A Cross-District Analysis from the CAIS Benchmarking Study, September 2008
Urban district reform has been hampered by the challenge of understanding the tremendous complexity of district change. The CAIS Benchmarking Study was designed to improve this understanding through ethnographic research that maps the reform journey in three urban districts. These districts have had demonstrable success in raising the achievement of underperforming students and have also received recognition for the development of systems to support this effort. This paper draws lessons learned from the pilot and the three district studies. The original construct of CAIS can be found in Defining a Comprehensive Aligned Instructional System.
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Strategy and Program Overview, July 2008
The Stupski Foundation, in concert with a portfolio of partners, is launching an ambitious new design, research and development effort to ensure that all children — especially children of color, children from low-income families and English-language learners — graduate ready for college, career and life. The foundation, in partnership, will convene some of the nation’s leading K-12 practitioners, researchers and entrepreneurs to define and develop the critical content for seven components of a learning system focused on college and career readiness for all students. The foundation will also launch an Innovation Fund to spur the development of new products and services within each of these areas, and a Learning Community to share our lessons with the broader field.
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Defining a Comprehensive Aligned Instructional System, January 2008
The Stupski Foundation has focused on the implementation of a comprehensive aligned instructional system as a critical lever for district reform. In the challenging environment of urban education, reforms focusing on only one system component (e.g., assessment, curriculum materials, professional development, resource utilization or accountability measures) have little likelihood of sustained impact. As isolated initiatives, they are easily overwhelmed by the dysfunction of the larger system. Similarly, reforms focused at either the district or classroom level seldom achieve broad success because there are few mechanisms to diffuse the reform throughout the system. Therefore, the development of a comprehensive aligned instructional system is essential to articulate a reform vertically from policy to classroom practice and horizontally across the many sub-systems of the district. As such, it represents systems change far more than it does an instructional change.
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