UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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UW – Roxhill Collaborative Schools for Innovation and Success
Implementation Report #1 – November 1, 2013
Executive Summary
This report, which includes an introduction and nine topical “sections,” addresses a broad range
of issues related to the last 16 months of work (one year of planning, and approximately 4 months of
implementation) on the UW – Roxhill Collaborative Schools for Innovation and Success project. The
report includes implementation highlights and anecdotal evidence of progress on outcomes while also re-
establishing the research base and the Innovative Practices approved in the Innovation Plan. Finally, the
report identifies the project structure, participants, and the evolving framework for the baseline data that
is guiding the implementation. Ultimately, it reflects the efforts all of us on the project have put into
clarifying the goals, outcomes, structures, roles and responsibilities, and common commitments that will
guide the implementation of this ambitious and unique partnership as we strive to close the achievement
gap and better prepare teachers to work in high needs schools and communities.
Introduction: context and anecdotes
Sometimes, in a report of this type, the parts do not necessarily add up to an enhanced
understanding of the whole, so we thought we would provide some broader context by highlighting the
largest pieces of work, complete with anecdotes from project participants:
Full Service Community School implementation, with specific attention to new family
engagement strategies and initiatives:
Roxhill has already made significant strides towards becoming a full serve community school (defined
more fully below): implementing a weekly parent coffee hour, creating a family resource room, opening a
new on-site health clinic, and launching a Positive Discipline class in Spanish to name just a few. Much
of this work is being led in partnership with Roxhill parent Alejandra Diaz. Alejandra has two students at
Roxhill and participated in a site visit during the planning year to see other full service community
schools in Oakland and San Francisco. According to Alejandra, those visits really changed her
understanding of how she could participate at Roxhill. At Hillcrest Elementary School in San Francisco,
she saw some parents having a bake sale for after school programs. When she tried to ask one of the
parents questions about the school, she realized the woman didn’t speak English. A native Spanish
speaker, Alejandra says, “My English always kept me from doing more at school, but this woman didn’t
speak any English and she was involved. That made me want to do more. I told my kids that this kind of
school, a community school, is like a dream that I have and I want to work to make it happen.” Alejandra
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has since become the President of the PTA at Roxhill and is working hard to create a community of
parents supporting their kids’ learning. She credits the CSIS project and the site visits with giving her
“the courage for where I’m standing right now.”
Innovative, collaborative, practice-based professional learning in math:
These unique, job-embedded events developed by the UW’s Dr. Kazemi are called Math Labs (and are
described in more detail below). These Labs provide opportunities for all the adults working at Roxhill
to develop a shared vision of instruction, identify common instructional routines, build knowledge, and
apply new knowledge in their classrooms with kids. The school completed two rounds of Math Labs last
year, and has done one of four Math Labs so far this year. During the Labs, grade level teams are
released from their classrooms and spending a day collaboratively learning and using the core practices of
ambitious instruction in mathematics. They dig into the Common Core Standards for a future math unit;
they plan a lesson; teach it in someone’s classroom; debrief that instruction, and repeat this cycle two to
three times throughout the day. So far, facilitators and leaders are observing changes for teachers and
students alike. Teachers are establishing trusting, collaborative relationships with teammates, making
their practice public, and deepening their instructional practices together. According to Assistant
Principal Frances Coppa, teachers are excited and challenged by this different approach to professional
learning. She notes that on a day teachers were working on developing backwards planning units, each
team spent several hours digging into the main ideas of the unit. Time seemed to fly, and it was hard to
break people away from all the great work that was happening in their small groups. Teacher, she says,
are “transferring the discussion norms for math to all subject areas so it is building a culture of discussion
in our school.”
Similarly, students across the grade levels are engaging in mathematical discourse where their ideas
are elicited. When you walk into teachers’ classrooms it is clear that math talk is rich. Chart paper and
anchor charts around the room make public the big ideas that students are working on. Students are eager
to share their ideas with one another. Students are learning common ways of listening to and responding
to each other’s ideas with guided instruction by teachers. “Kids are excited to see teachers as learners,”
says Coppa.
Extensive look at ways to strengthen the Teacher Education Preparation (TEP) curriculum and
teacher candidate experience to prepare “community” teachers:
The UW's TEP programs are linking directly with the work at Roxhill to expand pre-service teachers'
knowledge and skills related to family engagement and community oriented teaching. The teacher
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candidates placed at Roxhill this year are actively involved in the family engagement work. According to
Juan Cordova, one of the teacher candidates placed at Roxhill for his student teaching, “I am excited
about the opportunity to work with teachers, staff, parents, students, and the supporting community
because they believe in the school. It's wonderful to see in action all of the ideas and theories we have
talked about at the UW. Seeing people of different backgrounds working together to educate and
empower students and their families is awesome!”
Further, six Roxhill parents will be coming to talk with teacher candidates at UW during one of
their classes - a Teaching and Learning course which focuses on the psychological foundations of
learning. Parents will talk about what their role is within the community school model that Roxhill is
embracing and how they are both leading and learning through the community school effort. This will
help students understand the broader context of what it means to choose a school community to work in
and how parents understand themselves as part of a community school.
Another important contextual note is that there were delays in implementation and changes to first year
scope of work due to the delay in funding from the legislature. While some budget neutral activities were
able to move ahead according to schedule, other activities were put on hold until next year. Further, some
of the momentum gained around infrastructure building and organization were lost as we waited to hear
whether groups should continue to convene. This fall has been a time of re-organization and
infrastructure building for long-term project implementation.
Part of that re-organization entails adjusting the project structure from the Innovation Plan to be
more closely aligned with school-level implementation of full service community schools. The new
teams are Academic Excellence, Extended Learning, Holistic Health, Family Engagement, and Teacher
Educator Preparation. These teams, along with the Leadership Team, oversee implementation of the
project activities in line with its goals and outcomes.
Each of this report’s 9 main sections are broken out into categories based on 1) the overall aims
of the project: student achievement and teacher preparation; 2) the teams working within each of those
two overall project areas.
