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PREVIEW
Implementing an evidence-based instructional model began with training teacher leaders.
The model incorporates higher-level thinking skills to better prepare students for long-term success.
The results from their efforts will guide improvements in instruction and the model itself.
It is a challenge for schools with large populations of students from low-income, migrant, and nternational families to ensure that eveiy student reaches proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments. Traditionally, schools across the countiy have tended to cope with this challenge by offering a narrower curriculum and focusing only on improving students' "low-level literacy" skills (Bransford et al., 2000)-reading, writing and mathematics-because currently only those results get reported in federal school accountability reports.
At Overland High School in suburban Denver, CO. we used an evidence-based instructional model to meet this challenge, and preliminary results from our systemic schoolwide curriculum reform are promising. Over the past six years, Overland's total enrollment has stayed static but has undergone major demographic changes as the student community has changed from predominately White and middle-dass to a diverse population from different social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds and a poverty rate of 41%. Students at Overland come from more than 60 countries and speak more than 54 different languages. Overland's campus is also home to Prairie Middle School. The demographics of the two schools are similar because they both serve students from the community that surrounds the campus.
Although college preparedness and academic excellence are hallmarks of the school district, student performance at Overland has continued to decline over the past six years when compared with the state and district performance. Given these overall trends, the achievement of the 2000 cohort of students and the 2001 cohort over five years as they moved from middle to high school showed a stagnant or declining trend across the two schools.
The Learn by Design Model
Research on how students learn has shown that using an explicit plan-teach-monitor-adjust instructional model with rigorous curricula that enables teachers to learn effective instructional strategies, has structures for mentoring and active monitoring, and has accountability measures in place can raise the achievement of every student (Balasubramanian, Wilson, & Cios, 2006; Grier, 2002). Overland uses the Learn by Design Model as a conceptual...