Some of following publications and reports are downloadable from this site as PDF files. They require Adobe Acrobat Reader.
PUBLIC EDUCATION PROGRAM IN BRIEF
BPI's Public Education Program Information Brief
A short description of BPI’s current education work and its accomplishments over time.
BPI PUBLICATIONS
Small Schools, Next Steps: Voices From The Field
Based on more than 70 interviews with Chicago educators, this 2002 report identifies a number of system-wide and school-based strategies to improve the environment for small schools, particularly around school-level autonomy.
Partnership for Instructional Leadership--Theory of Action
This “theory of action” describes the framework guiding the Partnership’s work. Also included is a description of the Partnership’s key components, e.g. Cycles of Professional Learning, Instructional Leadership Teams, SMARTe goals.
RESOURCES
News and Analysis of the Chicago Public Schools
Monthly print and online magazine dedicated to chronicling
and analyzing Chicago public school reform since 1990.
Consortium on Chicago School Research
A national model, the Consortium maintains a rich dataset on Chicago public schools and their students beginning with 1991. The Consortium produces incisive, reliable and change-making research. Kim Zalent, BPI's Director of Public Education Initiatives, serves on the Consortium's steering committee.
SOME NOTABLE RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES
Anthony S. Byrk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton. Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 2010
Why are some schools able to dramatically increase student learning, while in other schools student learning stagnates? The authors identify the “five essential supports” shared by high-performing schools: leadership, connection to parents and the community, a "student-centered learning climate", quality of the professional staff, and "ambitious instruction."
This research is important and groundbreaking for the following reasons:
- Few research studies on school improvement are as broad or as long. The book used data from 200 CPS non-selective elementary schools over a seven year period.
- This may be the only major study to simultaneously identify factors internal to the school and external to the school that affect learning gains. Typically researchers investigate community factors or school factors but not both.
- The researchers discovered that strong essential supports contributed to learning gains, even in communities with weak social capital. On the other hand, they also found that it is significantly harder to improve schools with weak community social capital, yet these schools that need the most improvement have the least access to it.
- The research creates a framework for thinking about change that goes beyond thinking about just particular programs and structures. It helps school leaders and policy advocates think more holistically about school change. BPI’s Partnership for Instructional Leadership is built on the “five essentials” framework.
Elmore, Richard. School Reform from the Inside Out: Policy, Practice, and Performance. Boston: Harvard Educational Review. 2004.
Why is school reform so difficult? In this collection of essays, Elmore analyzes barriers to successful school reform, including scaling-up reform from a handful of schools to the district level; the importance of linking external and school-level internal accountability systems, and the challenge of knowing the right thing to do.
Hargreaves, Andrew and Dean Fink. Sustainable Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2005.
The result of a ten-year study on the sustainability of innovative schools, this book provides "a meal, not a menu" for practitioners and policymakers working to ensure that innovative schools remain successful over time.
