Supovitz, Jonathan A
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Publication The Impact of the GE Foundation Developing Futures in Education Program on Mathematics Performance Trends in Four Districts(2013-04-01) Sirinides, Philip M; Supovitz, Jonathan A; Tognatta, Namrata; May, HenryBeginning in 2005, the GE Foundation initiated a commitment of expertise and financial resources to a set of urban school districts to improve public education and enhance student achievement in mathematics and science. With strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement, the GE Foundation’s Developing FuturesTM in Education program pursued a strategy of: (1) facilitating school board, union, and district leaders to work together to articulate system goals and priorities; (2) helping district leaders to build systemic change processes and develop internal-management capacity; and (3) supporting district science and mathematics initiatives through materials alignment, coaching, professional development, and other capacity-building measures. This report analyzes the impacts of the GE Foundation commitment to the partner districts by examining trends in student performance in mathematics over time in four districts. We hypothesized that the GE Foundation’s collaborative efforts with the district educators would produce detectable and significant improvements in student outcomes.Publication #commoncore Project: How Social Media Is Changing the Politics of Education(2015-02-23) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Daly, Alan J; del Fresno, MiguelThe Common Core has become a flashpoint at the nexus of education politics and policy, fueled by ardent social media activists. To explore this phenomenon, this innovative and interactive website examines the Common Core debate through the lens of the influential social media site Twitter. Using a social network perspective that examines the relationships among actors, we focus on the most highly used Twitter hashtag about the Common Core: #commoncore. The central question of our investigation is: How are social media-enabled social networks changing the discourse in American politics that produces and sustains social policy? To join a conversation about this research in an open forum, tweet using #htagcommoncore.Publication In Search of Leading Indicators in Education(2012-07-10) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Foley, Ellen; Mishook, JacobData have long been considered a key factor in organizational decision-making (Simon, 1955; Lindblom & Cohen, 1979). Data offer perspective, guidance, and insights that inform policy and practice (Newell & Simon, 1972; Kennedy, 1984). Recently, education policymakers have invested in the use of data for organizational improvement in states and districts with such initiatives as Race to The Top (United States Department of Education, 2010) and the development of statewide longitudinal data systems (Institute for Education Sciences, 2010). These and other initiatives focus attention on how data can be used to foster learning and improvement. In other fields, including economics and business, much work has been done to identify leading indicators that predict organizational outcomes. In this paper, we conceptualize how leading indicators might be used in education, using examples from a small sample of school districts with reputations as strong users of data. We define leading indicators as systematically collected data on an activity or condition that is related to a subsequent and valued outcome, as well as the processes surrounding the investigation of those data and the associated responses. Identifying leading indicators often prompts improvements in a district’s system of supports. To develop this concept, we describe four examples of how districts identified and used key indicators to anticipate learning problems and improve student outcomes. We also describe the infrastructure and other supports that districts need to sustain this ambitious form of data use. We conclude by discussing how leading indicators can bring about more intelligent use of data in education.Publication The Relationship Between Teacher Implementation of America's Choice and Student Learning in Plainfield, New Jersey(2003-01-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; May, HenryRarely in educational research do we have access to data that allow us to empirically explore the relationships between the practices of individual teachers and the learning of their students. This report is one of those exceptional cases. In this report, we use data from Plainfield, New Jersey in which individual teachers' survey responses about America's Choice were linked to the test gains of the students who were taught by those teachers. By working closely with district administrators, we were able to link individual survey responses to the district's student achievement databases while retaining the confidentiality of both teachers and students. The result is an uncommon piece of evidence that empirically links teachers' implementation of America's Choice to student learning. The pattern from these results seems clear and persistent: the students of teachers who more deeply implemented the America's Choice model, particularly the writers workshop component of the design, learned more than did the students of teachers who had lower levels of implementation. Even after statistically controlling for the background characteristics of teachers and students and for students' prior test performance, teachers' implementation of America's Choice was associated with significantly higher learning gains for students.Publication Autonomy and Accountability in Standards-Based Reform(2001-08-27) Watson, Susan; Supovitz, Jonathan AIn this article we discuss the effects of one urban school district's efforts to increase the autonomy and accountability of schools and teams of teachers through a standards-based reform known as team-based schooling. Team-based schooling is designed