Profiles of the Regional Educational Laboratories

The Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE

Mission

To promote and support the continuous improvement of educational opportunities for all learners in the Southeast.

Regional Problem Areas to be Addressed

SERVE's program of work is targeted at a fundamental and pervasive regional problem--closing the achievement gap, particularly in low-performing schools. SERVE recognizes that it must address this problem by attacking a variety of root causes; therefore, the work of the Regional Educational Laboratory at SERVE is organized around six critical issues: transforming low-performing schools into high-performing learning communities, advancing educator quality, informing public policy, closing the achievement gap through early childhood, promoting literacy, and implementing standards, assessment, and accountability. The work focuses on the production and dissemination of procedural knowledge--that is, the tools, models, procedures, etc. for addressing these critical issues.

Transforming low-performing schools into high-performing learning communities (staff contact: Mary Apodaca). At the forefront of the achievement gap are those schools each state has labeled "low-performing" or in greatest need of reform. Addressing their needs is a formidable challenge, requiring interventions designed to build the capacity for continuous improvement. SERVE employs the following linked strategies designed to help these schools:

• SuperSites, one of SERVE's signature works, has been in operation since January 2000, when the first SuperSite was launched in the Mississippi Delta in partnership with the North Bolivar School District of Shelby, Mississippi, a rural, high-poverty area. Five educator-mentors work one-on-one with teachers and administrators to implement the state-mandated Corrective Action Plan by revising curriculum, coaching in classrooms and at the school and district levels, and assisting with leadership development and strategic planning. Future sites are anticipated in other SERVE states. Current research and preliminary results indicate that this intensive, sustained intervention can accelerate reform and improvement in student performance in low-performing schools dramatically.

• Procedural knowledge--it isn't enough to capture it; SERVE recognizes the central importance of sharing the word with people who can use the information to make a difference in classrooms, schools, and communities. The SERVE Regional Forum on School Improvement and the Southern States Seminar (on low-performing schools) are annual events that illustrate how SERVE disseminates procedural knowledge to educators and provides an opportunity to share successful practices and lessons learned.

• Partnerships with state departments of education allow SERVE to expand its significant work addressing the needs of low-performing schools and districts. SERVE will partner with the Alabama Department of Education on the Alabama Low-Performing School Project to research and develop procedural knowledge and a systematic way to deliver services and technical assistance to reach classrooms and students. SERVE will work with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's Achievement Gap Office to define best-practice strategies with the highest promise for North Carolina schools.

• Addressing national problems and concerns, SERVE's National Center for Homeless Education is a research and information resource that disseminates referral information related to the complex needs surrounding the education of homeless children and youth.

Advancing educator quality (staff contact: Steven Bingham). With increased retirements stemming from an aging workforce, higher licensure standards, and implementation of decreased pupil-to-teacher ratios, keeping a qualified teacher in every classroom is a continuous challenge. Yet without an adequate supply of qualified teachers and effective professional development, there is little hope of closing the achievement gap. SERVE's strategy to address this challenge includes providing a wide variety of teacher professional development, working with school leaders through academies, identifying and sharing knowledge about higher-quality teaching, and partnering to coordinate and expand knowledge and support to teachers and leaders as they strive to increase student achievement. For example, SERVE partners with the Georgia Department of Education in implementing the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) developed by the Milken Family Foundation, and SERVE works with the Southeast Center for Teacher Quality on a cross-state initiative on teacher supply-and-demand issues and as part of a regional researcher network on teachers and teaching. Montevallo University is a SERVE partner working on the Teachers As Researchers Academy, and SERVE Research Scientists are working with Fordham University on groundbreaking research in superintendent turnover. The A+ Foundation, affiliated with the Alabama Chamber of Commerce, has assumed a major role in our Teacher Dialogue Forums.

Informing public policy (staff contact: Helen DeCasper). The southeast is arguably the nation's "hotbed" of state-level reform--a testament to the understanding policymakers have of the need for education reform in the southeast. SERVE recognizes that direct support to schools, districts, and communities must be framed in the context of state reform and state reform must be informed by local needs and research-based information. SERVE has several policy-related efforts in place to address these unique needs of its region, including a SERVE senior policy research analyst located in each state education agency and one at-large position serving the region to assist in synthesizing policy and research information, developing policy options, and conducting other policy or legislative analyses as requested. Policy Briefs and reports are prepared to address research findings. SERVE supports the development of research-based, objective state education policy through a Policy Network composed of advisors to governors, chief state school officers, state boards of education, legislators, and other key policymakers. SERVE connects Network members through an annual event and the ongoing use of technology.

