What produces breakthrough results in chronically low-performing schools?

Across three diverse urban districts (San Francisco Unified, San Jose Unified and Oakland Unified), each with distinct challenges, strong partnerships with leaders and teachers and substantial implementation of the PartnersSI model significantly narrowed the achievement gap in the 2008-09 school year.

• Partner schools that substantially implemented our core service model outperformed the literacy gains on the 2009 California Standards Test in English Language Arts (CST-ELA) compared to their respective districts, similar schools around the state, and the state as a whole.

• English Learners in these schools outpaced the reading growth of their fluent English speaking peers. These results hold great promise as we continue to learn what truly works and ensure that proven practices are implemented consistently across all our schools to achieve dramatic gains for more students in the future.

These results hold great promise. As we continue to study what truly works, we will consistently implement the proven practices in our model across all our schools in order to increase and expand our impact on children in need.

School Spotlights

Brookfield Elementary
This year we partnered with New Leaders for New Schools to pilot an approach for accelerating school transformation by linking results-oriented leaders with our core service model. All five pilot schools made gains, including Brookfield Elementary in Oakland Unified, which significantly outpaced the district for all students and more than doubled district gains for English Learners.

Cesar Chavez Elementary
Cesar Chavez was one of several PartnersSI schools in San Francisco Unified to achieve significant growth this year. As a new partner school, Cesar Chavez fully embraced the core service model, and has set a solid foundation for further gains in the coming year.

Empire Gardens Elementary
Empire Gardens had the second highest reading gains of all the elementary schools in San Jose Unified this year. The school leveraged our core service model components that were closest to the classroom: building individual teacher capacity and a stronger core instructional program.