Assessing The Progress Of New American Schools: A Status Report

Assessing The Progress Of New American Schools: A Status Report
by Mark Berends

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Book Description
New American Schools (NAS), a private nonprofit corporation, began in 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transforming entire schools at the elementary and secondary levels, seeking to engage the nation's best educators, business people, and

From the Publisher
As a private nonprofit corporation, New American Schools (NAS) beganin 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transformingentire schools at the elementary and secondary levels. Havingcompleted its competition, development, and demonstrationphases, NAS currently is scaling-up its designs to form a critical massof schools within several partnering districts.The purpose of this report is to describe the baseline characteristics,such as school demographics and performance, of a large numberof NAS sites in the early implementation stages of NAS's scale-upphase. During this phase, RAND's research activities include monitoringthe progress of a large sample of NAS schools in eight jurisdictionsfrom the 1994-1995 school year through the 1999-2000 schoolyear. This report provides a description of the schools' demographics,climate, and test scores. The next step in the RAND analysis is toreport on trends in implementation, school performance, and relatedfactors.RAND will monitor changes in this sample of schools over the nextseveral years. This report establishes a baseline for tracking thechanges. The hope is that all those interested in school improvement-parents, teachers, administrators, policymakers, researchers,community members, etc.-will benefit from the analysis.Other RAND reports about New American Schools include Lessons from New American Schools' Scale-Up Phase: Prospectsfor Bringing Designs to Multiple Schools, Susan J. Bodilly, 1998(MR-1777-NAS). New American Schools After Six Years, Thomas K. Glennan, Jr.,1998 (MR-945-NASDC). Lessons from New American Schools Development Corporation'sDemonstration Phase, Susan J. Bodilly, 1996 (MR-729-NASDC). Reforming and Conforming: NASDC Principals Discuss SchoolAccountability Systems, Karen Mitchell, 1996 (MR-716-NASDC). Designing New American Schools: Baseline Observations on NineDesign Teams, Susan J. Bodilly, Susanna Purnell, KimberlyRamsey, and Christina Smith, 1995 (MR-598-NASDC).Funding for this research was provided under a contract with NASand was supported by The Ford Foundation, The Pew CharitableTrusts, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, theJohn S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and another donor.

About the Author
Mark Berends (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a social scientist at RAND whose areas of expertise include the sociology of education, stratification, organizations, and school reform.

Joanna Zorn Heilbrunn (University of California at Los Angeles, M.A., Sociology) is a project coordinator at the RAND Washington, DC, office.

Christopher McKelvey (B.A., Economics, Brandeis University) is presently working on an evaluation of New American Schools, a systemic school reform program. He is also working on a study of education vouchers. His primary areas of interest are microeconomic theory and individual decisionmaking.

Thomas J. Sullivan (Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Statistics, George Mason University) is a researcher at RAND. His research interests include computational statistics, geometric statistics, modeling and simulation, and space science applications.

Mark Berends (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a social scientist at RAND whose areas of expertise include the sociology of education, stratification, organizations, and school reform.

SHEILA NATARAJ KIRBY (Ph.D., Economics, George Washington University) is a senior economist at RAND in Washington DC.

CHARLES SCOTT NAFTEL (Ph.D. Program, Political Science, George Washington University) is a research programmer analyst at RAND in Washington DC.

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