Closing the achievement gap through early childhood (staff contact: Catherine Scott-Little). Early childhood research reinforces a major tenet for closing the achievement gap--get children off to a solid beginning through education; otherwise, at-risk children fall farther behind. SERVE's Ready Children Project will increase the number of children who enter school healthy and ready for success by increasing the quantity and quality of early childhood school readiness programs through research-based training, technical assistance, and other resources for schools, childcare professionals, and parents. Serving young children builds collaborative relationships among the early childhood community to enhance nationwide education efforts for children from birth to age eight. Staff conduct research, write publications, host conferences, provide training, and offer technical assistance to promote sound early childhood policies and practices. Also, an Early Childhood Leadership Institute will be held in partnership with Mississippi State University's Early Childhood Institute.

Promoting literacy (staff contact: Paula Egelson). Research emphasizes the foundational role literacy plays in education--reading really is "fundamental" to academic success. SERVE's strategy to address this problem focuses on Mississippi's critical need to improve literacy and involves a partnership with the Mississippi Department of Education, the University of Mississippi, and the Barksdale Foundation. Mississippi school districts are chosen each year to receive training and technical support to incorporate all components of the Mississippi Reading Reform Model. Another 20 districts receive support to incorporate some of the elements. SERVE will evaluate the Initiative and provide yearly reports concerning the status of evaluation activities. SERVE will also assist the Mississippi Department of Education in synthesizing the evaluation findings and providing results of the synthesis to the public. The Center for Educational Research and Evaluation at the University of Mississippi is also a partner in this effort. Another SERVE literacy effort (related to the Barksdale Reading Initiative) is the Family-School Partnership Project designed to assist Mississippi prekindergarten teachers in low-achieving schools to increase parent involvement through family literacy activities. Work will include identifying family literacy best practices, training for cohorts of teachers in low-performing schools, and implementing the program in classrooms.

Implementing standards, assessment, and accountability (staff contact: Wendy McColskey). In the last decade, southeastern states have implemented content standards, testing programs, and accountability mechanisms as primary tools for raising student achievement. However, without significant and coordinated efforts to build district, school, and teacher capacities to organize teaching and learning around higher standards, and to build cultures that use assessment to improve learning, accountability initiatives will not be able to achieve the goal of improved student outcomes for all students. SERVE's commitment to support the capacity building needed to make higher standards in all classrooms a reality includes work at all levels: state, district, school, classroom, and higher education.

At the state level, SERVE is developing procedural knowledge about how to improve state policies. At the district level, SERVE is studying how low-achieving districts respond to state standards, assessment, and accountability influences; developing tools for districts to use in assessing the quality of students' opportunities to learn in classrooms as a tool for school improvement and teacher growth; and supporting a learning community of districts (called SERVE-Leads) committed to developing procedural knowledge about the district role in leading standards-based reform. At the school level, SERVE is developing a template for an eighth grade culminating performance assessment. Its purpose is to focus middle school students on demonstrating competence in the skills needed to succeed in high school. At the classroom level, SERVE is summarizing the emerging research on "best practices" in classroom assessment and offering assessment skill training to teachers. Finally, SERVE is working with higher education to finalize and scale-up an assessment course for preservice teachers that will help them graduate ready to take on the challenges of standards-based reform in their classrooms.

For teachers to teach to higher standards, they must be held to a more compelling and research-based vision of good teaching than is found in many teacher evaluation systems. Thus, SERVE is field testing and scaling up a teacher evaluation system that will encourage teachers to strive toward higher professional standards.

