Research Findings and Reports

View or download the Executive Summary

Minding the Gap: New Roles for School Districts in the Age of Accountability

This study identified five key ways that high-performing, high-poverty districts play an active role in student achievement. This report turns conventional wisdom on its head by revealing that school districts, previously thought to be roadblocks to reform, can play a key role in boosting student achievement. The report identifies a set of “promising practices,” such as reporting publicly on student progress and creating a workable balance between centralization and decentralization, that have enabled some high-poverty districts to succeed where others failed. (May 2006) 90 pages.

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View or download the survey instrument used in the study

Challenged Schools, Remarkable Results: Three Lessons from California's Highest Achieving High Schools

This report identifies California's highest achieving, challenged high schools, those schools with large numbers of students challenged by poverty, English as a second language, fewer resources and lower expectations. It also, more importantly, reveals the three secrets to their success: the use of consistent curricula coupled with frequent diagnostic tests, adoption of best practices, and investment in teacher improvement. These three practices resulted in dramatic gains for these California high schools serving large populations of low-income, minority, and English-language learners. (November 2005) 73 pages.

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After the Test: How Schools are Using Data to Close the Achievement Gap

Study is the first to use California's Academic Performance Index (API) to compare schools that have narrowed the gap between African-American and Latino students and their white and Asian American peers with schools that have not. It found significant differences in the ways in which the schools approached data, leadership and communication (December, 2003). 53 pages.

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View or download free Achievement Gap PowerPoint

Other Research Reports

You are welcome to download any of the following reports at no cost. These reports are in Adobe Acrobat format.

Bringing the State and Locals Together: Developing Effective Data Systems in California School Districts

By Dr. Ida Oberman, Dr. Don Daily and Jim Hollis

Public education in the U.S. is placing higher and higher value on the collection, presentation, and use of data as an important component of an effort to improve the nation’s schools. Policy makers are actively using data to evaluate programs and they are using research to design programs and interventions. This is sharp contrast with past practice in which leaders often cited data to support pre-formulated positions. With the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act, states are also collecting and disaggregating data in order to track the achievement levels of different groups of students. The growing emphasis on using data to support decision-making is encouraging greater attention to developing effective data systems at both the state and local levels. School districts clearly have the potential to play an important role in bringing data to bear on a host of decisions that affect children, but their capacity and progress in developing data systems varies widely. The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a review of research conducted by Springboard Schools to examine data systems and their use within school districts and explore how state policy can aid in data management and data use at the district level.

This report is part of the Stanford-sponored research project, Getting Down to Facts: A Research Project to Inform Solutions to California’s Education Problems. Getting Down to Facts is a research project of more than 20 studies designed to provide California’s policy-makers and other education stakeholders with the comprehensive information they need to raise student achievement and reposition California as an education leader. The purpose of the research project is to carve out common ground for a serious and substantive conversation that will lead to meaningful reform by providing ground-level information about California’s school finance and governance systems necessary to assess the effectiveness of any proposed reform. (April 2007)

CSRQ Center Report on Elementary School CSR Models

This report provides a scientifically based, consumer-friendly review of the effectiveness and quality of 22 widely adopted elementary school comprehensive school reform (CSR) models.

The report provides education stakeholders a decision making tool to help them sort through their options regarding the hundreds of elementary school improvement choices available to meet local needs. The reviews are intended to clarify options, not to point to or endorse “best buys” from among the 22 models reviewed. Together, the reviewed models represent a significant portion of the total number of schools implementing elementary school CSR models. Each model serves at minimum 20 elementary schools in a total of at least 3 states, and is available for adoption in almost all states. (November 2005)

Leadership of Inquiry

By Michael Copland, Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, Stanford University, conducted in close collaboration with Springboard Schools, takes a close look at lessons for leadership drawn from the CRC multi-year study of Springboard Schools schools. (September 2002)

Lessons From High Achieving Schools

by Dr. Ida Oberman and the Springboard Schools Research Staff

The Path Out of Underperformance: Two Cases of Title 1 Schools that are Beating the Odds

by Elisabeth Cutler, Shawn Masten and Ida Oberman

Details the story of two Title 1 schools whose II/USP participation set in motion the adoption of a number of promising practices which resulted in significant student achievement gains. (April 2004)

Annotated Bibliography: Teacher Data Use & Talking About Race, Guided By Data

by Elisabeth Cutler

Reviews the current literature on data-based dialogues around race and achievement. The first purpose of this document is to aid coaches, and district and school leaders as they deliberate on how to strengthen the professional development for educators in building the skill and will in raising all students' achievement. The second purpose of this review is to assemble the thin but growing body of research on processes and structures that can strengthen educators' ability and skill in narrowing the achievement gap between racial and ethnic groups that plagues our schools. (April 2004)

From Otis to Woodstock: A Veteran Teachers' Journey from Work as Single Teacher to Collaboration as a Team and from Year-Round Thematic Curriculum to Data-Based Instruction

by Shawn Masten and Ida Oberman

Details an interview with veteran first grade teacher Gwen Stephens since three years active at one of Alameda's Title 1 schools, Woodstock Elementary. In the interview Mrs. Stephens reflects on what helped Woodstock make the gains that allowed it to get off the IIUSP list during the tenure of her time there. In addition, Gwen Stephens probes deeply into what matters most in teaching and learning.

What We Believe

Working Draft July 2004. In the attached document, Springboard Schools staff has formulated in working draft form what we believe regarding equity in education. We post this in the spirit of ongoing dialogue. Responses are welcome. (Working Draft, July 2004)

Reflections concerning the intelligent and constructive use of data to drive decision-making

Remarks by Dr. Daniel Fallon Chair, Education Division, Carnegie Corporation, New York was offered in response to an American Education Research Association 2004 panel report on work at Springboard Schools schools. The panel was titled "Strategic Interventions in School Reform: Lessons from Schools that Are Closing the Racial Achievement Gap"

A Case Study of an Urban Elementary School

By Katherine Barr

This paper is a descriptive history of two years in the ongoing reform work of an urban elementary school - particularly the support one Springboard Schools coach provided the administrator and teachers as they worked to raise student achievement. The paper describes the challenges and opportunities the coach faced within three specific areas of focus for the school: increasing the use of data in decision making; improving literacy; and creating a strong school-wide professional learning community.

Literacy Coaching: How School Districts Can Support a Long-Term Strategy in a Short-Term World

The report describes how five Springboard Schools school districts are using literacy coaches to build teaches' skills and knowledge in literacy instruction. This paper also offers recommendations to both district and state policymakers regarding how to support effective literacy coaching.

Improving Instructional Capacity through Field-Based Coaches

This paper explores the role of reform coaches, or what Springboard Schools calls "Local Collaborative Coaches", as they work within schools to build capacity for instructional leadership, manage knowledge resources, directly coach teachers, and build professional communities among teachers to support their peers.

Equity Research Briefs

Understanding Racial Disparity in School Discipline Practices, January 2001

The Achievement Gap, October 1999