• CCE Publications
• Published Articles by CCE Staff
• News Articles about CCE Programs

Special thanks to intern Mychael Jeffrey for his work on these pages.

CCE Publications

CCE produces a variety of research papers, reports, articles, and other publications about our work for the educational community and the public. We have made some of these available online in downloadable PDF files. We share these studies with you in order to promote discussions about how we can create democratic and equitable schools

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CCE has published the 2011-2912 Family Guide to the Pilot, Horace Mann, and Innovation Schools, in coordination with the Boston Public Schools, available here for download.

A new study of Boston schools that are achieving good results with English Language Learners was published by CCE and the Gastón Institute of UMass Boston on November 3, 2011. The findings emphasize the roles of leadership, focus, time spent in class, collaborative cultures, and other factors. Read the findings.

Ready for the Future: The Role of Performance Assessments in Shaping Graduates’ Academic, Professional, and Personal Lives (2010), by Laurie Gagnon, CCE. Based on in-depth interviews with graduates from three Boston Public Schools with well-established performance-based assessment systems, the study analyzes graduates’ preparation for future academic, professional, and personal endeavors. Graduates describe the process of learning from performance assessment, the ways their learning prepared them for future schooling or work, and the areas in which they faced challenges. Overall, despite a few challenge areas, the study schools’ performance assessment systems contributed to graduates’ success in college and in the world of work. Performance assessments helped study participants to discover their own learning styles, to master academic content and skills, and to develop critical thinking, communication, and real world skills.

Including Performance Assessments in Accountability Systems: A Review of Scale-up Efforts (2010), by Rosann Tung, for CCE and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. In order to prepare young people to effectively contribute to and benefit from life in the 21st century, we must develop effective ways to measure whether or not they are learning what they need to know. Toward this end, we feel performance assessments should be further explored. The purpose of this field review is to understand previous efforts at scaling up the use of performance assessments across districts and states. Through systematic description and comparison of seven large-scale initiatives, as well as analogous efforts from teacher certification, medicine, and law, the paper identifies the strengths and vulnerabilities in each initiative. The review concludes with implications for standards and procedures that will support the success of using performance assessments as part of a balanced and rigorous assessment system.
Executive summary (530 kb)
Full report (814 kb)

English Learners in Boston Public Schools in the Aftermath of Policy Change: Enrollment and Educational Outcomes, AY2003-AY2006 (2009), by Miren Uriarte, of the Mauricio Gastón Institute; and Rosann Tung, of CCE. This is the first rigorous study to document changed student outcomes for English learners since the 2002 voter approval of a Massachusetts referendum against the continuance of Transitional Bilingual Education as a method of instruction for English language learners, to be replaced by Sheltered English Immersion. Among other findings in the study is a sharp increase in the dropout rate among ELL students.

Experiential Education in Boston’s Pilot Schools: A Three-Year Demonstration Project (2008), by Beth M. Miller, of MMRA, Inc.; Rosann Tung, of CCE; and Rolanda Ward, an independent consultant. The Pilot Schools’ Experiential Education Demonstration project (PSEED), from 2005-2008, was intended to deepen and embed high quality experiential education within each school’s academic programs. The work is grounded in the belief that high quality experiential education will significantly enhance student engagement and performance over time. This complex and rich endeavor, its characteristic elements, and its successes and challenges are documented in this report. The following downloads are available in PDF format:

• Executive Summary
• Full Report
• Rubric Tool

Family and Student Choices in Boston Public Schools, by Monique Ouimette and Rosann Tung. This 2008 CCE study of the student assignment process in Boston finds demand for Pilot school placements far exceeds available spaces. Students who do not get their Pilot choice often leave BPS. In 2007-08, 26% of Boston families requested Pilot schools as their first choice, more than double the 11% of total school enrollment that Pilots can currently seat. Close to a third of the families who were turned down in their Pilot preference chose to leave the Boston public schools.

The Essential Guide to Pilot Schools
CCE has published the first two in a series of guides called The Essential Guide to Pilot Schools. The first guide in the series is the Overview, an attractive, 100-page book, full of practical and informative details about how Pilots function, how they are unique, what is involved in creating a Pilot school, advice, case histories, data, tools, and much more. The second guide, Leadership and Governance, discusses the roles and operations in the shared leadership that comprises a Pilot school. The full guides in .pdf format (large downloads) are available at Overview Guide and Leadership and Governance. The printed book versions are available at CCE. You can download the order form here.

