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Our Site |
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CCE can help you design and implement change.*
Find out how our experienced staff can work with you to raise your students’ achievement. We offer coaching, facilitation and professional development in:
Performance Assessment
Collaboration and Teacher Residencies
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Leadership Development
Autonomous Schools and
Re-design
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*CCE is an Approved Provider for DESE (Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) in the following areas:
—Essential Conditions for School Effectiveness (for Levels 3 and 4 schools)
—Educator Evaluation
—Effective Use of Data
—Effective District Systems of Support (for Levels 3 and 4)
—Professional Learning Communities
—Aspiring Teacher Residencies (The Worcester English Language Learner Teacher Residency—WELLTR—is CCE’s first Massachusetts teacher residency program as a DESE provider.) |
For information about how CCE can help you: email info@ccebos.org
or phone 617-421-0134.
Testimonials
Principal Sheila Fisher, of the James Madison Morton Middle School in Fall River, wrote to former CCE Associate Director Dania Vazquez, responding to Dania’s facilitating and writing their school turnaround plan: “Dania, Thank you for your guidance, support, logical suggestions and framing of tough decisions. Your skill in handling both people and paper problems is enviable. If this baby gets a chance to grow, our school will be such a wonderful place. But even if it doesn't, the path you have facilitated for us to see can be traveled. We will get there.”
Principal Nancy Mullin, of Kuss Middle School in Fall River, wrote to Fall River Superintendent Meg Mayo-Brown, “It was a pleasure working with Dan and Leah to write our Redesign grant. If we are successful, much of the credit goes to them for their attention to detail and thoughtful comments. If another opportunity arose, I would love to work with them again.” CCE Executive Director Dan French and CCE Consultant Leah Rugen facilitated and wrote the grant proposal for redesign of Kuss Middle School.
In a letter to education leaders in the state, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville, announcing the successful launch of autonomous, in-district Innovation Schools, states, “Several partners have provided incredibly valuable support to districts and schools, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dan French, Dania Vazquez, Meenakshi Khanna, and other staff members at the Center for Collaborative Education....” (Read Secretary Reville’s full letter.)
As part of its School Turnaround research project, nationally respected Mass Insight selected and analyzed five cases across the country of “dramatic, comprehensive turnaround of America's worst-performing schools” to look at particularly promising approaches. They identify Duggan Middle School, in Springfield MA, as one of these “turnaround” cases. They single out CCE, Duggan’s supporting partner, for its approach and accomplishments. Read how Mass Insight describes CCE’s role in Duggan’s turnaround.
In Springfield MA, Brightwood Elementary School received a Level 4 (underperforming) ranking from the state. The school brought in CCE to develop a turnaround redesign plan. Former Senior Research Associate Pam Stazesky was called in to develop and write the plan, completed at the end of January. Said Brightwood Principal Shalimar Colon, “Thank you for the great work of CCE in creating our final plans. Pam is fabulous as well! I don’t see how we could have done it without her.” |
Who we are...
The
Center for Collaborative Educationpromotes
purposeful learning and small, caring communities in K-12 public schools.
We provide coaching, professional development, advocacy, and research
toward the development of schools that nurture every student. We are
passionate about equity: schools must provide what each student needs.
They must help each student to express things that matter in writing
and speaking, to read challenging texts, to use mathematical concepts
and grapple with complex problems, and to understand human cultures
and the natural world.
Since these are
complex undertakings, we are aware that they require complex assessments
that go beyond a single standardized test. So we help schools create
tools of authentic assessment that reflect the learning goals and experiences
they are committed to. And we promote smallness, so that students and
teachers can know each other well - a necessity if powerful learning
and assessment are to occur. Along with smaller schools and classes,
we advocate for autonomy of individual schools, so teachers and administrators
will be free to create the best learning environments for every student.
We are comprised
of a number of networks and projects, described on this web site. They
all share these common ideals. Please have a look at what we do and
at what we are learning. And let us know if we can help you.
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News
QPA Summer Institute 2013 will be held July 15-18 in Boston, MA - K-12 teachers, administrators and district professionals will be guided in designing assessments that are multi-step assignments with clear criteria, expectations, and processes which measure how well a student transfers knowledge and applies complex skills to create or refine an original product-essential skills for 21st century college and career preparation. Register or download the brochure.
CCE will be conducting several summer institutes for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to selected school districts to engage in transforming schools and districts into strong professional learning communities (PLCs) that are focused on improving instruction as a primary vehicle to increase student achievement. For more information about the institutes, please download the brochure.
CCE’s Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts was released in November 2012. Aligned to the Common Core of State Standards, and praised by numerous reviewers, the Guide is for schools and districts who want to use performance assessment for developing thoughtful, informed students. The Guide is available for purchase from Amazon.
Irene Herrera-Stewart, director of CCE’s Los Angeles Principal Residency Network, received the Distinguished Educator award from the California State University, Los Angeles, on November 2, 2012. She was cited for having “developed, planned and led a residency-based apprentice program, which guides students through the rigors necessary to become instructional leaders of urban schools. Having also served the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for more than 30 years, she has taken on the roles of a middle school teacher for English as a Second Language students, assistant principal, administrative coordinator in LAUSD’s Administrative Academy, school services director, and administrator of instruction. She also served as the first instructional leader, overseeing the successful launch of the Los Angeles Academy, which was the first middle school opened by the LAUSD in over 40 years.”
Read about our Quality Performance Assessments Initiative, and check out our qualityperformanceassessment.org web site. CCE is a leader in providing professional development to help schools design performance tasks aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
eSchoolNews (February 2012) published "Performance assessment making a comeback in schools” by Dennis Pierce, which looks at two school systems that use performance assessment.The article concludes that PA is a powerful answer to the use of shallow testing in short-answer tests. It refers extensively to work done by CCE’s Quality Performance Assessment initiative.
Schools benefit from working with CCE: The Mass. Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education announced in March the dispersal of $28 million in Federal funding to “struggling schools.” Of the 14 Level 4 schools CCE worked with this latest round, all 14 made it through the first round (paper review of the plans) and were granted interviews (meaning they scored high enough to be eligible for funding), and 13 of 14 were then awarded grant funds on the basis of the interviews. Combined with the two Level 4 schools CCE successfully helped get funded in the first round, there was a 100% success rate (16 of 16) in having CCE’s proposals score high enough to be granted an interview, and a 94% success rate (15 of 16) in these schools’ being awarded federal School Improvement Grant funds for three years.
CCE and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation release Ready for the Future, a study of performance assessments that uses retrospective graduate interviews to better understand how such assessments prepare students for their futures. (Read more…)
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