The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession operated the New Teacher Alliance (NTA) from 2006-2009, sponsored by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Inverness Research evaluated the NTA through the four years, measuring the growth in district and school capacity to provide effective support to new teachers, and learning from new teachers…

Back in 1992, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded grants to five curriculum development teams and charged them with the task of starting over. Five years later, each of the development teams had produced an innovative and "integrated" curriculum. All represented notable departures from the commonly encountered, calculus-driven high…

The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP) commissioned Inverness Research to undertake a study about what it takes for elementary teachers to strengthen their teaching of science. This report documents the perspectives and experiences of a selected pool of K-5 teachers, representing 67 districts, who are committed to improving…

For decades teacher leadership has been widely promoted by policy makers and education leaders as a prime strategy for improving the educational enterprise. As practitioners of exemplary teaching, as innovators of pedagogy and curriculum, and as promoters of high-quality instruction for all students, teacher leaders are uniquely positioned to…

The Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) is a project within NSF's (National Science Foundation's) Math Science Partnerships (MSP) initiative. Funded at $23 million over five years, the AMSP involved 51 school districts and nine higher education institutions in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The AMSP faced two significant challenges in…

The papers presented in this paper accompany a core report about the Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) entitled "The Appalachian Math Science Partnership: A Multi-State Umbrella Partnership Promoting Local Mathematics and Science Reform Report." Each of them focuses on an especially effective strategy or component of the AMSP umbrella…

Inverness Research has served as the external evaluation group for the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP) since its inception in 2003. As evaluators, Inverness conceptualizes projects as investments in improvement, and it examines the returns on those investments. The direct services of projects and their immediate outcomes…

This paper defines the concept of "improvement infrastructure" and "educational capital" for education, and it uses the case of the National Writing Project to develop an extended, data-based illustration of the design and generativeness of an improvement infrastructure. Since 1983 there have been multiple "waves" of educational reform that have…

This is a presentation made by the author to the staff of the members of the United States House of Representatives who are part of the STEM Caucus (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Caucus). The briefing was held in the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, DC on July 27, 2007. Also presenting were Harold Pratt and Dr.…

The purpose of this report is two-fold. First, it is intended to describe the work and progress of the "MARS Toolkit for Change" project. Toward that end the report provides documentation and portrayal of the project from an outside perspective. The second and primary purpose of the report is to illuminate the lessons learned about the overall…

This paper summarizes the main ideas that emerged during a two-day conference to discuss effective educational practices in mathematics for Native American students. Information is in drawn both from conference discussions and from author experiences studying and evaluating other mathematics education projects, organized into sections that…

This brief draws upon the five-year evaluation study of the San Diego Urban Systemic Project (USP) that Inverness Research Associates conducted from 2001 to 2006. The intended audiences for this brief are those interested in investing in, supporting, or designing initiatives that aim to improve math and science education in large urban districts.…

Inverness Research Associates served as external evaluators for the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) from its inception in 2002 as a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Center for Learning and Teaching. One of the programs that CILS developed was the Informal Learning Certificate (ILC) for informal science educators (mostly…

In the 1990s, the nation's educational focus turned to troubled schools in the nation's poorest cities. Under the leadership of Luther Williams, then Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Urban Systemic Initiative was created to improve the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Recognizing that high-needs…

Through their visits and conversations with students, teachers, and administrators involved in the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) over the past decade, the people at Inverness Research Associates came to believe that ARSI served as an important leadership capacity-building effort for improving mathematics and science education in…