Section I: Innovative Practices
Broadly, the Innovative Practices in this collaboration can be broken down into four main
“innovations.” Because the Plan itself described these practices in detail, we have provided only
summaries below, with details of activities and progress described throughout the rest of the report.
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Student Achievement
1) Implementing a Full Service Community Schools (FSCS) model at Roxhill that integrates
academic excellence, family engagement, extended learning, holistic health.
A Full Service Community School (FSCS) embraces a holistic model of learning that revolves around
student success, broadly defined. A FSCS provides a range of services to children and families in
partnership with community based organizations (CBO); and serves as a hub for all sorts of activities and
services, including health/mental health, after-school recreational, and family support. The logic of the
FSCS model is that for kids to do well academically their basic needs of health and nutrition, mental
health, and safety need to be met and continually supported. The model also emphasizes the integration
of social-emotional and academic learning such that students are exposed to holistic models of classroom
instruction that provide them with a broad skill base, which research has shown to predict much later
gains in educational achievement and successes in other life domains (Heckman, 2000). Moreover, the
model offers a deep appreciation for the social and cultural strengths brought to schools by families and
members of the larger community, as well as a commitment to seeing families and community partners as
instrumental in promoting children’s successes in education. FSCS models can be implemented in a
variety of ways, and the Roxhill community has chosen to have a four-pronged approach: integrating
family engagement, extended learning opportunities, holistic (social, emotional, and physical) health, and
academic excellence. More about this model is included in the research base section below.
2) Conducting collaborative, job-embedded professional learning focused (in year one) on
mathematics (these events are known as Math Labs).
During Math Labs, grade-level teams of teachers collaborate on learning and using the core practices of
ambitious instruction in mathematics. They plan for and observe intellectually rigorous tasks being
enacted with students, and rehearse and receive guided feedback from peers and co-facilitators. Teachers
then enact the task with a small group of students, and, finally, debrief the experience through discussion
or review of video clips. In the debriefing, facilitators guide teachers through questions directed at better
understanding how students were or were not learning and the implications for their own practice and
knowledge. Applying these new insights, teachers develop their own instructional plans in grade-level
teams. Each Math Lab includes teachers’ engagement with disciplinary content to deepen their
knowledge for teaching and data review when teachers share samples of student work or summaries of
student performance from their classrooms. At Roxhill, Math Labs include all adults providing
instruction in the building: bilingual IAs, special education teachers, special education IAs, City Year
volunteers, and teacher candidates. The core elements of instruction are explored and discussed as they
relate to application with different populations of students. These experiences help ALL teachers build a
coherent vision of instruction and shared understandings about the mathematics demanded of children in
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the Common Core. In years three – five of the project, the instructional focus may move from math to
another area identified through data and with school leadership, but the job-embedded, collaborative,
professional development model will remain the same.
Teacher Preparation
3) Enhancing the Community, Family, Politics (CFP) of the Teacher Education Program to ensure
teacher candidates are prepared to be “community” teachers.
A community teacher is defined as “one who possesses the contextualized knowledge of the culture,
community, and identity of the children and families he or she serves and draws on this knowledge to
create the core teaching practices necessary for effectiveness in diverse settings” (Murrell 2001, p. 52).
The CFP strand of the Elementary Teacher Preparation program has historically been a strand woven
through course work that brings together the holistic approach to education and ambitious practices: the
dual process of gaining contextualized knowledge of children, families, and schooling and using this
knowledge to improve educational opportunities and outcomes has become an essential element of both
state and national teacher policy documents.
With UW faculty and staff, the Teacher Education Preparation Team is planning explicit ways for
teacher candidates to deepen their ability to communicate and connect with families, including those of
difficult to reach groups like mobile and homeless students, by connecting them directly with the ongoing
work at Roxhill. The evolution of the FSCS model provides opportunities for teacher candidates to
understand the connection between the social, emotional and physical well being of students and enhance
their ability to engage students and families and foster a positive learning environment using an asset-
based orientation.
4) Exploring ways to change the current one-on-one mentoring model used for student teachers.
Guided by the project’s commitment to innovative collaborative models, the TEP Team – with program
faculty and staff - will be working to redefine the “mentoring” model. An idea currently under
consideration within UW’s College of Education is to pilot a model that moves away from the traditional
dyadic one candidate – one mentor teacher model. Instead, an entire school would sign on to supporting
the preparation of the teacher candidates by opening up practice and creating innovative collaborative
arrangements that allow candidates to learn from multiple teachers and to engage in ongoing dialogue
with all professionals in the building, including ELL and special education teachers as well as community
service providers. Piloting such arrangements also serves to bring together university coaches and
instructors with mentor teachers and teacher candidates. The planning and implementation of this work
will be taken up in year two of the project, with Roxhill as a potential pilot site.
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Section II: Research-based model
The original proposal for this Collaborative School partnership used a research based theory of
action that called for taking a deeply clinical, problem-centered approach to creating networks of
professional learning to build an effective model for developing skills and capacity among the wide
range of participating educators and begin to erase the learning opportunity and achievement gap
among students.
This “networked” based approach was based on a belief that to date the the higher-education
community has failed to deliver these solutions, in part because “our current educational research and
development (R&D) infrastructure fails to connect to enduring problems of improvement in our nation’s
schools" (Bryk and Gomez 2008). In fact, a "small but growing cadre of scholars and policy
organizations have coalesced around an argument that the social organization of the research
infrastructure is badly broken and a very different alternative is needed (e.g., Burkhardt and Schoenfeld
2003; Coburn and Stein 2010; Committee on a Strategic Education Research Partnership 2003; Hiebert et
al. 2002; Kelly 2006; National Academy of Education Report 1999)” (Bryk, et al., 2011, p.
128). Something is needed to bridge the divide between researcher and practitioner in a way that makes
practice more central and research more accessible. In the case of this project that divide is being bridged
by the formation of networks of learners across Roxhill staff, parents, community organizations and UW
faculty working together to create new social arrangements for practicing teachers, new teachers, and
students. An essential component of creating these social arrangements for collaborative work was the
co-creation of both the vision and the strategies of that collaboration (Ball & Forzani, 2011; Horn &
Little, 2010; NCATE, 2010; Wilson & Berne, 1999). That co-creation happened during the planning year
and is reflected in the Innovation Plan. Each area of Innovative Practice (named above) is also guided by
research on how the rearrangement of social networks and increased collaboration can lead to significant
change for students and teachers.
