Capacity Building & Scale Up

The multi-year project research design (and goal) was to initiate and support the expansion of the Science IDEAS intervention as a means of studying the evolution of a project-developed Multi-Phases Scale-Up Model from a research perspective. The goal of such a research pursuit was to identify knowledge and tools that would contribute toward the understanding of how to better scale-up research-validated interventions in K-12 school settings. In a complementary fashion, the criteria for determining the validity of the multi-phase scale-up design were based on its success in initiating and sustaining the implementation of the Science IDEAS project. Given the establishment of the validity of the scale-up model itself, the goal of the project was to explicate the elements of the scale-up process in a fashion that would allows them be transportable to other interventions and settings.

Before reviewing the multi-phase scale up model itself, it is important to recognize that the present Science IDEAS scale-up initiative reflects an explicit research and development perspective. The emphasis of such an instructional systems design perspective (e.g., Dick et al, 2004) is that the successful preparation of any educational product requires two major elements: (a) that the desired outcomes can be obtained consistently under specified implementation conditions and (b) that the implementation of the product in applied settings is engineered to fall within the capacity of the system that is to utilize it (minimizing capacity development requirements). Within the context of the present project, the “reverse-engineering” of such an research and development approach provided an architectural framework for approaching the question of how to scale-up research-based initiatives within regular school settings. Therefore, in the present project our definition of scaling is a functional one that establishes as success criteria and links together (a) the fidelity of implementation of an intervention and (b) the performance outcomes established through the prior research for the intervention that are to be met as performance standards. By these standards, if the fidelity of implementation and the associated outcomes can be maintained at existing sites (i.e., are sustainable) while the intervention is being expanded to new sites, then scale up can be considered successful.

Major Project Scale-Up Elements

Operational scale-up/implementation issues addressed. These included (a) adding a formal start-up planning component for new schools to the original scale-up model, (b) limiting new schools to those who had no competing instructional initiatives, (c) expanding the roles of the teacher leadership cadre from model classroom implementation to involvement in professional development for new schools, and (d) providing professional support for teachers to gain an in-depth understanding of science concepts within grade level curriculum planning.
Revisions of key project scale-up strategies. These included (a) working with schools and teachers to increase implementation fidelity, (b) working with principals to involve them in the fidelity monitoring process (a key capacity development scale-up component), (c) developing project “talking points” to enhance principal communication (advocacy), and (d) developing district-level commitment to and advocacy for the project in a form that raises the student performance expectations held by the institution itself.
Effective project scale-up performance outcomes. These included (a) significantly improved fidelity of implementation trends over the past project year as assessed on a 9-18 week basis by project staff (e.g., the increase in teachers implementing Science IDEAS fully (vs. partially) rose from 43 to 65 percent), (b) school-level achievement summaries for 2002-2003, 2003-2004, 2004-2005, and 2005-2006 showed the average median SAT-9 percentile ranks in grades 3-5 for the project schools in reading were 69 and 70, respectively, while the percent of students in grades 3-5 judged proficient by the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading were 68% and 70% (even though the districts’ regular reading/language arts basal reading programs were not used), and (c) the ratings of all summer (2-week) professional development sessions conducted by Leadership Cadre Teachers for new schools have been consistently rated as highly effective by participants (mean of 3.6 on a 4 3 2 1 scale). The overall effectiveness of the Teacher Cadre was a significant project capacity development accomplishment.
Initiation of computer-based (web-accessible) scale-up components. This has evolved into a critical project component over the past several years from the standpoint of transportability of the Science IDEAS model and from the standpoint of designing generalizable tools that support scale-up with a variety of instructional interventions. These initiatives include re-formulating a number of project components so that they are computer-deliverable. These include prototype design/development of: (a) a information system for administrators that provides school/grade implementation status reports and links fidelity of implementation to student achievement trajectories in support of instructional management decision making, (b) a web-based planning/management tool that provides direct support to administrators engaged in planning and then supporting implementation of Science IDEAS one or in multiple schools, including the development, coordination, and utilization of specialized teacher expertise as a form of capacity needed for professional development and mentoring, (c) a web-accessible database for archiving “added value” components, and (d) a re-designed project web-page that provides increased support for teachers.
Implications of the Project for Enhancing the Success of School Scale Up. Initiatives model address a significant issue for advancing the potential of school reform initiatives to improve student achievement. Because the Science IDEAS intervention is primarily “constraint-oriented” rather than prescriptive (i.e., within specified limits, teachers have a great deal of flexibility in how it is implemented operationally), it provides a stringent test of the project scale up model that is generalizable across many different types of interventions. By framing the process of scale-up as a series of organizational actions adopted by school leaders and school systems, the project described in this paper is suggestive of the means to enhance the success of school-based implementations of research-validated instructional interventions by capturing and then supporting their implementation requirements through an instructional systems approach (see Dick et al, 2001).