Strong Results, High Demand: A Four-Year Study of Boston's Pilot High Schools, by Rosann Tung and Monique Ouimette, November 2007. Download Executive Summary (3.6 MB) or Full Report (4.3 MB). New study finds that Boston Pilot high school students outperformed their non-Pilot peers on every standard measure of engagement and performance over a four year period. The higher level of achievement held true for every racial, economic, and academic group examined.

Promising Results and Lessons from the First Boston District School Converting to Pilot Status, by Rosann Tung and Monique Ouimette, study presented at the American Educational Research Association annual conference in April 2007. Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA) is the first traditional Boston Public School (Boston High School) to convert to being a Pilot School since the inception of the Network, gaining autonomy over budget, staffing, schedule, curriculum, and governance in exchange for increased school-level accountability. The purpose of this study is to document the process of the school’s conversion to Pilot status and the subsequent early changes in the school. Also available, a brochure based on this study.

Progress and Promise: A Report on the Boston Pilot Schools, new research by CCE comparing outcomes of Pilot with non-Pilot Boston public schools (2006). This much awaited study documents Pilot School students performing better than the district averages across every indicator of student engagement and performance, at every grade level. Available from CCE or here online: Executive Summary or Full Report [Note that the Full Report is a large, 6MB .pdf file.]

Turning Points Guides: Emanating from the National Turning Points Center at CCE, these guides offer rich descriptions of best practices, as well as a coherent set of teaching and learning tools. Turning Points Guides draw upon the expertise and experiences of Turning Points schools and regional centers, as well as other educational research. They are concise books that offer explanations and specific strategies for faculties, coaches, and school leaders to use as they engage in key practices of teaching and learning and school change. The nine guides include:

• A Guide to Curriculum Development
• A Guide to Data-based Inquiry and Decision-Making
• A Guide to Looking at Student and Teacher Work
• A Guide to Collaborative Culture and Shared Leadership
• Teaching Literacy in the Turning Points School
• A Guide To School Structures
• At the Turning Point: The Young Adolescent Learner
• Understanding Learning: Assessment in the Turning Points School
• Creating Partnerships, Bridging Worlds: Family and Community Engagement

Descriptions of each guide, excerpts, and ordering information for the full guides are available here.

The new, revised CCE small schools planning guide is now available from Corwin Press as Creating Small Schools: A Handbook for Raising Equity and Achievement.
Revised for 2005-2006, this beautiful, practical, hands-on manual has been developed to assist faculty, administrators, community representatives, parents, and others involved in small school planning and implementation. The intent of the manual is to provide a helpful context along with ideas, tools, and organizers to assist schools as they begin their work toward becoming small schools. Click here for full information or to order.

Scaling Up Turning Points Through Autonomous Regional Centers, by Dan French and Leah Rugen (both CCE), chapter 10 in Expanding the Reach of Education Reform: Perspectives from Leaders in the Scale-Up of Educational Interventions (2004), published by Rand Corporation. “The authors describe a move by the Turning Points organization to ensure successful scale-up of the practices they advocate: the development of a network of regional centers to guide implementation of its program in diverse parts of the nation. Although these centers differ in terms of funding sources, institutional affiliation, and the specific focus of their activities, all have adopted the Turning Points design as part of their respective missions.”
[The full book is available online as a PDF. However, it may not work properly opened in a browser after clicking on it. A more reliable way to read the chapter or the whole book is first to save it to disk and then open the PDF file directly from the computer. To do this on a PC, right-click on the PDF link on the following Download page and choose “Save target as....” To save it on a Macintosh, hold down the clicker on the PDF file until options pop up on the screen, and then Save the target. The PDF file for downloading is made available by Rand Corporation at the Download. site.]

The Challenge of Coaching: Providing Cohesion Among Multiple Reform Agendas (2004). This third in a series of studies on coaching at CCE looks at coaches’ views on the “reform agenda” and answers the question, “How do coaches balance pushing the reform agenda and meeting the immediate needs of school staff?” The term “reform agenda” has multiple owners and therefore multiple meanings: the district reform agenda, the principal’s reform agenda, CCE’s reform agenda, and the coach’s reform agenda . This study also identifies some of the immediate needs which potentially detract from the work of whole school change. It describes coaches’ strategies for achieving the balance between reform and reality, the challenges faced in achieving this balance, and ways that CCE may address these challenges to develop the coaching and reform models.

