Special Stategies for Educating Disadvantaged Children
Cited on Inet(31Jul95) from a research document by Sam Stringfield and Linda Winfield of Johns Hopkins, these conclusions can be viewed as tentative until the study for Years 2&3 is completed...
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Cited on Inet(31Jul95) from a research document by Sam Stringfield and Linda Winfield of Johns Hopkins, these conclusions can be viewed as tentative until the study for Years 2&3 is completed.
A two volume Idea Book (www.ed.gov/Raising or gopher path above) pinpoints promising practices for secondary schools via case studies from Title I programs.
Among the conclusions are: (1) Strategies designed to affect students' whole days tyically resulted in higher levels of interactive instruction...than programs which are adjunct to the regular day; (2) Most strategies have benefitted from additional funding for individual schools; (3) Externally developed programs requiring fidelity to a pre-specified model require support from either model developers or other high-quality technical assistance; (4) Schools experiencing the greatest difficulties initiating special strategies usually display other serious problems, such as fiscal constraints, racial tensions, and inadequate school and district level leadership; (5) Active leadership is crucial to program implementation; (6) District and state commitment to ongoing staff development can be a key in facilitating special strategy implementation and institutionalization; and (7) With the possible exception of some adjunct programs, all special strategies visited continue to evolve.
Annotation
Regardless of strategy, ongoing staff development and technical assistance at all levels pops up as a must-do. Interestingly, several recent capsule summaries (from independent research threads) suggest that reform occurs when student learning is changed across subjects and throughout the school day. A splatter here and there produces no sustaining impact.
