New American Schools
2002
New American Schools (formerly New American Schools Development Corporation) recently released this 12-page self-study and self-promotion document which asserts-perhaps to nobody's surprise-that what they're doing is pretty terrific and what they're going to do in the future is better still. It stresses that NAS is about changing systems, not just constructing and disseminating school designs. And it summarizes some of NAS's new directions under the dynamic leadership of Mary Anne Schmitt. You can view a PDF at http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/policy.pdf. Also newly released by NAS is a trio of reports on Memphis, where that organization had made a large investment in education reform and where the former superintendent had made a large commitment to installing NAS designs in her city's schools. Her successor, however, opted to discard the NAS (and other "comprehensive school reform" or CSR) designs, claiming (on the basis of an internal study) that they weren't producing solid achievement results. NAS is now responding. The newest of these papers, by Tennessee State University professor James McLean, faults the methodology of the Memphis self-study and says that other studies showed solid results from that city's CSR effort. NAS has made two of those other studies available, both directed by Stephen Ross of the University of Memphis. (Somebody was in a hurry to get these out; he's "Stephen Ross, Ph.D." on one and "Steven M. Ross" on the other.) I don't know the truth about Memphis, and I have some misgivings about CSR as a reform strategy, but anyone tracking this topic will likely want to delve into the particulars of this forceful effort by NAS to show that it really was succeeding in Memphis and that Memphis was wrong to throw it out. For more, see "A Review of Evaluation of the Comprehensive School Reform Models in the Memphis City Schools" by James McLean, August 2001, http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/Memphis%20McLean.pdf; "Using Comprehensive School Reform Models to Raise Achievement: Factors Associated with Success in Memphis Schools," by Stephen Ross, January 14, 2001, http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/Ross%20Using%20Comprehensive%20School%20Reform%20Models.pdf; "Fourth-Year Achievement Results on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System for Restructuring Schools in Memphis," by Steven Ross et al, April 2001, http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/Ross%20TVAAS.pdf. You may also want to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with an October 2001 Fordham report titled "New American Schools: From Revolution to Mainstream," by Jeffrey Mirel (http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=44).
