The Heart of the Matter: The Coaching Model in America's Choice Schools

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania was contracted by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) in 1998 to conduct the external evaluation of the America’s Choice school design. CPRE designed and conducted a series of targeted studies on the implementation and impacts of the America’s Choice design. This report coincides with the publication of three separate studies by CPRE on the impact of America’s Choice in a number of districts across the country using a variety of quantitative and analytic approaches. Those impact analyses and a stand-alone piece on classroom observations conducted in Cohort 4 schools can be viewed as separate pieces or as complements to the information presented in this report. Another recent CPRE publication from fall 2001 is a widely distributed report entitled, Instructional Leadership in a Standards-based Reform, a companion piece to both the impact reports and this report.