A school reform plan developed at Johns Hopkins
is bringing significant gains in student
achievement and attendance to some of the
nation's most challenging and impoverished middle
schools, according to a recently released study.
The success of the university's Talent
Development Middle Schools reform model in
raising math achievement and attendance rates
among eighth-graders shows potential for
improvements in other areas as well, according to
MDRC, a New York-based nonprofit research firm
that recently released preliminary findings on
the most extensive effort to expand the Johns
Hopkins program. The MDRC study is available
online at www.mdrc.org/publications/400
/overview.html.
The evaluation focuses on six large
schools in a northeastern city that is not being
identified. Evaluating these schools, MDRC found
statistically significant impacts in math
beginning in the third year of the Talent
Development reform and continuing for two more
years. These included increases in math
achievement and decreases in the percentage of
students performing at the lowest level in math.
In addition, attendance, especially among
eighth-graders, increased during the second and
third years of the reform.
The evaluation found a positive trend in
reading scores, but the improvement was
considered statistically significant during only
the second year of Talent Development.
In addition to recognizing the potential
of the Talent Development model, developed over
10 years at the Center for Social Organization of
Schools at Johns Hopkins, the evaluation bolsters
whole-school reforms, which have come under fire
and budget cuts recently. These comprehensive
reforms attack many problems of failing
schools-poor instruction, weak curriculum,
uninterested students, unsafe and uninviting
physical conditions-at once rather than in a
piecemeal fashion.
Critics have said the reforms are too
expensive and difficult to implement and often
require schools to adapt to highly structured
curriculum and instruction. Yet the MDRC report
found that some of the most challenged middle
schools in the country were able to implement the
Talent Development model and make achievement
gains on par with the long-term gains associated
with reducing class size in the early grades.
"It is not common to find early impacts
of this magnitude in evaluations of models of
comprehensive school reform," the evaluation
concluded. "Although the early impact findings in
this report should be considered preliminary �
they are encouraging, particularly for math
achievement among eighth-grade students."
MDRC found that the strength of these
improvements depended on the timing and intensity
of the reform. Improvements occurred after the
reform had been in use for several years and were
greatest in math. These effects can have
widespread practical results. For example, if
they were applied to all 38 neighborhood middle
schools in this district, 1,200 eighth-graders
would move out of the bottom quartile in math
achievement each year.
"This is good news," said Douglas
MacIver, director of the Talent Development
Middle Grades program. "In an era that is rightly
demanding evidence-based school reforms, the
results show that when comprehensive,
research-based reforms are implemented and
sustained, significant progress can be made in
reducing some of the nation's most troubling
achievement gaps."
Talent Development Middle Schools is a
comprehensive reform initiative designed to
improve the organization, curriculum,
instruction, learning environment and teacher
support in the middle grades with the aim of
engaging students in learning and raising their
achievement.
Before Talent Development was implemented
in the district where MDRC examined its impacts,
75 percent of eighth-graders had math and reading
skills below grade level, and 25 percent were
chronic absentees. Many of the students were
unprepared for high school, the report showed.
While almost all eighth-graders were promoted to
ninth grade, only 60 percent of them moved to
10th grade the following year. MDRC compared the
results for students in schools working with
Talent Development to those of similar students
in the same schools before the reform began and
to students in matched schools in the same
district.
MDRC will produce a follow-up report that
will track the outcomes described above for an
additional two years.
To learn more about the Talent
Development Middle Schools model and see
additional research and findings, go to
www.csos.jhu.edu/tdms/index.htm.
GO TO