Center for Research in Educational Policy and the University of Memphis
Fourth-Year Achievement Results on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System for Restructuring Schools in Memphis, 2000
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the student achievement gains that have resulted since the 1995 implementation of school reform designs in the Memphis City Schools (MCS). Expeditionary Learning was one of the eight school reform designs included in this evaluation. The MCS is the district with the lowest socio-economic status in Tennessee. In an attempt to improve the academic achievement of its students, MCS chose to restructure a number of its schools by adopting a variety of whole-school reform designs in 1995. Each school that adopted one of these designs is known as a "restructuring school." Between 1995 and 1997, additional schools in this district adopted such reform designs. Due to the fact that only a few schools in the district implemented each reform design, this evaluation focused primarily on the overall effect of all eight designs on the Memphis City Schools. In general, the findings indicated that those schools implementing reform designs such as Expeditionary Learning have demonstrated noticeable gains in academic achievement since the adoption of these designs.
Students across Tennessee take the TerraNova, a version of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills exam, in grades 2-8 and grade 11. The TerraNova is a state-mandated test that measures student achievement in Math, Reading, Language, Science, and Social Studies. Score reports from this test were the primary sources of data used in this evaluation. In order to analyze the data obtained from these reports, both the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) and the Cumulative Percent of the Norm (CPN) were employed. The TVAAS and CPN are sophisticated statistical procedures used by Tennessee to analyze standardized test results.
Results of this study indicate that restructuring schools clearly demonstrated an increase in achievement from year to year since initial school reform implementation. In the year prior to design implementation, as well as the first year of implementation, all restructuring schools experienced a lower amount of achievement gain when compared to non-restructuring schools. By the second year of design implementation, however, these schools began to demonstrate higher achievement gains than non-restructuring schools. Furthermore, by the second and third years of design implementation, restructuring schools tended to gain advantages over non-restructuring schools in all subject areas, including Math, Reading, Science, Language and Social Studies. The report concluded:
[The restructuring schools] showed the prototypic pattern that is usually associated with reform efforts, that is, little change or even deficits in achievement in the first year of implementation, but positive gains over time. For all three cohorts, the "turnaround" period has been two years, which many educational reform experts would probably regard as unexpectedly brief given the demands and complexities of implementing comprehensive school reforms.
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