Examining the Turning Points Comprehensive Middle School Reform Model: The Role of Local Context and Innovation (2004). This paper looks at the ways schools and model developers adapt their designs based on local context to examine teaching and learning. The study synthesizes four Turning Points Middle School case studies to understand how these schools have achieved success in adapting the Turning Points design. In our cross-analysis, four features emerged as common across each school, though the schools used very different pathways to implement each feature. These features are: (1) Shared leadership to support improvements in instruction and curriculum; (2) Teacher collaboration to support improved teaching and learning; (3) Personalized instruction to help teachers get to know students well; and (4) Use of data to inform decisions.

Engaging Parents in an Urban Public High School: A Case Study of Boston Arts Academy (2004). High parental involvement has been linked to increases in student achievement and engagement in school. Schools with large populations of low-income students or students of color often have difficulties in engaging a majority of parents due to a variety of social and cultural differences among parents and teachers. Few models of extensive parent involvement in urban, public high schools have been described. The urban public high school studied in this paper engages many parents in school-based activities through multiple events and entry points, a welcoming school environment, and frequent communication among staff and parents. By focusing on building a diverse, inclusive culture and encouraging parents to take part in the school, this high school engages parents with varied prior experiences and dispositions toward parent involvement. Several key approaches that other schools may adopt are shared in this case study.

How Pilot Schools Authentically Assess Student Mastery (2004). This study documents how member schools of the Boston Pilot Schools Network use authentic assessments to understand what their students know and can do. Against a backdrop of proliferating state-mandated standardized tests, and federal legislation in the form of No Child Left Behind, Pilot Schools use performance-based tasks in which students ask questions that they have formulated on their own and use habits of mind to reflect on their work and thinking.

Creating Schools That Work: Lessons for Reform from Successful Urban High Schools, co-authored by the Center for Collaborative Education and Jobs for the Future, November 2003. Download: Executive Summary (.pdf, file size 71 K); Full Report (.pdf, file size 695 K)
Policy makers and practitioners need evidence to guide decision making on improving high school student achievement. The Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC, Jobs for the Future, and the Center for Collaborative Education partnered to explore this critical issue and generate discussion around possible strategies for leveraging best practices used in Massachusetts urban high schools. CERP identified nine urban schools that show, to varying degrees, that they can get impressive academic results with the student populations education reform is meant to serve. Creating Schools That Work, a collaboration between the Center for Collaborative Education and Jobs for the Future, uses those findings to present state and district policy recommendations for creating the conditions by which a far greater number of urban high schools can educate their diverse student bodies and prepare them to succeed in college and beyond.
A State House News Service Transcript of the discussion following the November 20 FleetBoston Auditorium presentation of the reports is available online as well.

How Are Boston Pilot School Students Faring? Student Demographics, Engagement, and Performance, 1998-2003. This is the third annual report looking at Boston Pilot school students. The study finds that Pilots “are among the top performing schools in Boston on the MCAS, have among the highest daily student attendance of all BPS schools, graduate a high percentage of their students, and send a high percent of their graduates to college,” all while serving “a student population that is generally representative of the larger BPS student population.”

A New Vision of Authentic Assessment to Overcome the Flaws in High Stakes Testing, by Dan French, Middle School Journal, September. September 2003.
“The work of creating academically challenging, developmentally responsive, and socially equitable middle schools that serve a diverse range of students is much more complex and messy than merely measuring students using a high stakes standardized test. We need to acknowledge the systemic reasons why low-income students and Black and Latino students are achieving at far lower rates than their White, more affluent peers and are much less engaged in the institution called school, and identify the conditions that create excellent schools for diverse students. Simple solutions to complex problems usually just create more problems.”

Cherry Lane High Case Study: Restructuring a Large, Comprehensive High School to Small Schools. Cherry Lane has begun a multi-year effort to convert from a large, comprehensive high school into three small schools with unique identities. This case study of Cherry Lane High’s first year of conversion looks at the background, design year, and early implementation of the multi-year process to becoming three small schools. By highlighting the impact on the school community and the major challenges they face, it is intended to inform the work of other districts and schools. The CCE research team presented this study at the American Educational Research Association annual conference in April 2003 in Chicago.

