida, Memphis City Schools [MCS] in Tennessee,1 and Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] in Pennsylvania) and four charter management organizations (CMOs) based in California (Aspire Public Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and Partnerships to Uplift Communities Schools). These sites have worked over a multiyear period to align teacher evaluation, staffing, professional development, compensation, and careerladder policies to boost teaching effectiveness and increase low-income minority (LIM) students' access to effective teaching.2 The initiative's goal is dramatic gains in student achievement, graduation rates, and collegegoing, especially for LIM students. At the core of these changes is each site's adoption of a definition of effective teaching and development of a rigorous measure of effectiveness that combined classroom observation, gains in student achievement, and other factors to rate every teacher. Each site used its vision of effective teaching and the new evaluation metrics to improve its management of its teacher workforce, including hiring, placement, professional development and support, compensation, retention, and career advancement.
2016-09-07
RAND Corporation;
In school year 2009–2010, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, a $290 million project aimed at improving student achievement through more-effective management and support of the teacher workforce. The foundation identified seven Intensive Partnership sites—three school districts and four CMOs—to implement, over a six-year period, reforms covering teacher evaluation, staffing, professional development, and compensation and career ladders.
Sites began planning and implementing the reforms during the 2009–2010 school year, and most elements were in place in some form by 2012–2013. However, the sites continued to add new components and fine-tune their strategies after 2012–2013, and foundation support continues through the 2015–2016 school year.
This report describes results through 2013–2014. Because implementation unfolded over time, it is not clear when to expect to see initial effects on student outcomes. Initial effects might be expected by 2012–2013, when many components were in place, but effects might be expected to grow as the components are implemented more completely and transform practice more deeply.
2016-09-07
RAND Corporation;
This interim report presents estimates of the overall effect that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative has had on student outcomes through the 2013– 2014 school year. The aim of the initiative is to encourage and support strategic human-capital reforms that are intended to improve the ways in which "teachers are recruited, evaluated, supported, retained, and rewarded" (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2011). The cornerstone of the reform is the development and implementation of teacherevaluation systems that are based on student achievement growth; structured classroom observations by principals or trained peers; and other inputs, such as student or parent surveys. These evaluations are used to guide personnel practices in three broad areas—staffing, professional development, and compensation and career-ladder decisions—with the goal of giving every student access to highly effective teachers. Staffing practices include such activities as expedited recruiting and incentivizing effective teachers to work in high-need schools; professionaldevelopment practices include feedback, coaching, and mentoring related to teachers' identified strengths and weaknesses; and compensation practices include monetary rewards for effective teachers and incentives for teaching in high-need positions.
This initiative is being implemented in sites that the foundation chose, including three large urban districts and four charter management organizations (CMOs) that are a part of the College-Ready Promise. The districts are Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) in Florida, Memphis City Schools (MCS) in Tennessee,2 and Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) in Pennsylvania. The CMOs are the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and Partnerships to Uplift Communities Schools. All sites have implemented most of the elements of the initiative to some degree, although there is variation by site. Enough change has occurred that it is reasonable to test whether there is evidence of improved students' outcomes. This report does not include results for any of the CMOs because student achievement data for the 2013–2014 school year are not available in California, where most of these schools are located.
2016-06-06
RAND Corporation;
In school year 2009–2010, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, a $290 million project aimed at improving student achievement through more-effective management and support of the teacher workforce. The foundation identified seven Intensive Partnership sites— three school districts and four charter management organizations (CMOs)—to implement reforms covering teacher evaluation, staffing, professional development, and compensation and career ladders over a six-year period.1 These reforms are intended, among other things, to improve teachers' overall effectiveness and to ensure that low-income minority (LIM) students have access to highly effective teachers. A detailed description of the initiative is available in a RAND report, Implementation: The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching Through 2013–2014.2 As part of an evaluation of the Intensive Partnerships initiative, RAND Corporation researchers investigated the relationship between teachers' effectiveness in raising student achievement in mathematics and reading (the teachers' value added) and the demographic characteristics of the students the teachers serve. We measured whether, on average, LIM students were taught by more or less effective teachers than non-LIM students were. We examined the issue among teachers and students in grades 4 through 8 in four sites (Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida; Pittsburgh Public Schools in Pennsylvania; Memphis City Schools in Tennessee; and Aspire Public Schools, a California CMO) and investigated whether site policies designed to improve LIM students' access to effective teachers have worked. We also explored differences in student access to effective teachers between schools and differences in access between classes within schools. We focused the analyses on the three years prior to the initiative's implementation and the four years following implementation.
