Results

Status of Program Components

The following narratives address the project’s progress in meeting each of its four program components during the second year of implementation.

Program Context

The Urban Dreams project, in collaboration with a consortium of community and university partners, seeks to improve high school students' academic achievement in social studies and language arts through the system-wide implementation of a standards-based and technology-embedded reform program that engages students, teachers, parents and other community members. Building upon research in best practices for teaching and learning as well as for community engagement, Urban Dreams relies heavily upon: a) an ongoing five year professional development program with recognized historians and literary scholars as instructors, and peer support models (i.e., professional dialogue circles and peer coaching) to support reflective practice among teachers; b) parent and community education; and c) the installation of technology tools and infrastructure.

Six ethnically diverse, urban high schools and three alternative high schools (total 11,000 students) are the target of the Urban Dreams project.  Within each of these schools, English and social studies teachers were afforded the opportunity to participate in staff development activities – a total of 100 have participated through June of 2002.  A total of 52 formally joined Cohort 1 (2000-2001) and received classroom equipment.  Forty-eight more teachers joined Cohort 2 and 30 participated in the Summer Institute (see below).  Table 1 provides an overview of the participating high schools as well as the number of target teachers per site in each year of the project.

Participating schools and number of target teachers

Index

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