National Leadership Area

Expanded learning opportunities (staff contact: Catherine Scott-Little). The formal boundaries of school-based education have been expanding for many years. Head Start, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, prekindergarten, and summer school are only a few examples of programs, initiatives, and supplements to the list. SERVE's work in its National Leadership Area is aimed to systematically bring order to this important education issue. As part of its commitment to this national effort, SERVE will conduct an assessment to determine the status of research in the expanded learning field. SERVE's research agenda will take a two-pronged approach. In the area of early childhood education, SERVE is examining the plethora of benchmarks that have been developed for preschool-age children. Results from this research will inform early childhood educators on the skills and characteristics children need to develop to be "ready" for school. The second research study examines indicators of high-quality school-age programming, pulling together current attempts to evaluate expanded learning programs and research on the impact of these programs. Results from this synthesis will provide information to guide schools and other providers as they design and evaluate school-age expanded learning programs. SERVE is also organizing a series of discussion groups, informal symposia, and conferences to promote cross-organizational collaboration and dissemination of research findings in the expanded learning arena.

Along with other key partners, SERVE is developing a plan for coordinated technical assistance to schools. The technical assistance plan will address support for schools and communities to facilitate community collaboration (especially in rural areas or areas that often receive the least help in developing services for children), provide training on the school improvement/school reform knowledge base and implications for quality afterschool and expanded learning programs, encourage collaboration with the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program to assist potential bidders (especially from rural, limited-income, and/or culturally diverse communities) in developing successful proposals, and offer assistance for schools and communities in providing high-quality early education services.

Key Accomplishments

SERVE has developed products and provided assistance to states, districts, and schools across the region. Among the many successful efforts, two stand out as especially promising to positively impact low-performing schools and to help close the achievement gap. They are:

• Senior Project Program--In existence since 1994, Senior Project links the development of oral and written communication skills for secondary students and the creation of a culminating assessment for 12th-graders. Students produce a research paper on an approved topic of their choice, develop a related product, and present their findings before a community review panel. Today, over 60 high schools in the 6 SERVE states participate in the program, and a variety of support is available to southeastern high schools that wish to implement Senior Project. Priority will be given to low-achieving high schools in rural areas. A hotline, electronic billboard, training, annual institute, Senior Project research, and SERVE Senior Project products are available to interested educators. Senior Project sites exist in all SERVE states: Alabama (2), Florida (16), Georgia (3), Mississippi (8), North Carolina (31), and South Carolina (3).

• Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) Program Implementation Study-- SERVE began a 3-year study in 1999-2000 of the progress of CSRD implementation in 38 schools across its 6-state region. The study looks at a purposive sample of 10 percent of all CSRD schools in the southeast that are implementing various self-contained, externally developed, comprehensive school reform models, as well as those integrating components from locally developed approaches. The sample includes urban, suburban, and rural communities. CSRD sites exist in all SERVE states: Alabama (4), Florida (12), Georgia (7), Mississippi (4), North Carolina (6), and South Carolina (5).

Upcoming Products and Events

The 2001 SERVE Forum on School Improvement: Sharing Knowledge, Expanding Learning. The sixth-annual SERVE Forum will conveneteachers, administrators, community leaders, and national experts for 3 days of dialogue, instruction, team-building, and sharing (Fall 2001, Charlotte, North Carolina).

Policy Colloquium. SERVE is cosponsoring with the BellSouth Foundation and the Columbia Group a "Briefing of Southeastern Congressional Delegations on Educational Research," focusing on research conducted by the Rand Corporation on southeastern regional performance and policy implications (Spring 2001, Washington, DC).

Teacher of the Year (TOY) Advisory Committee Meeting. SERVE biannually convenes current and immediate-past Teachers of the Year from each of the six states as a powerful network and think tank on teaching, learning, and educational policy (Fall 2001, North Carolina Center for Advancement and Teaching).

Tomorrow's Child: Benefiting from Today's Family-School-Community-Business Partnerships. This Sharing Success document provides descriptions of successful family-school-community-business partnerships in early childhood education (Fall 2001).

Building Babies' Brains: A Training for Infant/Toddler Caregivers. This training guide is designed for presenting understandable brain-based educational research to child caregivers (Fall 2001).

Virtual Libraries in the Southeast: A Guide to Online Databases Available to Educators in the SERVE States. This Technology in Learning document offers readers information on how to access licensed databases in the southeast (Fall 2001).

[Southwest Educational Development Laboratory] [Western Regional Educational Laboratory at WestEd]

This page last modified August 29, 2001 (jer)