Student Achievement
Instructional Quality
The most powerful predictor of student learning is quality of instruction (Haycock, 1998; Peske
& Haycock, 2006; National Academy of Education, 2009). Efforts to improve instruction – to get
teachers to what is sometimes termed “ambitious instruction” – have often focused on a single element of
teaching and learning or the content knowledge of individual teachers. While these elements matter, the
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theory of action and research driving this project suggest that the persistence of poor performance is
rooted in the need to build individual and organizational capacity to provide high-quality
instruction; therefore improved teacher instruction and student achievement will be a result of a systemic
re-arrangement of the relationships between and among teachers, leaders, students, and the
university. This collaboration therefore seeks to break down the pervasive norm of private, individualized
practice whereby each teacher struggles alone to choose and master the right instructional practices to
meet the remarkable heterogeneity of student needs she faces each day. This will be replaced by a
network of education professionals that leads to organizational learning.
The Math Lab construct referenced throughout this document is built on research about
Networked Improvement Communities - spaces that arrange “human and technical resources so that the
community is capable of getting better at getting better (Englebart 2003)” (Bryk, et., al, 2011, p. 130).
The job-embedded nature of the Math Labs reflect recent studies (see Ball & Cohen, 1999; Borko, 2004;
Grossman et al., 2009) demonstrating the limits of improving instructional practice through external
coursework alone. Building professional communities removed from close interaction with students can
lead to simplistic or overused ideas such as cooperative learning. What is required is the ability and
disposition to use knowledge of content and knowledge of students in flexible ways in order to learn how
to teach in a particular situation. In order to respond to a student who asks a question while the class is
working independently, for example, one must know how to observe that particular student’s work,
interpret that work, elicit elaborations, and intervene in a way that makes it possible for the student to
move on (Franke, Kazemi, & Battey, 2007; Lampert, 2001). To improve teachers’ practice, the project
must help them acquire (1) the interactive skills required to engage students in serious academic work and
(2) the ability and willingness to use knowledge in particular moments of practice.
Full Service Community Schools
While developing proficient students by increasing instructional quality is a primary aim of this
project, studies consistently find students make greater gains academically when programs attend to social
and emotional skill building. Substantial evidence links students’ health and emotional wellness to
improved academic achievement (Durak, et. al., 2011); therefore, there is increasing awareness of the
need for schools to integrate educational, medical and support services for students. Indeed, the provision
of integrated - highly collaborative, holistic, process-oriented - student services are central to a variety of
evidence-based school, organization, and community-change theories (Bandura, 1977; Goodman et al,
1990; McLeroy et al, 1988; Parcel et al, 1988).
For these reasons, another essential focus for the re-arrangement of social relationships that
enable organizational learning is in the realm of social and emotional development. The co-creation of the
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Innovation and Success Plan did not include just teachers and researchers, but also families and
community based organizations. During the planning year, this joint Advisory Group helped the school
consider the Full Service Scommunity School model.
The model of “full-service” schools (Dryfoos, 1994) recognizes that children, particularly those
from low-income families and disadvantaged backgrounds, are best served by schools that blend high
quality education with academic supports with health and wellness programs developed in collaboration
with community partners. Research on full-service schools show that comprehensive programming that
attends holistically to the needs of children and their families hold promise for improving academic
outcomes for students, reducing conduct and mental health problems, and improving school-family
partnerships (Dryfoos, 1994, Warger, 2002).
The full-service schools model builds on the foundations of positive youth development (Lerner
et al., 2005) and prevention science (Coie et al. 1993 IOM, 1994; Botvin, 2004), which seek to integrate
knowledge on the developmental etiology of problem behaviors with that of rigorous evaluation studies.
Prevention science is a field devoted to studying and reducing risk factors and enhancing protective
factors for a range of youth problems, including bullying and school dropout, substance use/abuse, and
mental disorders (IOM, 1994, 2009). The field has adopted a public health framework in which risk and
protective factors are systematically targeted in planned intervention efforts.
Schools are recognized as ideal settings in which to implement innovative, research-based prevention
programs (National National Academies, 2009; Hawkins & Herrenkohl, 2003; Monahan, Oesterle, &
Hawkins, 2010; D. B. Wilson, Gottfredson, & Najaka, 2001; S. J. Wilson & Lipsey, 2007) because all
youth, including those at highest risk of problems, are required to attend. The full-schools model
capitalizes on momentum over the past several decades to broaden the mission of public schooling to
bring prevention more fully into the domain of schools. It also serves as another model through which to
re-arrange social relationships in support of academic achievement and student growth. Instead of
individual organizations – schools, mental health clinics, CBOs – maintaining a siloed approach to their
piece of a child’s well being, they come together in a mindful, collaborative way to build processes and
systems to support children and families.
Research has also consistently shown that students whose families are more involved in schools
experience greater academic success, better attendance, better grades, and better motivation (Caspe, et al.,
2007; Watson, et al., 1983; Griffith, 1986; Henderson and Berla, 1995; Levine and Lezotte, 1995).
Moreover a recent longitudinal study shows that 1) increases in family involvement predict increases in
literacy achievement, and that 2) family involvement in school matters most for children at greatest risk
(Dearing et. al, 2004). The prevention literature features various examples of school-based programs in
which parents are engaged as active partners in efforts to reduce behaviors or issues of concern, as in
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multi-component classroom interventions that include family-support staff or parenting workshops
(Hawkins & Herrenkohl, 2003). The full-service schools model emphasizes parent involvement and goes
beyond that of other programs by including, for example, counseling and family planning services,
welfare services, and parent education along with home visitations.
