Corcoran, Thomas B.
Email Address
ORCID
Disciplines
relationships.isProjectOf
relationships.isOrgUnitOf
Position
Introduction
Research Interests
Collection
15 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 15
Publication The Limits and Contradictions of Systemic Reform: The Philadelphia Story(2002-11-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; Christman, Jolley BruceIn Philadelphia, the Annenberg Challenge was known as Children Achieving and was a districtwide systemic reform initiative designed and led by a small core group of District officials and external partners. This report examines the Children Achieving Challenge and the strategies the designers employed to improve teaching and learning in the public schools. Among the conditions associated with the Annenberg Challenge were requirements that two matching dollars be raised for each one received from the Annenberg Foundation and that an independent management structure be created to provide program, fiscal, and evaluation oversight of the grant. In Philadelphia, a business organization, Greater Philadelphia First, assumed these responsibilities, and with them, the challenge of working with the School District to build and sustain civic support for the improvement of the public schools.Publication America's Choice Comprehensive School Reform Design: First-Year Implementation Evaluation Summary(2000-02-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; Hoppe, Margaret; Supovitz, Jonathan A; Luhm, TheresaIn the fall of 1998, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) contracted with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) to conduct the evaluation of the America’s Choice School Design. This is a summary of CPRE’s first report of a three-year evaluation of the design. The evaluation of America’s Choice seeks to answer four basic questions: Are schools successfully implementing the America’s Choice program design? What environmental characteristics are facilitating or impeding implementation? How effective is America Choice’s implementation strategy? And what are the impacts of the program on teachers and students? As America’s Choice is still in the early stages of implementation, most evaluation efforts are directed toward the questions about the implementation of the program and the conditions surrounding its implementation. In subsequent years, CPRE increasingly will emphasize its evaluation of the impacts of the program on students. This report describes the first year of the implementation of America’s Choice. Following this introduction, section two provides a description of America’s Choice and the theory behind the America’s Choice school design. Section two concludes with a set of reasonable expectations for the progress of America’s Choice in its first year. Section three describes CPRE’s findings concerning the implementation of America’s Choice, including many of the specific design components. Section four analyzes the role of the school district in the implementation of America’s Choice. The report concludes with a summary of the findings of the first year’s evaluation.Publication The Merck Institute for Science Education: A Successful Intermediary for Education Reform(2003-03-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.A variety of technical assistance organizations have been created in the last 20 years to help public schools implement reforms to improve their perfor- mance. These organizations vary in size, sponsorship, and focus, but their creation rests on the common premise that the reforms needed in the schools to educate all children to high standards require strong external stimuli and resources and knowledge beyond what are ordinarily available in public school systems (McDonald, McLaughlin, & Corcoran, 2000). Accordingly, these technical assistance organizations forge partnerships with school systems under pressure to improve their performance. Working across the boundaries of the educational system, these organizations serve as catalysts for reform, offering schools and districts expertise and other resources needed to make the desired changes. Dedicated to the implementation of reforms, they are presumed to be free of the ordinary interests and ordinary political pressures and, therefore, more likely to be able to overcome the inertia and resistance that often block reform in public bureaucracies like school systems. Researchers have not paid sufficient attention to these organizations, yet they play an increasingly important role in the improvement of public education. To stimulate more interest in these organizations, and in understanding what makes them effective, we report here on the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE). For nearly 10 years, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has evaluated MISE’s partnership with four school districts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, providing MISE staff with feedback on the progress of their work and assessing MISE’s impact on schools, teachers, and students. This long-term relationship has provided an extraordinary opportunity for both CPRE and MISE staff to gain insights into how a technical assistance organization works with school districts to change classroom practice. The story of MISE, and its efforts to bring about instructional reforms in science, is a story of vision, collaboration, learning, and persistence. It is also a success story that offers important lessons for other intermediary organizations working with school districts to improve teaching and learning.Publication Learning Trajectories in Mathematics: A Foundation for Standards, Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction(2011-01-01) Daro, Phil; Mosher, Frederic A; Corcoran, Thomas