ERIC Number: ED443898
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2000-Apr
Pages: 78
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: ISBN-1-887410-95-3
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
From Innovative Programs to Systemic Education Reform: Lesson from Five Communities. The Final Report of the Benchmark Communities Initiative.
DeSalvatore, Larry; Goldberger, Susan; Steinberg, Adria
This document presents the lessons of Jobs for the Future's Benchmark Communities Initiative (BCI), a 5-year systemic educational reform initiative launched in 1994 in five communities. Before joining the BCI, the five Benchmark communities had each begun a school-to-career effort. Five key findings from the BCI are outlined: (1) students engaged in intensive school-to-career experiences that have strong work-based learning components compare favorably to peers on a number of key academic achievement indicators; (2) for school-to-career efforts to affect overall student outcomes significantly, specific program activities and components must be defined as core elements of the district's overall reform strategy; (3) enabling conditions that make a systemic reform agenda possible are a high-level leadership group bridging all partners and institutions that convene and connect those partners; (4) districts and their partners can enhance the educational value of students' work-based learning experiences in spite of serious barriers; and (5) data can be a powerful driver for reform when communities create a process for measuring the right things at the right time. Performance measurement was central to the BCI effort, helping partners to hold one another accountable for progress toward agreed-on goals. (SLD)
Descriptors: Education Work Relationship, Educational Change, Educational Innovation, Secondary Education, Systems Development, Urban Schools
Publications Department, Jobs for the Future, 88 Broad Street, 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02110 ($12.50). Tel: 617-728-4446; Fax: 617-728-4857. For full text: www.jff.org.
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, Pleasantville, NY.; Boston Foundation, MA.; Joyce Foundation, Chicago, IL.; Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, MO.; Quantum Research Corp., Chevy Chase, MD.; Lilly Endowment, Inc., Indianapolis, IN.; Mott (C.S.) Foundation, Flint, MI.; Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, PA.
Authoring Institution: Jobs for the Future, Boston, MA.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A