Field-site partnership formed with District of Columbia Public Schools

DCPS’ Proposed Problem of Practice:

  1. Why are schools in the same geographic area with the same demographic characteristics producing such different literacy outcomes for their students, given that the curriculum, guidelines, and resources provided by the district are the same?
  2. Can we identify practices in the higher performing schools that might be successfully transferred to the lower performing schools? 

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    DCPS had developed policies and practices over two decades aimed at improving early literacy outcomes. 


    These included:

    • Universal preschool for 3 and 4 year olds.
    • Adoption of a common phonics program and a phonemic awareness program in every elementary school.
    • Development of a core curriculum district-wide to develop comprehension skills and background knowledge.
    • Dedicated weekly teacher release time for teacher collaboration in every school, facilitated by an instructional leader.
    • Implementation of IMPACT: a teacher evaluation program based on 5 Essential Practices rooted in research evidence, along with a system of rewards and penalties for those at the ends of the performance distribution. 

    As these reforms took hold, the district’s NAEP scores rose faster than any urban district in the nation. However, the achievement gap widened. The district noted that in the lowest income areas of the city, schools with the same demographic characteristics were producing widely differing student outcomes. District leaders were looking for an explanation for that variation, as well as the identification of contributors to higher performance that might be spread to lower performing schools.

Partnership Grant:

SERP & DCPS applied for an IES Partnership Grant. Catherine Snow (Harvard University) and David Blazar (University of Maryland) joined the research team. Intensive observations in 6 schools and analyses of district-wide data were proposed, with the goal of identifying opportunities for intervention. The grant was awarded in 2019.

Two professional learning courses and word work materials developed

Workstations: The SERP team combed through classroom video, drafted the Effective Literacy Workstations course content, and professionally recorded the instructional components of the course in the 2023-2024 school year. Feedback on the course draft was solicited from:

  • a small group of teachers who piloted the draft sessions,
  • district literacy leaders who participated in the monthly partnership meetings,
  • district leaders who oversee teacher evaluations, 
  • project advisors Robert Pianta (University of Virginia), Lowry Hemphill (Boston University), Nell Duke (University of Michigan), Rhonda Bondie (Fordham University), and Cathy O’Connor (Boston University). Revisions were made continuously in response to feedback. 

Lowry Hemphill suggested that the workstations course would be much more powerful if teachers had differentiated materials to work with, particularly for the Word Work station. From her extensive classroom experience, she was aware of how time-consuming it is for teachers to create these materials themselves, given the need to differentiate for students at multiple levels of mastery. The lift, especially for new teachers, is very heavy. Hemphill and Emily Hayden (SERP) drafted the workstation activities, which were produced by SERP staff (Matt Ellinger and Wafaa Ahmed).

Discourse: We combed through the classroom video a second time, this time looking for examples for Developing Student Discourse. This course was developed in the second half of 2024 in preparation for implementation in January, 2025. While there was insufficient time for teachers to pilot the course in advance, all other sources of feedback for the workstations course were tapped again.