B.Learning Trajectories in Mathematics: A Foundation for Standards, Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction aims to provide: A useful introduction to current work and thinking about learning trajectories for mathematics education An explanation for why we should care about these questions A strategy for how to think about what is being attempted in the field, casting some light on the varying, and perhaps confusing, ways in which the terms trajectory, progression, learning, teaching, and so on, are being used by the education community. Specifically, the report builds on arguments published elsewhere to offer a working definition of the concept of learning trajectories in mathematics and to reflect on the intellectual status of the concept and its usefulness for policy and practice. It considers the potential of trajectories and progressions for informing the development of more useful assessments and supporting more effective formative assessment practices, for informing the on-going redesign of mathematics content and performance standards, and for supporting teachers’ understanding of students’ learning in ways that can strengthen their capability for providing adaptive instruction. The authors conclude with a set of recommended next steps for research and development, and for policy.Publication Getting It Right: The MISE Approach to Professional Development(2003-12-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; McVay, Siobhan; Riordan, KateWith an initial 10-year commitment from Merck & Co., Inc. the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) was founded in 1993 to demonstrate that virtually all students could reach high levels of scientific literacy. Shortly thereafter, MISE formed partnerships with four public school districts -- Linden, Rahway, and Readington Township in New Jersey, and North Penn in Pennsylvania -- where Merck has major facilities and a history of providing employee volunteers and supporting local science education initiatives. These district partnerships quickly merged into one multi-district Partnership. MISE's approach to improving science teaching has been systemic, addressing both policy and practice in the partner districts. MISE has helped its partners plan strategically, select highquality instructional resources, support teacher learning, and carry out instructional and curricular reforms. Working together, MISE and its partner districts have developed and implemented a shared vision of good science instruction based on national and state standards. This vision has been the basis for the design and delivery of professional development for teachers and administrators. Sustained by the Partnership since 1994, this professional development program has helped the partner districts make significant reforms in the teaching of science and mathematics. In 1993, MISE contracted with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania to evaluate the effectiveness of its work with the four districts. CPRE has documented the activity and progress of the Partnership for a decade and has issued a series of reports on its impact. In this report, we assess the Partnership’s approach to professional development. Specifically, we address the following questions: 1. How has the Partnership’s professional development measured up against the emerging standards for professional development? 2. Has participation in Partnership professional development resulted in increased teacher content knowledge? 3. Has participation in Partnership professional development led to changes in instructional practice? 4. Has participation in Partnership professional development resulted in improved student achievement? 5. Has MISE’s strategy strengthened district capacity to support the improvement of teaching? 6. What lessons can be learned from the experience of MISE and the Partnership with professional development?Publication The Use of Research Evidence in Instructional Improvement(2003-11-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.Those who seek to reform our public schools often argue that school performance would improve if only policy and practice were based on evidence. If decision-makers and practitioners paid more attention to research findings, the argument goes, they would make better decisions about improvement strategies and resource allocation, and we would see better results. The belief in this axiom is demonstrated by the increasing frequency with which reformers, educators, and policymakers find it necessary to legitimate their actions with claims that they are "research-based." However, moving beyond rhetoric to actually put this principle into operation turns out to be difficult. This issue of CPRE Policy Briefs looks at findings from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's study of how central office and school staff in three urban districts made decisions about instructional improvement strategies, and how much weight they gave to evidence. The three districts, in three different states, had enrollments ranging from 50,000 to over 200,000. Leaders in all three districts were addressing the problems common to most urban districts: students' problems associated with living in poverty, low achievement, high mobility, and high dropout rates. Changes in district and school leadership, high teacher turnover, changes in funding, and new state policies compounded the difficulty of improving performance in all three sites. The districts were also working in environments characterized by decentralized decision-making, high-stakes accountability, and increasing competition among providers of comprehensive school reform designs and other "research-based" instructional improvement strategies. During our