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Home > About CES > Results for Kids > CSRD Study
Collaborating with Colleagues to Raise Student Achievement in a Michigan Elementary School
CES works closely with school administrators and faculty to set aside time for teachers to design curriculum and assessments collaboratively, to look at student work, and, ultimately, to share strategies that result in improved student achievement. In Michigan, the CES CSRD schools are establishing Collaborating for Student Success groups. These school-based groups of six to eight teachers, facilitated by a colleague trained in facilitation, focus their conversations on improving student learning. The groups begin with the assumption that:
The people involved in Collaborating for Student Success share a deep commitment to helping every student succeed, even if that means making some changes in the ways things are done [in the school and classroom].
One elementary school devotes its staff meeting time to teachers meeting in Collaborating for Student Success groups by grade level. During 2000 – 2001, teachers learned how to use new assessment tools for gauging students' progress in developing literacy skills and then began developing lessons aimed at helping students raise their literacy achievement. Once they tried these lessons, teachers collectively examined students' work to investigate whether they were eliminating gaps in student achievement between groups of students within the school.
In this school, prior to working with CES, teachers never met to discuss assessment, instruction or student work. The intensive thirteen-session training for facilitators of Collaborating for Student Success groups provided the school with tools and strategies that they could use to achieve their goal of raising students' literacy achievement.
Closing the Achievement Gap on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program
When faculties meet to discuss issues of assessment, instruction and student performance, they can work collectively to insure students' success. The percentage of students in the four Michigan CES CSRD schools receiving satisfactory or better scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program's Math test have increased steadily from 42.7% in 1997 to 61.1% in 2001; most of that progress was accomplished in 2001. This rise substantially narrowed the gap between CES CSRD schools and the state average.
The CES CSRD schools' results on the Reading test are similarly promising. In 2001, the schools' average percentage of students receiving passing marks was 15 points higher than the initial testing year. Further, they narrowed the performance gap with the state average, which also increased, to three quarters of its size in 1997. In contrast, the gap has remained stubbornly persistent between the average of all other CSRD schools in Michigan and the state average and. This suggests that Michigan CES CSRD schools are making more headway in raising student achievement and closing the achievement gap than their counterparts in other CSRD schools.
Page last updated: November 27, 2002
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