Topic: Curriculum & Instruction
A strong curriculum and effective instruction are essential for all students, no matter their cultural or linguistic background. This has been a theme of Alliance work throughout its history.
The Adolescent Literacy Collaboratory is a year-long, job-embedded professional learning experience for middle school and high school teachers of math, science, social studies, and English/language arts. The Collaboratory combines an initial face-to-face institute with year-long online learning activities.
Web site: /Collaboratory
In collaboration with the Center for Inquiry on Secondary Education (CISE) in Maine and the Center for Resource Management (CRM), The Education Alliance produced research-based resources that provide guidelines for planning, implementing, and sustaining adolescent literacy initiatives at the secondary level, and provided professional development that applied effective secondary literacy classroom practices in the subject areas.
ARISE is a Brown University program funded by the National Institutes of Health through its Science Education Partnership Awards program. ARISE is designed to engage students in inquiry-based approaches to learning about science, bring cutting-edge research into the classroom, and improve the understanding of the relevance of science to everyday life. The Education Alliance’s evaluation design for this program includes components to examine critical outcomes of the ARISE program, which are both developmental and performance driven in nature.
The Information Technology and Society Research Group at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA contracted with The Education Alliance to evaluate its year-one implementation of the Building Information Technology Skills (bITS) program, funded by the National Science Foundation's ITEST grant. bITS shared ITEST's overall goal to increase the number of students from under-represented populations pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The CAMR program is part of Brown University’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) and is funded under the National Science Foundation’s MRSEC grant program. CAMR has the objective of fostering inter-disciplinary research through education and outreach. In collaboration with CAMR faculty, The Education Alliance is investigating two components of the outreach activities: BrownOut and Research Experience for Teachers (RET).
The Education Alliance conducted an applied research project on the design and evaluation of online seminars to allow in-depth learning about topics in elementary mathematics education. The project targeted teachers using Investigations in Number, Data and Space, a K-12 mathematics curriculum, and focused on issues of curriculum implementation.
The Alliance provided technical assistance to the Bridgeport Public Schools to develop and pilot a Classical Studies Academy. The program included a study of the arts and classics in a setting that is conducive to mastery of literacy and numeracy, and it served as a model to provide innovative learning opportunities for elementary students in low-performing schools.
GET City is a youth-based program implemented by Michigan State University’s Colleges of Education and Engineering. The program is funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant program. A two-year, year-round program, GET City supports youth in learning to use advanced information technology skills to identify, investigate, and model solutions to urban energy problems at the Lansing Boys and Girls Club. The Education Alliance is conducting an evaluation study which will examine implementation challenges and successes as an ongoing investigation of program activities.
The purpose of this project was to conduct Maine’s State CSRD Evaluation. The evaluation design involved site visits over three years to all CSRD grantee schools and intensive consultation with Maine state department of education officials involved with state implementation and support for the CSRD program.
The Education Alliance is conducting an evaluation of The Coaching Cycle: An Interactive Online Course for Mathematics Coaches, awarded to EDC through the NSF Discovery Research program for the training and support of instructional coaching in K-8 mathematics. The goal of the project is to deepen coaches’ understanding of selected mathematical topics that are frequently problematic in K-8 instruction, while providing participants an opportunity to learn and practice content-based coaching skills in a collegial online community.
New York City school districts identified for corrective action contracted with Learning Point Associates (LPA) in partnership with The Education Alliance to conduct curriculum audits in order to identify how districts have delineated, interpreted, aligned and articulated New York state standards and written district curricula in English language arts and/or math. The Education Alliance audits focused on English language learner instruction, as part of this comprehensive district audit process.
Partnerships and Research Investigations by Mathematicians and Educators to Improve Mathematics Instruction (PRIMETIME): Evaluation
The Rhode Island Department of Education contracted with The Education Alliance to conduct an external evaluation of its implementation of the PRIMETIME program, which provides training, curricular support and higher education coaches to work with middle and secondary school teachers throughout the state.
PRIMES is a three-year, federally funded Math Science Partnership (MSP) program of the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (RIDE). The goals of the PRIMES program are to increase the academic achievement of students in mathematics and science by enhancing the content knowledge and instructional skills of classroom teachers. Partnership between high-need school districts and the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty in institutions of higher education are at the core of these improvement efforts. The evaluation study of PRIMES, conducted by The Education Alliance, examines the implementation and impact of the program at each of three selected school districts.
Hezel Associates subcontracted with The Education Alliance to conduct an evaluation of the effectiveness of PBS's online teacher development program, TeacherLine.
"Student-centered learning" describes a style of teaching and learning where the environment, curriculum, and instruction focus primarily on helping students achieve success. Understanding how to build and sustain student-centered learning environments at the high school level is crucial to the long-term goal of improving high schools. The purpose of the Personalized Learning Project was to capture and disseminate procedural knowledge about how schools can become student-centered, and to articulate the process required to create and sustain personalized learning as the guiding norm of high schools.
In partnership with Hezel Associates, The Education Alliance conducted primary data collection for a formative evaluation of Rhode Island’s implementation of the Physics First program. The Physics First program reorders the traditional high school science curriculum sequence to begin with the teaching of physics in the ninth grade, followed by chemistry and biology in the tenth and eleventh grades.
The Education Alliance is leading evaluation efforts to assess the Rhode Island Technology Enhanced Sciences (RITES) program, a major statewide initiative focused on improving middle and high school science and mathematics education. In a $12.5 million award from the National Science Foundation Math & Science Partnership, the RITES program builds on extant initiatives across the state focused on inquiry-based science through a rollout of professional development, online resources, research-based content and partnered support. The evaluation design for the RITES program includes quasi-experimental approaches as well as qualitative data collection to continuously inform program staff on all aspects of program implementation and improvement efforts.
School districts in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York along with the Southeastern Massachusetts Teaching American History Consortium, contracted individually with The Education Alliance to conduct evaluations of their Teaching American History programs.
Through funding from the National Science Foundation, Brown University has established research fellowships for six undergraduates to conduct summer research beginning in 2008. The award is part of an ongoing effort to train undergraduate students in modern research techniques at the intersection of mathematics and the life sciences. UMB faculty and The Education Alliance have designed an evaluation to provide formative program feedback to ensure the success of students in the fellowship program.
Johns Hopkins University contracted with The Education Alliance to evaluate the implementation and impact of the "What is Engineering?" course in two sites associated with the MESA (Math, Engineering and Science Achievement) program.
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