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Project Summary

The project will incorporate the drivers of systemic change suggested by the National Science Foundation and the factors derived from research on school change into an empirical model to help explain the impact on student achievement that can be accomplished through a systemic reform effort. The project will translate the drivers and factors into indicators of change and develop instruments to collect data about these indicators in multiple states. Data will be collected with a variety of methods including student, teacher and principal questionnaires, interviews, and observations. Existing achievement data in each state will also be gathered. The indicators will be organized into explanatory models demonstrating how student achievement is affected. Models will be constructed for schools in three SSI states that have had significant interaction with the SSIs and for schools in the three states that have not had interaction with the SSIs. In addition a model will be produced for students in a fourth state which never had an SSI. Comparison of the models will serve as the basis for identification of the unique aspects that can be attributed to participation in an SSI. All data obtained will be combined into comprehensive databases to facilitate analyses. Analyses will range from simple descriptive statistics to complex modeling procedures. The less complicated preliminary analyses will be used to inform the more complicated analyses. The results of this multi-stage, multi-state analysis will serve as a basis for better understanding the critical components of science and mathematics education reform.

The study will accomplish several specific objectives and ultimately the investigation will provide the information necessary to produce more effective models of systemic change.

• Review and summarization of the existing literature on drivers (especially drivers one and two) and on the proposed relationships between them and student achievement

• Identification of the most relevant measures of drivers to serve as indicators

• Development of instruments to gather information on the indicators from a variety of information sources

• Analysis of the relationships among the individual and sets of indicators and student achievement to determine the causal paths and mediating variables for SSI and non SSI situations

• Comparison of the relationships to isolate the unique interactions fostered by involvement in SSIs

• Integration of the new findings with the existing research base.