NEA Foundation Funds Work to Close Achievement Gaps

Awards Durham $50,000 Planning Grant to be Used to Create a Roadmap for Five-year Effort to Improve Student Performance

(Washington, DC) (May 4, 2009) – The NEA Foundation announced today that it will build upon the success of its collaborative Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative by awarding a Durham public education partnership a $50,000 planning grant.  The partnership, comprised of leaders from the Durham Association of Educators and Durham Public Schools will use the funding to develop a proposal to demonstrate how they will work together to improve achievement rates for low income and minority students, while raising performance for all students.

Based on a review of its proposal later this year, the Durham partnership may receive a five-year, up to $1.25 million grant from the NEA Foundation to implement its strategy. The proposal will be considered along with proposals from four other urban public education partnerships that also have received NEA Foundation planning grants. The additional sites are: Kansas City, Kan.; Springfield, Mass.; Omaha, Neb.; and Columbus, Ohio.

“We could not be more excited or motivated to work together with the Durham Association of Educators to develop a comprehensive plan to tackle the all-important challenge of narrowing the achievement gap,” said Durham Public Schools Superintendent Carl Harris. “This is an effort that has long been under way in our community, one that we all have recognized for many years.  The NEA Foundation grant would be critical toward taking us to the next level as we continue our already strong efforts toward this end.”

"The Durham Association of Educators is excited to partner with Durham Public Schools on this important issue," said Donald Barringer, DAE president. "The grant brings educators and district administrators to the table in a cooperative effort to make decisions that will immediately benefit at-risk students, and ultimately all students. During these tough economic times, it's so important to have this grant money from the NEA Foundation for systematic and comprehensive planning involving key stakeholders. The plans we develop for these initial schools will allow us to develop best practices to use in every school. With NEA Foundations’ help, Durham Public Schools may become a model for nationwide success on closing the achievement gap."

Specifically, the partnership’s proposal will focus on ways they will work together to strengthen four areas of intervention in public education:

• Local association district capacity and collaboration to generate a shared understanding of the problem, frequent and ongoing communication, and an agreed-upon set of strategies to address the challenges;
• System alignment and coherence designed to increase capacity at the district level to ensure school-level success;
• Family and community partnerships designed to generate support for improvement efforts and to bring necessary resources for achieving the vision and outcomes; and
• Quality teaching designed to improve teaching and learning as a means of closing the achievement gaps by improving the professional lives of teachers.

“We have found that these areas of intervention together bolster the likelihood that local impact can be sustained as they address and change the conditions and structures that we believe most directly drive student achievement and performance,”  said Sanford.  Durham’s proposal will assess their readiness, build capacity, and develop a shared vision and set of aligned, systemic strategies that close the achievement gaps.  And it may qualify for our larger, multi-year implementation grant.”

Since its inception in 2004, the NEA Foundation has spent just under $6.2 million on its signature Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative, working with urban districts in Seattle, Wash.; Hamilton County (Chattanooga) Tenn.; and Milwaukee, Wis.

“Preliminary results from our three original pilot sites show powerful evidence of the potential of building and maintaining a collaborative relationship focused on student achievement among these groups,” said Harriet Sanford, president and CEO of the NEA Foundation.   “With less than a year to go at our first site in Chattanooga, we are seeing gains across the board. The achievement gap has dropped 13 percent in reading and 10.5 percent in math from 2004 to 2008.  Equally important, our initial support has catalyzed the community to extend this work from the first five middle schools to all 21 middle schools in Hamilton County.”

Sanford added that an independent, third party evaluator has been tasked with reviewing the data, and details about progress being made through this work will be released later in the year.

“In addition to the improvements made at each of our pilot sites, we have gained important insights about how educators and communities can best approach challenges,” Sanford said.  “Although the problems they faced were different at each site, as were the solutions and the results, our collaborative, research-based, teacher-driven approach was the same.  It works, and we’re eager to extend it into new sites.”

The planning grants are by invitation only and are based on a process and set of criteria that include: student population and demographics; local associations affiliated with the National Education Association; regional diversity; and stable association and district leadership.