School & District Management

Project to Seek High-Poverty Schools’ Best Practices

By Bess Keller — November 28, 2006 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Jon Schnur favors rewarding educators in carefully thought-out ways for significantly increasing their students’ performance.

But as the co-founder and chief executive officer of the group New Leaders for New Schools, he saw a new federal grant program designed to steer schools in that direction as the opportunity to do much more.

Jon Schnur

As a result, his organization, which recruits and trains promising leaders to be principals, proposed a national project that would launch an entirely new, largely Web-based tool for sharing the best educational practices of urban schools. Schoolwide awards would be paid for dramatic increases in achievement, but educators would also earn bonuses for helping their peers learn.

When the first round of grants from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund was announced in recent weeks, Mr. Schnur’s group and its partners won four of the 16 awards, expected to total more than $71 million over five years. The New York City-based New Leaders was the only grantee that was not a state education department or a school district, though three of its partners are the District of Columbia, Memphis, Tenn., and Denver school systems. (“More Teacher-Incentive Grants Trickle Out,” Nov. 8, 2006.)

Among the project’s goals is to give both charter and regular public schools the chance to contribute to the archive of effective practices. The second-largest of the three U.S. Department of Education grants—nearly $5 million in the first year and a projected $20.8 million over five years—went to New Leaders and a coalition of charter schools and charter school networks.

Dubbed the Effective Practice Incentive Fund, the project wants first to identify high-poverty schools in the new network that are doing well or rapidly improving.

The initial criteria for inclusion are to be devised by Mathematica Policy Research, a research and evaluation firm, and the New Schools Venture Fund, which invests in charter schools, a process that will be vetted by the three partner school districts. But final selection of no more than 10 percent of the participating schools will also depend on visits from “effective-practice teams.” Teachers in schools making the list would get a bonus for the year in the range of $500 to $1,000, while principals might get as much as $15,000, Mr. Schnur said.

At the same time, criteria will be set for outstanding individual teachers, who must also pass the test of observation by the teams. Such teachers, no more than a handful in a school, would receive rewards of at least $5,000 in exchange for opening up their classrooms and sharing their expertise. Video of their teaching and documents related to their practice would be compiled on the Web, where they would be offered free to educators nationwide. The outstanding teachers might also expect in-person visits from educators wanting to learn from them or be part of teams that would visit schools needing help.

Blending Dimensions

The idea, said the 40-year-old Mr. Schnur, a former policy adviser to President Clinton, is to give incentives “to people who have demonstrated results and are taking on leadership roles by sharing their practice online and in person with other educators. It’s a blend of those two dimensions.”

It might even be possible, he said, to reward teachers further on the number of times their Web materials are viewed and the number of positive ratings the materials get.

Money from the Teacher Incentive Fund grants will pay for more than two-thirds of the projected $90 million initial cost of the project, according to Mr. Schnur. About half the remaining $20 million or so will be contributed by the school districts and charter schools and about half by private philanthropies. Some $8.7 million in philanthropic money remains to be raised, he added.

Jacquelyn Davis, who directs New Leaders in Washington, said she believes the project will be a boost for the District of Columbia’s teachers. “The grant is a stamp of approval at some level that there are really good people in these communities doing really good work … and if you don’t highlight what they are doing, you won’t keep them,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in the November 29, 2006 edition of Education Week as Project to Seek High-Poverty Schools’ Best Practices

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Assessment Webinar
Rethinking STEM Assessment: Strategies for Administrators
School and district leaders will explore strategies to enhance STEM assessment practices across their district, within schools and classrooms.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
Federal Webinar Keeping Up with the Trump Administration's Latest K-12 Moves: Subscriber-Exclusive Quick Hit
EdWeek subscribers, join this 30-minute webinar to find out what the latest federal policy changes mean for K-12 education.
Artificial Intelligence Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: Math & Technology: Finding the Recipe for Student Success
How should we balance AI & math instruction? Join our discussion on preparing future-ready students.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Principals Urge Ed. Department: Leave School Safety Funding Alone
Schools need access to funds for mental health professionals and other student services, say principals who've experienced school shootings.
5 min read
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon listens to members of the Principal Recovery Network during their annual meeting on June 9, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon listens to members of the Principal Recovery Network during their annual meeting on June 9, 2025, in Washington.
Courtesy of Allyssa Hynes/NASSP
School & District Management Opinion For Principals, Emotional Intelligence Is More Than Just Being ‘Nice’
Emotions are contagious. When leaders struggle, the school environment does, too.
Marc Brackett, James Floman & Robin Stern
5 min read
Juggling emotions control concept, businessman juggling emotions icons and mood control, mindfulness and psychology, techniques and techniques for managing anger
iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion How Can Principals Grow the Next Generation of Teachers? Listen to My Student
Here’s what made this high schooler want to become a public school teacher.
S. Kambar Khoshaba & Mina Etemadi
4 min read
Conceptual image of growing the next generation of teachers from students.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
School & District Management How Los Angeles Schools Are Responding to the ICE Raids and Protests
The school year in Los Angeles is ending amid immigration raids, protests, and the activation of National Guard troops and Marines.
4 min read
Los Angeles police officers with batons and riot gear attempt to move back protesters in downtown Los Angeles on June 9, 2025.
Los Angeles police officers with batons and riot gear attempt to move back protesters in downtown Los Angeles on June 9, 2025. Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district's police force planned to set up "perimeters of safety" around graduation ceremonies this week amid immigration raids in the city, protests, and the activation of National Guard troops and Marines.
Eric Thayer/AP