An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Home
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Introduction
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Acknowledgments
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Overview
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - 24 Approaches
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Catalogs & Reviews
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - References
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Appendices
An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform - Ordering Information

An Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform

Response from ATLAS Communities

We welcome the opportunity for practitioners to learn about ATLAS Communities. However, we believe it is important that your readers understand the special nature of the ATLAS approach. It is a framework for transforming a preK-12 pathway of schools. It is a journey for the schools that agree to participate in ATLAS; to assess strengths and needs, learn about the components of the ATLAS framework, develop implementation goals, benchmarks, and plans, and move through the iterative cycle of planning, action, and reflection. Because the ATLAS ideas, tool, and strategies build on the expertise and wisdom that already reside in every school and district, no two pathways look exactly the same.

The following vignette highlights the power of the ATLAS framework:

"For many teachers and principals, education reform has become a confusing whirlwind of unconnected initiatives. One day the faculty is trying out team teaching, the next day they're learning about project-based lessons. It's all very exciting, but is the end result improved student achievement?

Too often the answer is no, because the staff lacks a coherent way to tie new techniques into a meaningful coordinated push. At Memphis' Booker T. Washington High School, Principal Elsie Lewis Bailey confronted this issue.

"We had been using new strategies here and there, as we read about them, or read what another school had done." Bailey recalls. The ATLAS design ended her piecemeal search for new ideas and practices, giving Bailey and her teachers a ready-made, research-based organizing framework."*

"With ATLAS, we don't have to look for strategies. ATLAS has given us an entire framework around which to base our instructional program."

Elsie L. Bailey, Principal
*from New American Schools - Annual Report 1997

Unlike many approaches, ATLAS did not exist prior to 1992. In 1992, the four founders of ATLAS, Ted Sizer from the Coalition of Essential Schools, Howard Gardner from Harvard Project Zero, Janet Whitla from the Education Development Center, and James Comer from the Yale School Development Project, had a vision that they could meld the strengths of each of their programs to create a truly comprehensive approach to school improvement. ATLAS is a continui9ng embodiment of that vision. Therefore, ATLAS today is very different from ATLAS in 1993. Not different in the overreaching framework of a pathway, fundamental principles and habits, or in the elements of school change--but in the way we approach our work, in the materials we use, and the resources we provide. And ATLAS in 2003 will be different from ATLAS today.

Because ATLAS is a continuing evolving framework for improvement, there is not a wealth of research, as defined by AIR, to provide evidence of student effects, the ultimate outcome. The AIR definition of research base and effectiveness implies that a traditional study of student outcomes with  control groups is necessary. Because ATLAS requires a high magnitude of teacher change, ATLAS schools are only now developing a large enough cohort of teachers to look at student outcomes in a more systematic way. ATLAS is developing a research plan to engage in such research beginning in the 98/99 school year.

However, we and our pathways do have evidence that ATLAS has been making a difference. The implementation of the ATLAS framework in schools across the country--in both urban and suburban districts--has led to marked improvements in school culture, and significant changes in instructional methods, student habits and outcomes. Standardized test scores have increased in all pathways that have worked with the ATLAS framework for three years or more. Students and teachers in all pathways report that students are more interested in their schoolwork. Students comment that their work is different in nature, that they are learning more, and that their successes are more rewarding.

A teacher said that ATLAS taught the district that professional development is "not workshops on this or that," but an understanding that the educational process is "pinpointing an issue," but of "learning from each other." In Gorham, family participation in student-led learning conferences is nearly 100 percent. Family Centers have been established in several pathways, and many parents are being trained as school volunteers.

In Memphis, the high school scores on  ninth-grade state assessments for reading and math improved for the fourth consecutive year. In Prince George's County, reading scores jumped 13 percent in two years. In Norfolk, there was a 15 percent increase in eleventh grade exhibition tasks. Norfolk scores also improved in middle school reading, writing and mathematics. In Philadelphia, four Strawberry Mansion cluster schools exceeded performance targets after two years of ATLAS implementation.

ATLAS Schools are making a difference for their children.