A Common Intent to Understand: Boston Pilot School Directors Talk about Diversity examines the ways Pilot Schools talk about diversity in their schools and the impact these discussions have on staffing, professional development, pedagogy, curriculum, and students. The CCE researchers presented this study at the annual meeting of the New England Educational Research Organization in April 2003.

MCAS Position Statement by the CCE Board of Directors

Parent Involvement in the Boston Pilot Schools: Lessons from a Unique Urban Network, presented at the annual meeting of the New England Educational Research Organization in April 2002. This is the first study in a series on parent involvement in the Boston Pilot Schools. It documents multiple ways that parents are involved in Pilot Schools.

The Role of External Facilitators in Whole School Reform: Teachers’ Perceptions of How Coaches Influence School Change, presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April 2002. This is the second in a series of reports describing the role of coaches in working with schools to promote whole school reform. This report analyzes teacher and administrator perceptions of coaching practices in their schools.

How Boston Pilot Schools Use Freedom Over Budget, Staffing, and Scheduling To Meet Student Needs. This study reports on how schools in the Boston Pilot Schools Network implement their budget, staffing, and scheduling autonomies to create lower class sizes, lower daily teacher loads, multi-year relationships between teachers and students, creative definitions of staff roles, more adults in instruction, longer blocks of instructional time, and more collaborative planning time in comparison to district non-Pilot Schools.

Promoting Whole School Reform: A Closer Look at the Role of External Facilitators, presented at the 14th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement in January 2001. This paper is the first in a series of reports describing the role of coaches - external facilitators - in working with schools to promote whole school reform.

The Role of a Third Party Organization in the Boston Pilot Schools Network, presented at the 14th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement in January 2001. This paper describes the role of CCE in supporting a unique urban public school network, the Boston Pilot Schools Network. It is CCE’s thesis that public schools, particularly those serving high percentages of low-income students and students of color, have a much greater chance of educating every student if they are members of a network of like-minded small schools that receive intensive support from an intermediary organization.

Whole School Reform: How Schools Use the Data-Based Inquiry and Decision-Making Process, presented at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in April 2001. In the current culture of school accountability, schools are looking for ways to understand how to interpret the data that is provided to them, as well as how to use this process to improve the quality of instruction offered by their school. This paper describes what we learned about this process in our work with six schools in our Networks.

The Coach in Context: Building School Capacity Through External Facilitation, presented at the Annual Conference of the New England Educational Research Organization in April 2001. This paper explores some of the complexities that make coaching multifaceted through the presentation of a case study of a coach facilitating middle school math and science reform. This case study identifies some of the challenges coaches face, some strategies coaches use in their daily work, and some implications for the coaching model.

Articles published independently by CCE staff

Families and Schools Partner for Student Success, by Meenakshi Khanna, in Middle Matters, April 2008 (Publication of the National Association of Elementary School Principals).
Article looks at how two middle schools in Boston chose different routes, consistent with their school populations, to involve parents in the education of their students.

The Belmont Zone of Choice: Community-Driven Action for Change, by Jeremy Nesoff, in Horace, the Journal of the Coalition of Essential Schools, Winter 2007.
This is the detailed story of how a new network of Pilot Schools has begun in Los Angeles. The birth of the network has involved extensive coordination of community, school system, union, and faculty interests.

Boston’s Pilot Schools: Progress and Promise in Urban School Reform, by Dan French, “Commentary” in Education Week, April 19, 2006.
CCE’s Executive Director looks at how school districts, teachers unions, and the community have worked together using the Pilot school model to create successful urban schools “unified around a common commitment to excellence and equity, with clear strategies to get there.”

Failing Our Students, by Evangeline Harris Stefanakis, op-ed in the New York Times, January 8 2006.
“New York City schools base their decision on whether to promote students entirely on results from the state achievement exams. But these tests, which are written for native English speakers, discriminate against those who are still learning the language.” This is a powerful documentation of how the system is detrimental. It proposes practical solutions.

Nine Friction Points in Moving to Smaller School Units, Commentary by Larry Myatt, in Education Week, April 6, 2005.
“Many... large-to-smaller [conversion] initiatives have been under way for several years. Yet in many locales, results have been few despite substantial investment in what is often called ‘conversion’ work.” Myatt, Director of the Greater Boston Principal Residency Network at CCE, points to the complexity of getting broad buy-in for the small school concept from all the affected constituencies.