Teacher Preparation
Educator Preparation
As noted earlier, the Community, Family, and Politics (CFP) Strand of UW’s TEP program is the
result of ongoing work to prepare “community teachers.” In this case, a community teacher is defined as
“one who possesses the contextualized knowledge of the culture, community, and identity of the children
and families he or she serves and draws on this knowledge to create the core teaching practices necessary
for effectiveness in diverse settings” (Murrell 2001, p. 52). Washington State requires that its teacher
preparation programs are designed to provide teacher candidates opportunities to interact with ‘diverse
populations in order to integrate professional growth in cultural competency as a habit of practice’ (PESB,
2012). On a national level, the theme of ‘family/communities’ appears nineteen (19) times in the most
recent publication of InTASC’s ‘Model Core Teaching Standards,’ and while ‘politics’ is not an explicit
theme in the document, we argue that it is a significant component of the InTASC standards related to
‘professional learning and ethical practice’ and ‘leadership and collaboration’ (CCSSO, 2011).
The CFP work is guided by the belief and the research that suggests "Family involvement is more
than a school program. It is a way of thinking and doing business that recognizes the central role families
play in their children's education and the power of working together" (OSPI, Nine Characteristics of High
Performing Schools, 2003) and an understanding that teachers need to build trust and allyship with
parents and communities (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Meier, 2002). Engaging with families and
communities allows teachers to bring local knowledge, joys, and social struggles into curriculum and
ultimately, teacher-family connections can increase student achievement (Henderson & Mapp, 2002 and
OSPI, 2003 for research synthesis)
Home visits, a research-based intervention that provides an opportunity to bridge the - often wide
- cultural divide between school and home, are an integral part of the CFP curriculum. Programs, like
home visits, focused on improving students’ academic and social-emotional learning are developed from
a social-ecological framework that emphasizes the interconnection between schools and families. What
happens in one context influences the other. When communication between teachers and parents is poor
or inconsistent, children can receive conflicting messages about their work and what to prioritize in
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school. They can also be exposed to norms and values that do not align, undermining efforts to enhance
students’ academic performance.
Re-arrangement of Mentor Model
The ongoing work in the TEP program related to rethinking the mentor model is similarly guided
by the rearrangement of social relationships. In this case, the specific focus for these social arrangements
is around the university-novice teacher-school relationships as well as the relationships between teachers
in the school. While the UW TEP has always strived to evolve based on the needs of the educator
workforce and evidence from the schools and communities for which it prepares teachers, the use of
intentional Networked Improvement Communities (described above) in a clinical or practice-based context
will provide the space for the coming together of novice teachers, SPS District Staff, and UW COE
researchers to more fully explore innovation and knowledge production.
The creation of these relationships will foment a fundamental shift in the way participants view
and use different kinds of expertise. Unlike traditional professional development models in which outside
expertise (university, district, etc.) brings a specific method or intervention to a set of educators (school,
grade band, classroom) with the intent of changing practice, this model values the network of expertise.
Thus classroom practitioners, university faculty, teacher candidates, etc. rely on one another to provide, or
co-create, the expertise necessary to address the learning and opportunity gaps in a specific school setting.
There is growing recognition of the “importance of context, local development activity…school culture
and leadership in promoting increased professionalism and encouraging learning” (Lewis, 2012, p. 480)
for teachers and teacher candidates alike.
Rearranging the social relationships creates a new paradigm for the ways in which teacher
educators learn in practice-based settings. This new paradigm builds on other research-based notions
about effective educator preparation including “making inquiry an integral part of the professional lives of
teachers” (Cochran-smith & Lytle, 1992) and the importance of cooperating teachers. CSIS is supporting
the TEP to continue its efforts to evolve and strengthen the quality of the practice-based components of its
educator preparation in keeping with research that indicates “prospective teachers who report better
quality student teaching experiences feel more prepared to teach, more efficacious, and plan more years in
teaching and in the district than peers who report lower quality experiences” (Ronfeldt & Reininger,
forthcoming, p. 28).
The network model also allows the development of what Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) call
inquiry as stance among the teacher candidates involved in the CSIS Networked Improvement
Communities. Cochran-Smith and Lytle build this idea on their concept of developing educators’
“knowledge of practice.” That is, developing teacher expertise depends on simultaneously learning formal
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knowledge and learning from investigating the experience of teaching in real classrooms. CSIS learning
communities will focus their attention on deepening and improving teaching as they “…generate local
knowledge, envision and theorize their practice, and interpret and interrogate the theory and research of
others” (2009, p. 289). This is a particularly significant experience for TEP candidates. It is important that
candidates develop a view of themselves as continuous learners, as active participants in expanding the
expertise of a group of educators with a wide range and length of teaching experience. Developing an
inquiry stance as part of Networked Improvement Communities will help candidates acquire the habits and
skills they will need to learn and inform their practice throughout their careers.
Section III: Partnerships
At its core, this project is about partnerships: the partnership between UW and Roxhill and the
multiple partnerships that have begun and are evolving between school, university, families, and
community-based organizations are what will link this work to broader educational aims and position its
effects to be maintained by the community. Below, we highlight some of the important partnerships that
have started and are evolving in the planning year and first year of CSIS.
Roxhill has myriad partnerships with community organizations. A major component of the
Innovation Plan is the management and integration of partners into the life of the school with a common
vision for students and families. Existing partners who have played and will continue to play a major role
at Roxhill are
Communities in Schools Seattle - a non-profit with a mission of surrounding students with a
community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. The heart of the
CIS program is placement of a full-time School Success Coordinator at each partner school site
who delivers both school-wide enrichment activities and targeted individualized interventions. At
Roxhill the Coordinator partners with staff, administrators, and other CBOs to provide
interventions vary from arranging tutors or mentors to helping families connect to housing,
transportation, or other social services. She also leads or contributes to all-school activities,
events, or resources such as a Seahawks Family Fitness Night, school supplies, holiday food
baskets, a winter coat giveaway, and a variety of family engagement nights.
City Year - an education-focused, nonprofit that unites young people of all backgrounds for a year
of full-time service to keep students in school and on track to graduation. At Roxhill, City Year
Corps Members and a Site Coordinator provide 1:1 and small group tutoring and support
achievement efforts in Reading and Math for Tier 2 ELL students, grades 3-5 in math and grade 3
in reading; provide before and after-school programs for K-5 students; strengthen family
engagement; and provide assistance during Saturday Academy.
