Scaling Up The Design

By Lynn Olson

After a three-year trial run in St. Mary's County, Md., Roots and Wings is about to soar nationwide. As part of the scale-up project launched by the New American Schools Development Corporation, four states and seven school districts have agreed to replicate one or more of the nine NASDC designs, Roots and Wings among them, in at least 30 percent of their schools over the next five years.

At least five of those sites--Cincinnati, Memphis, Philadelphia, Miami, and the state of Maryland--already have schools that are implementing a predecessor to Roots and Wings known as Success for All. That program reorganizes elementary schools that serve large numbers of disadvantaged students to insure that all children read competently by the end of 3rd grade.

Existing Success for All schools may choose to become Roots and Wings schools by adding elements to their program, such as WorldLab, an interdisciplinary social-studies and science curriculum. Roots and Wings encompasses the entire school curriculum, while Success for All focuses primarily on reading, writing, and family-support services. There are now some 200 Success...