to devolve decision-making authority down to the school level by increasing teachers' autonomy to make decisions. Increased accountability is enacted in the form of a state-level standards-based initiative. Based on our evaluation over a two-year period involving extensive fieldwork and quantitative analysis, we describe the ways that teachers, teams and school administrators responded to the implementation of team-based schooling. What are the effects of increasing school-level autonomy and accountability in the context of standards- based reform? Our analysis highlights several issues: the "lived reality" of teaming as it interacts with the existing culture within schools, the ways that teachers respond to the pressures created by increased internal and external accountability, and the effects of resource constraints on the effectiveness of implementation. We conclude by using our findings to consider more broadly the trade-off between increased autonomy and accountability on which standards-based reforms like team-based schooling are based.Publication A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of America's Choice on Student Performance in Rochester, New York, 1998-2003(2004-07-01) May, Henry; Supovitz, Jonathan A; Perda, David AEducation is a cumulative process. Yet while students' knowledge and skills are built up over time, educational researchers are rarely afforded the opportunity to examine the effects of interventions over multiple years. This study of the America's Choice school reform design is just such an opportunity. Using 11 years of student performance data from Rochester, NY - which includes several years of data before America's Choice began working in the district - we examine the effects of America's Choice on student learning gains from 1998 to 2003. Employing a sophisticated statistical method called Bayesian hierarchical growth curve analysis with crossed random effects, we compare the longitudinal gains in test performance of students attending America's Choice schools to those of students attending other Rochester schools. Our analytical method allows us to examine student test performance over time, account for the nested structure of students within schools, and account for the very real problem of within-district student mobility.Publication Building a Lattice for School Leadership: Lessons From England(2015-03-01) Supovitz, Jonathan AThis policy brief examines the evolution of the educational leadership development system in England to see what ideas American leaders and policymakers might take from looking transnationally. The brief is based on a more in-depth examination of that leadership development system described in a CPRE research report entitled Building a Lattice for School Leadership: The Top-to-Bottom Rethinking of Leadership Development in England and What It Might Mean for American Education. The research report was based upon a year of research on school leadership in England that included extensive background research, site visits to schools and leadership programs, and over 20 interviews with government officials, teachers and school leaders, university researchers, union officials, and both forprofit and non-profit school leadership providers.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, AnneThis 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 Mapping a Course for Improved Student Learning: How Innovative Schools Systematically Use Student Performance Data to Guide Improvement(2003-11-01) Supovitz, Jonathan A; Klein, ValerieTo be useful to teachers and school leaders, test data must provide more than just a destination. Student performance results must also provide guidance that informs educators that they are moving in the right direction, while providing interactive and recursive feedback for mid-course adjustments. In order for student performance data to be useful to teachers and school leaders, and to make it worthwhile for them to make the extensive efforts necessary to learn to interpret and act upon what they learn, data feedback systems must rely on multiple sources of data collected and analyzed at regular intervals. This report is about building better roadmaps for teachers and school leaders in order to guide their instructional decision-making. The data required for more precise decision-making come from systematically exploiting a variety of student performance data at both the individual classroom and school levels. Rather than just relying on one individual test to provide guidance, innovative school leaders are building more comprehensive systems of assessments that provide better interim information from multiple perspectives. Through more sophisticated data systems, teachers and school leaders can foster a more inquiryoriented approach that involves ongoing and sustained investigations into the kinds of teaching that produce more powerful student learning. In this report, we show how innovative teachers and school leaders are creatively using their data to help guide their strategic decisions. Through their examples, we develop and describe a theory of what a system of school data use might look like.Publication Slowing Entropy: Instructional Policy Design in New York City, 2011-12(2014-10-01) Supovitz, Jonathan AHow do policymakers craft policies, particularly centered on the Common Core State Standards, to be more resilient and less likely to disintegrate during enactment? Researcher Jonathan Supovitz in Slowing Entropy: Instructional Policy Design in New York City, 2011-12 examines the design of a New York City Department of Education policy intended to engage teachers and principals across NYC with the instructional challenges of Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This summary provides an instructive backstory to some of the thought processes of the policy architects and provides insight into the way that careful policymaking can be more resilient to decay as it enters the rough-and-tumble reality of school communities.