Sam, Cecile

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Publication
    Evaluation of the i3 Scale-Up of Reading Recovery | Year Two Report, 2012-13
    (2014-12-01) Goldsworthy, Heather; Armijo, Michael; Gray, Abigail M; Sirinides, Philip M; Blalock, Toscha J; Anderson-Clark, Helen; Schiera, Andrew J; Blackman, Horatio; Gillespie, Jessica; May, Henry; Sam, Cecile
    Reading Recovery is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child’s literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the training of 3,675 new Reading Recovery teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding service to an additional 88,200 students. The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) was contracted to conduct an independent evaluation of the i3 scale-up of Reading Recovery over the course of five years. The evaluation includes parallel rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs for estimating program impacts, coupled with a large-scale mixed-methods study of program implementation. This report presents the findings of the second year of the evaluation. The primary goals of this evaluation are: a) to provide experimental evidence of the impacts of Reading Recovery on student learning under this scale-up effort ; b) to assess the success of the scale-up in meeting the i3 grant’s expansion goals; and c) to document the implementation of the scale-up and fidelity to program standards. This document is the second in a series of three reports based on our external evaluation of the Reading Recovery i3 Scale-Up. This report presents results from the impact and implementation studies conducted over the 2012-2013 school year—the third year of the scale-up effort and the second full year of the evaluation. In order to estimate the impacts of the program, a sample of first graders who had been selected to receive Reading Recovery were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received Reading Recovery immediately, or to a control group that did not receive Reading Recovery until the treatment group had exited the intervention. The reading achievement of students in this sample was assessed using a standardized assessment of reading achievement—the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS). The data for the implementation study include extensive interviews and surveys with Reading Recovery teachers, teacher leaders, site coordinators, University Training Center directors, members of the i3 project leadership team at The Ohio State University, and principals and first-grade teachers in schools involved in the scale-up. Case studies were also conducted in nine i3 scale-up schools to observe how Reading Recovery operates in different contexts.
  • Publication
    Evaluation of the GE Foundation-Supported Demonstration Schools Initiative in Milwaukee Public Schools, SY 2012-2013
    (2013-12-01) Sam, Cecile; Supovitz, Jonathan A; Darfler, Anne; Newman, Bobbi; Hall, Daniella
    The Milwaukee Public School district (MPS) Demonstration Schools Initiative provided intensive support to 10 MPS elementary and middle schools implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English language arts. This evaluation report was designed to answer two overarching questions: How did MPS implement the Demonstration Schools Initiative in Year One, and what factors shaped the implementation? Is there evidence of teachers' adoption of the instructional shifts associated with the CCSS? This evaluation found that teachers in the Demonstration Schools ended the 2012-2013 school year with significantly higher CCSS knowledge in both mathematics and English language arts than did teachers in the comparison schools.
  • Publication
    Building District Capacity for System-Wide Instructional Improvement in Cincinnati Public Schools
    (2013-12-01) Sam, Cecile; Riggan, Matthew
    This report summarizes findings from one component of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education’s (CPRE) evaluation of the General Electric Foundation’s (GEF) Developing FuturesTM in Education program in Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). The purpose was to closely analyze the district’s capacity to support system-wide instructional improvement. To understand how CPS, one of the four Developing FuturesTM districts that were examined, built capacity for system-wide instructional improvement, our study during Phase Two focused on a single, overarching question: to what extent has CPS central office adopted and institutionalized the seven core principles of Developing FuturesTM?
  • Publication
    Evaluation of the GE Foundation-Supported Coaching & Demonstration Schools Initiative in Erie Public Schools, SY 2012-2013
    (2013-11-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Sam, Cecile; Newman, Bobbi; Darfler, Anne
    This evaluation report summarizes the evidence of the implementation and early impacts of the General Electric Foundation’s (GEF) Demonstration Schools Initiative in the Erie Public School district (EPS) conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) during the 2012-2013 school year. The Demonstration Schools Initiative provided intensive support to four schools (two elementary, one middle, and one high) implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics and English language arts. Concurrently during the 2012- 2013 school year, EPS also continued their implementation of another GEF-supported initiative— the Coaching Initiative—using a cadre of instructional coaches in mathematics, science, and ELA for the other schools in the district. In both the Coaching and Demonstration School Initiatives, instructional coaches are key agents of change. Their function is to target and customize the support needed at the building, grade, and teacher levels to shift teachers’ understanding and practice to align to the CCSS. For the Demonstration Schools Initiative, coaches also focused much of their time trying to develop professional learning communities (PLCs) within their schools. This evaluation was designed to answer three overarching questions: Did teachers in the Demonstration Schools gain more knowledge of the CCSS as a result of their participation in the GEF-supported initiative? What were the impacts of the initiative for the teachers in the GEF- Foundation supported Demonstration Schools compared to the rest of the district? How did teachers perceive their respective coaches throughout the district?
  • Publication
    Evaluation of the i3 Scale-up of Reading Recovery | Year One Report, 2011-12
    (2013-08-01) Gray, Abigail M; Gillespie, Jessica; Sirinides, Philip M; Sam, Cecile; Goldsworthy, Heather; May, Henry; Armijo, Michael; Tognatta, Namrata
    Reading Recovery (RR) is a short-term early intervention designed to help the lowest-achieving readers in first grade reach average levels of classroom performance in literacy. Students identified to receive Reading Recovery meet individually with a specially trained Reading Recovery (RR) teacher every school day for 30-minute lessons over a period of 12 to 20 weeks. The purpose of these lessons is to support rapid acceleration of each child’s literacy learning. In 2010, The Ohio State University received a Scaling Up What Works grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund to expand the use of Reading Recovery across the country. The award was intended to fund the scale-up of Reading Recovery by training 3,675 new RR Teachers in U.S. schools, thereby expanding capacity to allow service to an additional 88,200 students. The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) was contracted to conduct an independent evaluation of the i3 scale up of Reading Recovery over the course of five years. The evaluation includes parallel rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental designs for estimating program impacts, coupled with a large-scale mixed-methods study of program implementation under the i3 scale-up. This report presents findings through the second year of the evaluation. The primary goals of this evaluation were: a) to assess the success of the scale-up in meeting the i3 grant’s expansion goals; b) to document the implementation of scale-up and fidelity to program standards; and, c) to provide experimental evidence of the impacts of Reading Recovery on student learning under this scale-up effort.
  • Publication
    Building District Capacity for System-Wide Instructional Improvement in Erie Public Schools
    (2013-12-01) Fink, Ryan; Riggan, Matthew; Sam, Cecile; Darfler, Anne
    This report summarizes findings from one component of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education’s (CPRE) evaluation of the General Electric Foundation’s (GEF) Developing FuturesTM in Education program in Erie Public Schools (EPS). The purpose was to closely analyze the district’s capacity to support system-wide instructional improvement. To understand how EPS, one of the four Developing FuturesTM districts that were examined, built capacity for system-wide instructional improvement, our study during Phase Two focused on a single, overarching question: to what extent has EPS central office adopted and institutionalized the seven core principles of Developing FuturesTM?