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Neighborcare Health - the largest provider of primary medical, dental and behavioral health care
services in Seattle focusing on low-income and uninsured families and individuals, seniors on
fixed incomes, immigrants, and the homeless, provides primary care medical and mental health
services to Roxhill through the operation of an on-site School-based Health Center. All students
enrolled in the school are eligible for services, and Neighborcare does not turn anyone away
because of inability to pay. Neighborcare integrates with the school environment, working closely
with school administration, families, intervention and prevention teams, the school nurse and
other service providers to ensure care is well coordinated. In addition to comprehensive primary
care services, Neighborcare providers navigate support, insurance enrollment assistance and on-
site dental services.
Center for Leadership in Athletics - a UW Center that – through academic programs and
community outreach - develops effective leaders and leadership practices, that maximize the
positive, educational impact of athletics. The Center supports the success of community-based
organizations and schools that educate and develop youth through physical education and
athletics. CLA is developing a collaborative network of community organizations, facilitating
access to University resources, and identifying potential strategies for making athletics and
physical education a winning experience. CLA is playing a role on the CSIS Holistic Health
team helping to develop experiences and opportunities for Roxhill students to access and engage
in quality physical activities.
Multicultural Education Rights Alliance – a grassroots group that connects community members
(parents, caregivers, spiritual leaders, professionals, teachers, and elected officials) as advocates
and actors working to achieve effective, inspired, racially and socially just public education. In
partnership with Seattle Public Schools, we offer connecting and cultural coaching. This includes
convening issue-driven meetings with multicultural context coaching and connecting to interrupt
ineffective status quo policies, practices or investments in support of community-building
collaborations to support socially and racially just action. The founders of McERA serve on the
TEP team and are highly engaged in the CFP curricular work.
Section IV: Stakeholder Equity
As evidenced by the list of partners above, we are including a wide range of community members
and community organizations in this, many of whom are represented in the collaborative Teams that
guide the CSIS work. Each of the Teams went through its own process to create a representative group
and ensure all essential stakeholders are connected to and invested in each aspect of the project.
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Leadership Team
The Leadership Team consists of the staff and faculty most integral to the implementation of the CSIS
project. The Team has the following members:
Sahnica Washington, Roxhill Principal
Frances Coppa, Roxhill Assistant Principal and Project Manager
Jonathan Aldenese, Roxhill Danforth Intern and Community Schools Coordinator
Beth Graves, Community in Schools Site Coordinator
Leslie Herrenkohl, Professor UW College of Education
Todd Herrenkohl, Professor UW School of Social Work
Elham Kazemi, UW Associate Dean for Professional Learning
Kate Napolitan, UW Coach of Roxhill Teacher Candidates, CFP Instructor
Academic Excellence
The Academic Excellence Team is comprised of three UW Math Education Project teacher educators:
Elham Kazemi, Ruth Balf, and Emily Shahan. Roxhill staff across the grade levels and role groups are
also guiding the work of this group: Peter Weschler (3rd grade teacher), Addie Harrington (intervention
support), Hollis Hernandez (2nd year teacher, UACT graduate), Cara Christensen (new elTEP graduate
and teacher); Jonathan Aldanese (Danforth Intern); Frances Coppa & Sahnica Washington (School
assistant principal and principal).
Extended Learning
In order to ensure that the Extended Learning Team is in alignment with Roxhill’s school goals for
intervention, the Extended Learning team has merged with the the Multi-tiered Systems of Support
(MTSS) team that meets bi-weekly. Team members were selected to ensure that different groups in the
school were included. Members include administration, classroom teachers, intervention teachers, special
education teachers, Communities in Schools, and City Year. Professor Leslie Herrenkohl represents the
UW on this team, At the beginning of the school year, this team met three times to coordinate program
design, philosophy, and logistics such as transportation and start and end times. They also met to create a
common set of after school expectations for behavior and attendance. The team continues to meet bi-
weekly to make adjustments to Extended Learning needs.
The Extended Learning Team also convenes the broader group of community based organizations
with whom Roxhill partners. These meetings help align the practice of the CBOs with the school’s goals
and vision.
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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Family Engagement
This team is made up of 5 family members, each of whom are also on the Roxhill PTA; school
administration; 4 Roxhill teachers, 2 general education classroom teachers, 1 Special Education teacher,
and a bilingual Instructional Assistant; Communities in Schools Site Coordinator; the House
Administrator responsible for our attendance campaign; a City Year Americorps member; and our 3
University of Washington ELTEP Teacher Candidates.
Holistic Health
The Holistic Health team consists of Roxhill teachers (a first grade teacher, third grade teacher, and the
physical education teacher), the school’s assistant principal, a staff member from Neighborcare, and UW
partners (a student and two staff members of the UW Center for Leadership in Athletics and a professor
from the school of social work. Teachers at Roxhill voluntarily joined the team in response to a request
that went out to the school community; other members (e.g., Neighborcare) were asked to join the team
because of their roles at the school and areas of expertise.
Teacher Preparation
The Teacher Preparation Team extended invitations to all affiliated faculty and staff in ELTEP and the
Seattle Teacher Residency who could join the effort. We also included our community partners, the
Multicultural Education Rights Alliance, to represent community and family perspectives on teacher
learning. Finally, we have CTs from Roxhill who have volunteered to participate. The current team
involves 20 people, including six professors and 4 staff members.
Section V: Cultural Responsiveness
Student Achievement
The FSCS model is, as described above, a culturally responsive model. The voices and desires of
parents and community are integral to the success of an effective community school. Roxhill’s
intentional move towards this model has already yielded some specific results:
• We have a Positive Discipline training currently in session and it is being held in Spanish and
translated to English. There are 23 families participating and 4 Roxhill staff members.
• Our PTA has become more diverse, representing the cultural and economic backgrounds of the
families at Roxhill. The new PTA President, a Latina mother who joined Roxhill staff and
community partners on the Advisory Team last year and visited Oakland with us, recruited 7
other parents as VPs who are from different cultural and language groups. The PTA has
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
15
prioritized school community, creating a staff wall with pictures of staff and info about them to
create some familiarity with many new staff every year.