Cain in the Classroom: The Dramatic Effects of Low Expectations in a School of High Achievers (October 2004), by Robert Frank, presented at the XII Congress of Comparative Education Societies, in Havana, and included as a chapter in Comparative Pedagogy: Selected Topics, ed. Metod Cernetic, Marko Musanovic, and Olga Decman Dobrnjic. The research documents the devastating effects of low expectations in the classroom and considers the implications for the African-American “achievement gap.”

Taking Stock: A Decade of Education Reform in Massachusetts, by Larry Myatt and Peggy Kemp, in Phi Delta Kappan, October 2004.
PRN Director Myatt and Fenway headmaster Kemp compare the hope in the early 90’s for reform of education, with the realities of today. They see some gains, along with many disappointments, in a No Child Left Behind environment whose main goals (but not strategies) they share, for the most part. They see that many of the dialogues and structures they had envisioned as part of school reform fifteen years ago “have been co-opted, have been neutralized, or have vanished.”

Please Don’t Feed the Beast: From Fashion to Rap, Students Criticize Media for Furthering Negative Youth Images at First-Ever Conference, by Robert Frank, in the South End News, April 29, 2004.
Boston Pilot secondary school students met in the first annual Pilot Youth Conference and looked at the ways the media corrupt youth and public images of youth. Music, fashion, radio, television, and even video games were seen as racist and destructive.

Addressing the Middle Grades Gap, by Dan French, in Term Paper, May 2003.
Executive Director of CCE, Dan French, issues a call for rediscovering the principles and passion, and not just the structures, that are behind middle school reform. He proposes an intense, humane, and rigorous response to Ronald Williamson’s criticism that the current middle school has “misplaced its focus on meeting the needs of early adolescent learners and instead” has become “enveloped by a shroud of orthodoxy.” [Note that the .pdf file shows on the screen in tiny print unless the article is viewed on a full -screen view at 135% enlargement. To print the article legibly requires 11"x17" paper and 155% enlargement]

Developing an Inquiry-Minded District, by Jay Feldman (CCE), Gail Lucey, Sarah Goodrich, and Dana Frazee (CCE), article in the focus on “Using Data to Improve Student Achievement,” in Educational Leadership, February 2003.
Three schools show how the data-based inquiry and decision making process can improve decisions about curriculum, instruction, and policy. By engaging in ongoing data analyses, teachers can develop plans to address barriers to student learning.

Somewhere After the Rainbow, by Dan French,op-ed in the Cambridge Chronicle, January 29, 2003.
CCE executive director and Cambridge parent Dan French responds to the sudden termination by the school committee of the small schools initiative at Cambridge MA’s Rindge and Latin School. He cites numerous statistics showing unique academic progress since the small schools approach was introduced.

Smaller Schools Make a Difference, Letter to the Editor by Dan French, in the Boston Globe, December 19, 2002.
CCE Executive Director Dan French refutes opinions expressed by some sources, in the Payzant article (below), that downplay the impact of smallness on the quality of education in schools.

Small Schools and CFGs,by Steven Strull, in Connections: a Journal of the National School Reform Faculty, Fall 2002.
Former CCE and NESSN Program Director Strull takes a practical and philosophical look at the CCE/Small Schools approach to education and at how that approach is manifested in a recent Critical Friends Group training program. “We approach our work with a simple bias, that those closest to students, the teachers, must make ALL substantive decisions regarding learning and teaching.”

Race and Class: ‘Misrepresenting the Facts’ On MCAS Pass Rates?, by Dan French and Maryellen Brunyak, Letters to the Editor in Education Week, November 6, 2002.
French and Brunyak, in separate letters to the editor, respond to the Massachusetts DOE’s assertion that most students failing the MCAS are white.

Teachers as Grantseekers: The Privatization of the Urban Public School Teacher, a study by Regional Turning Points Associate Sara Freedman, done while she was on the Boston College faculty and published in Teachers College Record in February 2000: “The growing participation of select groups of urban teachers in private grantgiving programs available to them on district, state, and national levels has critical ideological, structural, and cultural links to the movement to privatize public education...Grantseeking sanctifies and celebrates a hierarchy within teaching that neatly mirrors the power structure within society at large, all under the guise of ensuring more effective teaching to students of color.”