Can Large-Scale School Improvement Efforts Succeed?
(04/22/2010) SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — April 22, 2010 — As the Obama administration moves aggressively to improve the nation’s lowest performing K-12 schools, WestEd has concluded a five-year longitudinal study of an earlier federal school improvement effort aimed at high-poverty, low-performing schools. This newly completed examination of the $1 billion Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) Program offers insight into the non-standardized nature of successful school improvement and the challenges of sustaining it. It also provides a cautionary tale. Begun as a demonstration project in 1998 and subsequently authorized as a full program under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the U.S. Department of Education’s CSR Program directed grant funds, through states, to qualifying high-poverty, low-achieving schools. The aim was to help these schools increase the pace and effectiveness of their reform efforts. To qualify for a CSR grant, schools agreed to address 11 CSR components, or requireme
