How did CTAC come to be associated with innovation in education?
Because of our background in community organizing, CTAC has always embraced initiatives that focus on meeting the most pressing needs of low-income, ethnically diverse communities and the institutions that serve these communities. Differing from piecemeal approaches, our efforts focus on systemic reform. This means working to link on-site practice, research, and public policy for more sustainable results. As examples in education, CTAC has (1) supported the first desegregation plan based on controlled choice (in Cambridge, MA), work that proved integral to the most successful process of school desegregation in the nation; (2) provided the assistance to and conducted the comprehensive study of pay for performance in Denver, helping to spearhead the performance-based compensation movement nationally; and (3) built the capacity of state-to-district and state-to-school interventions in states as diverse as California, New Jersey and Ohio. We work with schools, districts and states througho