• Parent Leaders - The 7 Vice Presidents from the PTA are also our Parent Leaders. This team
decided to distribute Parent Leader Stipends to these people and the team will be establishing the
expectations and responsibilities for these stipends.
The CSIS project is structured so that it will continue to be aligned with and responsive to family and
community cultural needs.
Teacher Preparation
The UW’s TEP program is continually engaged in process improvement in response to the
community’s needs and its desire to attract a teaching workforce reflective of the region it serves. To this
end, the program has made changes to its course work and field work and recently conducted a
recruitment audit, making both short and long term plans to strengthen the recruitment efforts. Using
these guidelines, TEP has started identifying strategies for attracting teacher candidates from
underrepresented populations within the UW. These efforts have largely focused on reducing barriers.
Also, as noted above, the TEP CSIS team includes the founders of the Multicultural Education
Rights Alliance, a group whose work involves multicultural context coaching to interrupt ineffective
status quo policies. They will provide support for the TEP work, around both the CFP strand and
recruitment to be connected and responsive community needs.
Section VI: Assessment
In the Innovation Plan, we identified project goals and project outcomes. Progress on these project goals
is being monitored by each of the teams and overall by the Leadership Team using work plans developed
by each team. In the first few months of the project implementation, each team has been responsible for
mapping out the strategies and activities associated with those goals that will lead to the intended
outcomes. Another part of that process has been clarifying the outcomes towards which each team is
working and identifying and collecting necessary baseline data for each team to use to guide its work.
Below are reports from each team on their work to date discussing outcomes, aligning strategies, and
collecting and reviewing baseline data.
Student Achievement
Academic Excellence
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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We aim to develop more coherent, rigorous, and aligned instructional practice across the school,
making thoughtful and intentional use of the instructional supports available at Roxhill. We are also co-
planning units of instruction aligned to Common Core. We have collected base line student data to inform
the math content of our work together by using a formative assessment tool development by UW to gauge
students’ accuracy and strategy use when solving a range of word problems. Attitude items were also
included in this tool to assess students’ interest and identification with mathematics. This tool will be part
of pre-post data that we will collect and will be triangulated with MAP and MSP data. We are also
collecting video records from each classroom that will be repeated at the end of the year as a way of
documenting student engagement and participation with math content. We will be able to evaluate
changes in classroom discourse from the beginning to the end of the year.
Proposed Outcome Measures Existing Baseline Data
School-wide impacts (assessment of school
culture/climate, school improvement; new
instructional practices implemented)
• District climate survey
• BERC Needs Assessment: (see original
Innovation plan)
• Documentation of school wide PD from
planning year
• Video records being collected for baseline
Appropriate student growth on MSP based on
student growth percentiles (OSPI to issue
Spring 2013, and in subsequent years, and
individual student scores over time).
• 62.8 % of 3rd – 5th grade students met
standard on the 2012-13 Reading MSP.
• 41.3% of 3rd – 5th grade students met
standard on the 2012-13 Math MSP.
• 49% of ELL students in grades 1-5 made
annual typical growth on the Reading MAP
assessment in the 2012-13 school year.
Appropriate grade level growth for individual,
classroom assessments
o (Measures of above: Formative
assessments such as: School/district
benchmarks (MAP, WA Kids),
formative assessments developed or
adapted (e.g., TC), student attendance)
• In process of aggregating baseline data in
for MAP, WA Kids, and TC.
• Have collected baseline data on students’
conceptual understanding and strategies in
mathematics using the Cognitive Growth
Inventory (see appendix A for an example).
• See below for attendance.
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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Growth in English language development on
WELPA for ELL students.
• In process of aggregating baseline data in
this data.
Family Engagement
The outcomes proposed as part of the Innovation Plan only partially measure the ways in which
we hope families become involved at Roxhill. The Family Engagement Team is currently collecting and
reviewing the necessary baseline data in order to assign ambitious targets to track progress.
Proposed Outcome Measures Existing Baseline Data
Improved student attendance and reduced
consecutive days absences – Target: 71%
of students will have fewer than 5 absences
in the first semester; 75% of students will
have fewer than 5 absences in the second
semester.
• 67% of K-5th grade students had fewer than
5 absences (excused or unexcused) in the
first semester of the 2012-13 school year.
• 66% of K-5th grade students had fewer than
5 absences (excused or unexcused) in the
second semester of the 2012-13 school
year.
Reduced disciplinary incidence and
referrals.
• Incomplete data from last year.
Increasing student and family use of social
services.
• Collecting data from Communities in
Schools (CIS) reporting (and Neighborcare
as appropriate).
• Adopting/Revising CIS reporting for
tracking progress (see Appendix B).
Increasing number and type of activities to
support social-emotional health and
wellness for students and families.
• Collecting data from CIS reporting (and
Neighborcare as appropriate).
• Adopting/Revising CIS reporting for
tracking progress.
Increasing number/percent of parents who
communicate interest in school activities
and events; increasing number/percent
volunteers at school activities and events
• Collecting data from CIS reporting and
adopting.
• First year Family Coffee Hour averaged 5
families.
Holistic Health
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The Holistic Health group is looking closely at data and assessment as it begins its work, in part
because assessments of this type would be new to the school and because privacy issues play into the
ways in which partners can share information in this realm. The outcomes listed below are serving as a
starting point for this work, but one of the first steps around data for this team is of looking at how
students and parents “define” holistic health. Students will be assigned the task of drawing or describing
in words their images of health and wellness. Parents will be asked in small groups to elaborate on their
perceptions of health and wellness for their children and to explain how they see the school as playing a
role in this area. The team is also look at the current services provided in the school and investigating
ways to leverage those efforts and account for their “services” to students and families.
Proposed Outcome Measures Existing Baseline Data
Report of indicators of students’ social-
emotional health and wellness (including
health and safety, sense of belonging,
interpersonal and relationship skills) and
development of progress monitoring
system
• Parent survey done during needs
assessment provides some indicators of
“community” health and wellness.
Evidence of staffing appropriate for need
(e.g., social worker, nurse, counselor,
psychologist)
• Conducting audit to identify current
services and “load.”
