The National Science Foundation….

has come out with a report on what works best in science and math education.  The National Science Foundation started out with some proganms under the Urban Systemic Initiatives (USI) program label and was later replaced by the Urban Systemic Program (USP).

Schools distircts that got funding under these programs had strict rules on how to spend the money. School districts trained teacher leaders to help improve other teachers, improved math and science classwork, and used data to make educational decisions.

The Brownsville School district which is mainly Hispanic used system-wide professional development in its science classes in order to increase the graduation rate by 12%.

The Columbus Ohio area used teacher leaders to help impove test scores.

In the San Diego area principals became instructional leaders in their schools and provide intensive professional to the teachers in the school.

The report looks at many other schools districts as well that got money.  I found this report to be a nice read and it loooked good as well.