2016-06-06
RAND Corporation;
This report attends to the distribution of effective teachers within and across schools in the sites, collectively known as the Intensive Partnership sites. We examine the trends in the distribution of effective teachers between LIM students and other students. We also examine whether any of a variety of mechanisms can explain changes in LIM students' access to effective teaching. These mechanisms include increasing the percentage of LIM students whom effective teachers teach, increasing the effectiveness of teachers with large percentages of LIM students, and replacing less effective teachers of LIM students with more-effective teachers.
2016-01-01
Union of Concerned Scientists;
Cities all over the U.S. are coming up with innovative ways to fight back against a failing food system that is sickening millions of Americans each year. In this report, we present case studies of five local initiatives to increase access to healthy food. These solutions may serve as a model for other communities--and as a reminder that we need to transform the dysfunctional federal policies that make healthy food access harder than it should be.
2014-05-09
National Center on Time and Learning;
This report looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. It reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an expanded-time school schedule and calendar. These schools' expanded time (on average, they are in session almost 300 hours more per year than the national norm of 1,170 hours) affords not only more hours and days focused on classroom instruction, but also a full array of professional learning opportunities.
2014-02-01
Institute for Higher Education Policy;
By 2020, more than six out of 10 U.S. jobs will require postsecondary training. Despite a slight increase in college attainment nationally in recent years, the fastest-growing minority groups are being left behind. Only 25 and 18 percent of Blacks and Hispanics, respectively, hold at least an associate's degree, compared with 39 percent of Whites. Without substantial increases in educational attainment, particularly for our nation's already underserved groups, the United States will have a difficult time developing a robust economy.
Home to 65 percent of Americans, and a majority of all African Americans and Hispanics (74 and 79 percent, respectively), the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) can play a strong role in developing this nation's workforce. In fact, to reach a national attainment target that meets our workforce needs, more than half of college degrees could be generated from the these cities. The majority of degrees needed among African-American and Hispanic adults could also be produced in MSAs.
Clearly, investing in and organizing around the potential of metropolitan areas is critical, and the stakes have never been higher. Yet the current funding climate requires strategic public and private partnerships to invest in education innovation and human capital development in order to have the most robust impact on sustainable national growth. For this study, the Institute for Higher Education (IHEP) sought to follow up on its previous work examining MSA educational attainment rates by further exploring policies that either inhibit or facilitate degree production, and identifying metropolitan-level, cross-section collaborations that help local leaders contribute to national completion goals.
2013-09-10
FSG;
Launched by a coalition of business and government leaders, Memphis Fast Forward(MFF) is a multi-layered collective impact initiative designed to increase economic prosperity and quality of life in Greater Memphis, Tenn.
2012-12-01
Edna McConnell Clark Foundation;
This report presents an assessment of the Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot. It was commissioned by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, founder and lead investor of the grantmaking initiative.
Starting in 2000, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (Clark) adopted an investment approach to grantmaking that focused on providing growth capital to youth-serving organizations with demonstrated commitments to evaluation and measurable outcomes. For grantees, the strategy meant larger, longer-term, unrestricted investments, complemented by extensive access to consulting and technical assistance to strengthen their organizations.
This approach helped Clark grantees across the portfolio increase the numbers of youth they served (for example, by 18 percent between 2005 and 2006) and achieve annual revenue gains (averaging 19 percent over the four years prior to the founding of GCAP). At the same time, the Foundation concluded that more capital would be required if its grantees and other promising youth-serving organizations were to realize their ultimate scale and sustainability potential.