Reduced grade retentions • Collecting data
Improved student attendance and reduced
consecutive days absence
• 67% of K-5th grade students had fewer than
5 absences (excused or unexcused) in the
first semester of the 2012-13 school year.
• 66% of K-5th grade students had fewer than
5 absences (excused or unexcused) in the
second semester of the 2012-13 school
year.
Increasing number and type of activities to
support social-emotional health and
wellness for students and families
• Taking inventory of students’ and families’
baseline perceptions of health and well
being.
Reduced disciplinary incidence and
referrals
• Incomplete data from last year
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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Increasing student and family use of social
services
• Collecting data from Communities in
Schools (CIS) reporting (and Neighborcare
as appropriate)
• Adopting/Revising CIS reporting for
tracking progress
Teacher Preparation
The TEP Team has used its goals and target outcomes to define its working subgroups (described
below). While much of the data below exists with the College of Education, the Team is just now
beginning to collect and look at the baselines.
Proposed Outcome Measures Existing Baseline Data
Opportunities for candidates to plan,
conduct and lead small and whole group
lessons; feedback from mentor teacher
and/or field supervisor
• Looking at syllabi, coursework.
Opportunities for TCs to serve on CSIS
Working Group and/or participation in
PLC
• No opportunities prior to CSIS project.
TC Attendance at school staff meetings,
participation in parent-teacher conferences,
family engagement activities, community
service, participation in home visits
• Past TC’s at Roxhill participated in home
visits and parent teacher conferences.
Review of course syllabi for connections to
field experience; alignment of course
assignments with goals of field experiences
• Starting in TEP team.
Principal satisfaction with first year
teachers (TEP graduates)
• Data being collected.
Increasing number of candidates of color
recruited from local community
• Data being collected.
Strong passing scores on ed TPA, WEST-E
and WEST-B, increasing number of
endorsements in literacy, math, ELL, SpED
or other fields needed in urban school
• See attached for baseline (Appendix C).
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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setting.
Principal interns’ demonstrated ability to
lead discussion of student data for learning
improvement or social-emotional and
wellness
• No intern last year.
High rates of employment in urban, high-
need WA school settings – depending on
regional workforce factors
• See attached for baseline (Appendix D).
UW faculty engagement • No engagement before start of project.
Extended Learning
The Extended Learning outcomes currently overlap completely with those of the Academic Excellence
Team, so no separate chart is necessary. However, the Extended Learning Team will take up the need for
goals and outcomes specific to its programming in the next few months.
Section VII: Implementation Progress
What follows are the highlights from the progress reports of for each Team.
Academic Excellence
The Academic Excellence Team is guided by the following Project Goals:
• Enhancing the pedagogical knowledge and instructional skills of Roxhill teachers, including the
ability to address social-emotional learning, and the organizational and leadership capacity of the
school. (Also listed under Leadership, Holistic Health)
• Supporting high quality instruction for all Roxhill students and increasing student learning. (Also
listed under Extended Learning)
• Providing high quality field experiences for teacher candidates who complete their training
prepared to work with diverse student populations and in full service community school settings.
(Also listed under TEP)
All the activities Roxhill engages in, day-to-day, are oriented around academic excellence. The CSIS
project provides support in specific areas towards the above goals. To date, we have done the following:
• Conducted two whole-school PD days to (1) establish the shared norms and
discourse/participations practices that will be developed school wide to support productive
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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engagement with schools (2) learn and use backwards planning to develop Common-Core aligned
units of instruction.
• Launched math labs at each grade level (described above).
• Collected baseline data of student learning and attitudes towards mathematics using a UW
assessment tool.
• Visited classroom in between math lab sessions to provide support for instructional growth.
• Integrated work with resource teachers into math labs and planning.
• Involved teacher candidates in planning sessions, enactment of common instructional activities,
and using video to reflect on practice.
Extended Learning
The Extended Learning team is guided by the following project goal:
• Supporting high quality instruction for all Roxhill students and increasing student learning.
To date we have done the following:
• Combined the Extended Learning Team with the school intervention team (MTSS) and met on a
bi-weekly basis to oversee the alignment with Extended Learning programming is overseeing the
Extended Learning program to be aligned with school goals. They meet on a bi-weekly basis.
• Collected baseline data against which to monitor student progress.
• Hosted professional development for extended learning providers based on student needs and
school wide intervention goals.
• Appointed an Extended Learning Curriculum Coordinator to oversee extended learning
curriculum.
• Met in data teams to prioritize Extended Learning student rosters.
• Designed specific extended learning programs based on student data.
• Launched the 2013-14 Extended Learning Program.
o Team Read
o Invest in Youth Tutoring
o Math All-Stars
o City Year programs: Horizon and Stargazers
Family Engagement
The Family Engagement Team is guided by the following project goals:
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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• Increasing family engagement in children’s learning, and involvement in the school community.
• Integrating the social-emotional health and wellness services at Roxhill, and increasing student
access as a result of school-community partnerships. (Also listed under Health & Wellness)
The group’s progress to date includes
• Collecting and reviewing the necessary baseline data in order to assign ambitious targets to track
progress (see above).
• Continuing Family Coffee Hours. This year, we have measured an increase in participation at
Family Coffee Hours, from an average of 5 families on a weekly basis to 12. In addition, the
topics and focus of those sessions are driven by families.
• Launching a Positive Discipline training currently in session and it is being held in Spanish and
translated to English. There are 23 families participating and 4 Roxhill staff members.
• Re-structuring the PTA: Our PTA has become more diverse, representing the cultural and
economic backgrounds of the families at Roxhill. The new PTA President, a Latina mother who
joined Roxhill staff and community partners on the CSIS Advisory Team last year and visited
Oakland with us, recruited 7 other parents as VPs who are from different cultural and language
groups. The PTA has prioritized school community, creating a staff wall with pictures of staff
and info about them to create some familiarity with many new staff every year.
• Recruiting new Parent Leaders - The 7 Vice Presidents from the PTA are also our Parent
Leaders. This team decided to distribute Parent Leader Stipends to these people and the team will
be establishing the expectations and responsibilities for these stipends.
• Hearing from parents that they feel a significant increase in family engagement this year.
