Assessing The Progress Of New American Schools: A Status Report,New

About the Author Mark Berends (Ph.D., University of WisconsinMadison) is a social scientist at RAND whose areas of expertise include the sociology of education, stratification, organizations, and school reform. Joanna Zorn Heilbrunn (University of California at Los Angeles, M.A., Sociology) is a project coordinator at the RAND Washington, DC, office. Christopher McKelvey (B.A., Economics, Brandeis University) is presently working on an evaluation of New American Schools, a systemic school reform program. He is also working on a study of education vouchers. His primary areas of interest are microeconomic theory and individual decisionmaking. Thomas J. Sullivan (Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Statistics, George Mason University) is a researcher at RAND. His research interests include computational statistics, geometric statistics, modeling and simulation, and space science applications. Mark Berends (Ph.D., University of WisconsinMadison) is a social scientist at RAND whose areas of expertise include the sociology of education, stratification, organizations, and school reform. SHEILA NATARAJ KIRBY (Ph.D., Economics, George Washington University) is a senior economist at RAND in Washington DC. CHARLES SCOTT NAFTEL (Ph.D. Program, Political Science, George Washington University) is a research programmer analyst at RAND in Washington DC. Christopher McKelvey (B.A., Economics, Brandeis University) is presently working on an evaluation of New American Schools, a systemic school reform program. He is also working on a study of education vouchers. His primary areas of interest are microeconomic theory and individual decisionmaking. Product Description New American Schools (NAS), a private nonprofit corporation, began in 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transforming entire schools at the elementary and secondary levels, seeking to engage the nation's best educators, business people, and researchers in an effort to create, test, and foster the implementation of schoolwide designs that break the mold. The competition, development, and demonstration phases of this effort have been completed; the current scalingup phase, with the goal of forming a critical mass of schools within partnering school districts, began in 1995. This report describes RAND's plan for collecting the data needed to address the overall questions posed for the effort: What were the NAS schools like before they implemented the designs? How have the designs and the assistance they provide evolved over time? Are the critical components of the NAS designs being implemented across a wide array of schools? Do the NAS designs extend beyond From the Publisher As a private nonprofit corporation, New American Schools (NAS) beganin 1991 to fund the development of designs aimed at transformingentire schools at the elementary and secondary levels. Havingcompleted its competition, development, and demonstrationphases, NAS currently is scalingup its designs to form a critical massof schools within several partnering districts.The purpose of this report is to describe the baseline characteristics,such as school demographics and performance, of a large numberof NAS sites in the early implementation stages of NAS's scaleupphase. During this phase, RAND's research activities include monitoringthe progress of a large sample of NAS schools in eight jurisdictionsfrom the 19941995 school year through the 19992000 schoolyear. This report provides a description of the schools' demographics,climate, and test scores. The next step in the RAND analysis is toreport on trends in implementation, school performance, and relatedfactors.RAND will monitor changes in this sample of schools over the nextseveral years. This report establishes a baseline for tracking thechanges. The hope is that all those interested in school improvementparents, teachers, administrators, policymakers, researchers,community members, etc.will benefit from the analysis.Other RA