Powerful Ideas, Modest Gains: Five Years of Systemic Reform in Philadelphia Middle Schools

In this report, we draw on data from a total of 11 middle schools where we conducted interviews and observations during our five-year evaluation. Five of these schools were part of more intensive, multi-year case study research. Throughout this report, we offer sketches of what happened in these five schools during the Children Achieving reform to give a sense of the progress that they did and did not make toward becoming organizations capable of supporting both teachers as they adopted challenging new instructional practices and students as they stretched to reach higher standards of achievement.