Holistic Health
The main goal of the Holistic Health Team is
• Integrating the social-emotional health and wellness services at Roxhill, and increasing student
access as a result of school-community partnerships.
This team has just begun meeting and as identified the following initial activities:
• Create a committee name will resonate with staff, parents, and staff
• Define holistic health to guide our work going forward
• Ask students to provide an image or explain in text what it means to be healthy (assignment to go
home with students over the next several weeks)
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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• Find contexts to have conversations with parents about the same; also ask what they would
prioritize as activities at the school around holistic health and wellness.
• Determine what opportunities exist for professional development with staff at Roxhill?
• Identify particular areas for enrichment that align with holistic health.
• Capitalize on what we already know about parents’ interests in enrichment to set the groundwork
for activities in areas like art and physical education?
• Establish a plan for service coordination, with input from the Extended Learning Team.
Teacher Preparation
The Teacher Preparation Team is a large group that has divvied up its work to align with the project’s
goals for Teacher Education. Below is a description of the initial scope of work for the three teacher
education subgroups.
Subgroup 1: Links between courses, CFP, school experience, and community experience
Relevant CSIS Goals:
• Providing high quality field experiences for teacher candidates who complete their training
prepared to work with diverse student populations and in full service community school settings
• Engaging the work of UW faculty through research, teaching and service opportunities, and
enhancing cross-disciplinary collaboration
Possible subgroup scope
• Investigate goals of field experience: What are the program’s goals for field experiences? To
what extent do we place TCs in similar schools/contexts?
• Review TEP Syllabi to determine:
1) To what extent does each course connect to field/community experiences through
readings, assignments, class activities? What are connections, overlaps, redundancies
between courses?
2) To what extent does each course give TCs opportunities or tools to participate in family-
community engagement activities? How are these opportunities mediated?
3) To what extent do courses provide opportunities for school and community professionals
and/or families to participate in University coursework?
4) To what extent do courses provide opportunities or tools that connect to programmatic
assessments (edTPA, Capstone)?
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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Subgroup 2: Community connections and relationships
Relevant CSIS Goals
• Proving high quality field experiences for teacher candidates who complete their training
prepared to work with diverse student populations and in full service community school settings
• Recruiting teacher education candidates (including under-represented students) interested in
working in diverse urban settings.
Possible subgroup work:
• Review syllabi to determine
1) What are the goals of the field-based seminar?
2) Where do these goals appear in other courses?
3) To what extent does the field seminar actually connect TCs to their work in
schools/communities?
4) To what extent does the community-family-politics work provide opportunities or tools
that connect to programmatic assessments (edTPA, Capstone)?
• Determine of how (EL)TEP communicate the family and community work (as well as other
programmatic features) to wider publics?
• Determine how can (EL)TEP can create opportunities for families and communities to
communicate with UW about their hopes and desires for their children and their children’s
teachers?
• Determine how systems can be created to respond to family and community input? That is, how
can (EL)TEP develop trust with families and communities who may have negative historical
relationships with TEPs, UW, and/or universities in general?
Subgroup 3: Integration across Professional Programs
Relevant CSIS Goals
• Proving high quality field experiences for teacher candidates who complete their training
prepared to work with diverse student populations and in full service community school settings
• Recruiting teacher education candidates (including under-represented students) interested in
working in diverse urban settings. (NOTE: As discussed, recruitment is a larger programmatic
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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responsibility, but we can think about the communication of our work to broader publics as an
aspect of recruitment.)
• Engaging the work of UW faculty through research, teaching and service opportunities, and
enhancing cross-disciplinary collaboration
Possible subgroup work/guiding questions:
• Look across the professional programs to explore the What are each program’s goals for field
experiences? To what extent are placements of TCs guided by similar philosophies? To what
extent do program structures (e.g. number of candidates; recruitment; financial supports) inform
the goals for field experiences? What can we learn from each other?
• Compare and contrast programs in order to learn from each one:
1) To what extent do programs connect to field/community experiences through readings,
assignments, class activities? What can we learn from each other?
2) To what extent does each program give TCs opportunities or tools to participate in family-
community engagement activities? How are these opportunities mediated?
3) To what extent do courses provide opportunities for school and community professionals and/or
families to participate in each program’s coursework?
4) To what extent do courses provide opportunities or tools that connect to programmatic
assessments (edTPA, Capstone)?
Section VIII: Scalability
Scalability is not something the leadership team has had a chance to address at this early stage. However,
because of the site visits last year, we are aware that FSCS is a model that is thriving nationally and
Roxhill is potentially in a position to be a springboard or a platform for other schools in the district or
region to follow suit. Race to the Top funds will be providing money for some “Deep Dive” schools in
the Road Map region to invest in a wrap around partnership model similar to Roxhill’s. Ideally Roxhill
will become connected with these like-minded schools and together they can think about ways to scale
this work to others.
On the UW side, the Math Labs work is part of a broader effort to re-design the way we think
about and enact professional learning for teachers regionally. The College of Education is in the process
of designing a broader initiative, called INSPIRE, that would bring these types of learning experiences to
other schools and districts. This work would be based on the needs and demands of the region. Roxhill
UW-Roxhill CSIS Progress Report
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provides a space for others to see and learn about the work, as well as a place to refine ideas and
collaborate with teachers and get their feedback on how these types of professional learning are changing
practice and impacting students.
Section IX: Sustainability
One of the most important characteristics of this project – and the one that makes it the most enduring - is
that it is built upon a theory of action that seeks to make deep and lasting changes in the culture and
organizational capacity of the institutions engaged in the work. The types of relationships and networks
that evolve because of this work are what will sustain the project beyond the life of CSIS funding. A Full
Service Community School, for example, re-organizes the way a school supports and engages the children
and families that it serves. As a school becomes more a part of a fabric of the community and vice versa,
the school and community are both changed for good. Similarly, the work at the UW TEP program is
asking deep and fundamental questions about how all of those who interact with teacher candidates and
novice teachers engage with them. The work is building a set of common commitments and expectations
that will be sustained beyond the programmatic adjustments that arise. The CSIS work is becoming
embedded into the curriculum and structure of the the ELTEP program.