Research and Evaluation Team
at the Center for Collaborative Education

Provides services in educational research and program evaluation for organizations engaged in public education

Publications: Whole School Reform & Associated Practices

Experiential Education in Boston’s Pilot Schools: A Three-Year Demonstration Project (2008)

Beth M. Miller, MMRA, Inc.
Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education
Rolanda Ward, Independent Consultant

The Pilot Schools’ Experiential Education Demonstration project (PSEED), from 2005-2008, was intended to deepen and embed high quality experiential education within each school’s academic programs. The work is grounded in the belief that high quality experiential education will significantly enhance student engagement and performance over time. This complex and rich endeavor, its characteristic elements, and its successes and challenges are documented in this report.

Full Report
Executive Summary
Rubric Tool

Strong Results, High Demand: A Four-Year Study of Boston's Pilot High Schools (November 2007)

Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education
Monique Ouimette, Center for Collaborative Education

New study finds that Boston Pilot high school students outperformed their non-Pilot peers on every standard measure of engagement and performance over a four year period. The higher level of achievement held true for every racial, economic, and academic group examined.

Full Report (4.3 MB)
Executive Summary

Promising Results and Lessons from the First Boston District School Converting to Pilot Status (2007)

Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education
Monique Ouimette, Center for Collaborative Education

Study presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference in April 2007. Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA) is the first traditional Boston Public School (Boston High School) to convert to being a Pilot School since the inception of the Network, gaining autonomy over budget, staffing, schedule, curriculum, and governance in exchange for increased school-level accountability. The purpose of this study is to document the process of the school’s conversion to Pilot status and the subsequent early changes in the school.

Full Report
Brochure

Progress and Promise: A Report on the Boston Pilot Schools (2006)

Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education
Monique Ouimette, Center for Collaborative Education
Leah Rugen, Center for Collaborative Education

New research by CCE comparing outcomes of Pilot with non-Pilot Boston public schools. This much awaited study documents Pilot School students performing better than the district averages across every indicator of student engagement and performance, at every grade level.

Full Report [6MB]
Executive Summary

Examining the Turning Points Comprehensive Middle School Reform Model: The Role of Local Context and Innovation (2004)

Jay Feldman, Center for Collaborative Education
Monique Ouimette, Center for Collaborative Education

This paper looks at the ways schools and model developers adapt their designs based on local context to examine teaching and learning. The study synthesizes four Turning Points Middle School case studies to understand how these schools have achieved success in adapting the Turning Points design. In our cross-analysis, four features emerged as common across each school, though the schools used very different pathways to implement each feature. These features are: (1) Shared leadership to support improvements in instruction and curriculum; (2) Teacher collaboration to support improved teaching and learning; (3) Personalized instruction to help teachers get to know students well; and (4) Use of data to inform decisions.

Full Report

Cherry Lane High Case Study: Restructuring a Large, Comprehensive High School to Small Schools (2003)

Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education

Cherry Lane has begun a multi-year effort to convert from a large, comprehensive high school into three small schools with unique identities. This case study of Cherry Lane High’s first year of conversion looks at the background, design year, and early implementation of the multi-year process to becoming three small schools. By highlighting the impact on the school community and the major challenges they face, it is intended to inform the work of other districts and schools. The CCE research team presented this study at the American Educational Research Association annual conference in April 2003 in Chicago.

Full Report

Whole School Reform: How Schools Use the Data-Based Inquiry and Decision-Making Process  (2001)

Jay Feldman, Center for Collaborative Education
Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education

Presented at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April 2001. In the current culture of school accountability, schools are looking for ways to understand how to interpret the data that is provided to them, as well as how to use this process to improve the quality of instruction offered by their school. This paper describes what we learned about this process in our work with six schools in our Networks.

Full Report

How Boston Pilot Schools Use Freedom over Budget, Staffing, and Scheduling To Meet Student Needs  (2001)

Rosann Tung, Center for Collaborative Education
Jay Feldman, Center for Collaborative Education

This study reports on how schools in the Boston Pilot Schools Network implement their budget, staffing, and scheduling autonomies to create lower class sizes, lower daily teacher loads, multi-year relationships between teachers and students, creative definitions of staff roles, more adults in instruction, longer blocks of instructional time, and more collaborative planning time in comparison to district non-Pilot Schools.

Full Report

The Role of a Third Party Organization in the Boston Pilot Schools Network (2001)

Dan French, Center for Collaborative Education

Presented at the 14th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement in January 2001. This paper describes the role of CCE in supporting a unique urban public school network, the Boston Pilot Schools Network. It is CCE’s thesis that public schools, particularly those serving high percentages of low-income students and students of color, have a much greater chance of educating every student if they are members of a network of like-minded small schools that receive intensive support from an intermediary organization.

Full Report