study, we looked at three sets of strategic decisions that each district faced as it tried to improve student performance. The first set of decisions concerned what to do (i.e., which reform design or curriculum to adopt). The next set was deciding how to get it done; how to provide adequate support and coordination; and how to focus people's attention on the desired changes, ensure effective implementation, reduce distractions, and buffer this important work from competing agendas. Finally, there were decisions about scaling up the reforms -- the problem of replication. The decision-making process in each case was complicated and the use of evidence to support the ultimate decisions varied considerably. While these categories overlap, they are useful organizers of our findings.Publication Report on the Progress of the IN-STEP Pilot Program, 2008-2009(2009-12-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.This is the second report on the progress of the Inquiry Based Science and Technology Education Program (IN-STEP), an innovative science education initiative being implemented in the lower secondary schools of Phang-nga province. Sponsored by MSD Thailand, a pharmaceutical company, and supported by funding from its parent company, Merck & Co., Inc., IN-STEP is being implemented by a public-private partnership led by the Kenan Institute Asia (K.I.Asia), which, besides MSD Thailand and Merck & Co., includes the Thai Ministry of Education (MOE), the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE), the Educational Services Area Office (ESAO) in Phang-nga province, the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science & Technology (IPST), the National Science and Technology Development Agency, the Science Society of Thailand, Teachers College, Columbia University, and, most importantly, the science teachers and principals working in the lower secondary schools in Phang-nga. These organizations have worked together to develop a shared vision of good science teaching and to develop the IN-STEP design.Publication Learning Progressions in Science: An Evidence-Based Approach to Reform(2009-05-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; Mosher, Frederic A; Rogat, AaronAmerican education policy seems poised to escalate and shift its two decade long commitment to standards and outcome-based reform. That commitment has involved a set of “grand bargains”, in which the federal government provides Title I (The “No Child Left Behind Act” or NCLB) disadvantaged education funds in return for the states’ agreeing to set ambitious content standards, and define performance or “proficiency” standards associated with them that all students in the states’ schools will be expected to meet by the 2013/2014 school year. The disadvantaged children targeted by Title I are expected to meet the same standards as all of the rest of the children in each state. In return for agreeing to hold their schools accountable for meeting these expectations, the states are left free to set their standards and their related measures of proficiency as they wish, within some broadly defined parameters. And the local school systems and schools in each state, in return for their share of the Title I/NCLB money are left free, for the most part, to choose their preferred approaches to instruction as long as they agree to be held accountable for ensuring that all their students are making adequate progress towards meeting the state’s proficiency goals. So, the general form of each bargain is an agreement to reduce or forgo regulation of inputs in return for a commitment to define, and meet, outcome expectations. But, having agreed to do something they had never before tried to do—to succeed with essentially all students—schools and educators face the problem that they don’t know how to meet their side of the bargain. Proponents and observers of reform claim to be shocked that some states are setting their performance standards in ways that minimize or disguise the degree to which their students are likely to fail to meet the hopes of reform. In addition, schools and teachers are resorting to approaches, such as relentless test preparation and focusing on students who are just at the edge of meeting proficiency requirements, that try to meet the letter of the bargains’ requirements while leaving the more ambitious spirit of the reforms’ hopes well behind, along with all too many children.Publication The District Role in Instructional Improvement(2001-09-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; Fuhrman, Susan H.; Belcher, Catherine L.Are changing conditions affecting the capacity of districts to provide focus, to coordinate support, and to scale up successful reforms? From a study of the roles played by central office staff members in shaping and supporting instructional reforms in three large urban districts, the authors derive an answer.Publication Science Instruction in Newark Public Schools(2011-09-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; Gerry, Gail BThe Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) has prepared this report on the Newark Public Schools (NPS) for the Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) to assist them with the development of a strategic plan for improving science education in the district. The data used in the report have been gathered and analyzed through the collaborative efforts of CPRE, MISE, and Horizon Research, Inc. (HRI). MISE and CPRE collaborated on two rounds of school site visits; CPRE conducted interviews with district officials; MISE staff analyzed Newark’s curriculum documents and administered a survey of Newark teachers and administrators; and HRI reviewed a sample of interim science assessments developed by the NPS staff.