 SERP Partners with The Center for Applied Special Technology for STARI
The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) has invited SERP to enter a five-year partnership to expand a portion of SERP’s current curriculum development work using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This CAST-led research and development effort will create and evaluate a comprehensive middle school Literacy Ecosystem in which learning-disabled students, struggling readers, and teachers can thrive. As a part of the proposed work, SERP’s Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI) will be modified and supported according to UDL principles of multiple means of representation, action, and engagement. expand »
As a partner organization over the course of the five-year project, SERP will be part of the leadership team and a major content developer, bringing expertise in adolescent literacy research and specifically in implementation of the STARI program. The STARI curriculum, which is being developed under the leadership of SERP researcher Dr. Lowry Hemphill of Wheelock College, is part of a larger set of SERP initiatives collectively called Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate (CCDD). Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES), CCDD is an extensive program of research, development and evaluation in middle school literacy that is being conducted in close collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Boston Public Schools. The potential for cross-fertilization between the CAST and CCDD efforts, and for increased coherence for the participating schools, is both unusual and promising.
Asked about the collaboration, SERP Executive Director Suzanne Donovan said “We hold CAST in high regard and have great respect and admiration for the contributions they have made to the knowledge base, and to teaching and learning for students with disabilities. The capacities of our two organizations provide a wonderful opportunity for synergy. We are very pleased to extend our collaboration and look forward to our work together.”
This partnership is made possible by the support of a U.S. Department of Education grant under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). « collapse
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 Board members work on a design problem Nov 4th. SERP Opens a New Design Center in San Francisco
The SERP Institute's Media and Design team moved into the brand new SERP Design Center in San Francisco's Mission District on September 15th, and spent the next six weeks building out the space as the newest tool for creating dynamic and exciting materials and tools for SERP's partnerships across the country. expand »
"Over time SERP learned about the direct benefits of design and how it improves the work in our partnerships," Matt Ellinger, Director of Media and Design said in an interview with the entire Media and Design team November 8th. "The Design Center will serve as a workshop for the collaborators on our diverse teams creating new ideas and sparking innovation."
The space features an 8'x20' whiteboard wall, an 8'x30' pinboard wall, HD projection, completely mobile furniture, mobile whiteboards, a prototyping kit (complete with a Slinky), a conference room with full HD audio/visual hookups, and over 4,500 Post-it notes. Supporting columns may soon become murals of trees reaching to the ceiling!
Previously, the Media and Design team was housed in the San Francisco Public Schools' Academics and Professional Development (APD) office with the generous support of SFUSD. However, it was sometimes necessary to seek out other facilities for collaborative work. Classrooms were commonly used in these cases, but Ellinger points out that they present some shortcomings when it comes to design work.
"Teachers put a great deal of effort into creating engaging spaces for their students, but rarely does anyone do the same for them. This Design Center will be a space in which teachers and other SERP collaborators can engage openly and creatively with colleagues," Ellinger said.
Keith McDaniel, Media and Technology Designer for SERP, designed the new space according to specific principles linked to fulfilling SERP's commitment to bringing design thinking into the work for years to come. McDaniel, along with George Gumilinski, Media and Design Technician for SERP, built much of the specialized equipment themselves.
"The overarching thought behind the design of this facility was to build a platform, not a product – the space can fit whatever need is at hand and the tools to make it so are immediately accessible. Everything is on wheels, even the garbage cans, and the room is one large open space that can be divided according to the project. We covered every surface we could find with a functional material like whiteboards or pinboard, and even built four more rolling whiteboards. The space itself is a constant prototype, and that is a spirit that will permeate the work here," McDaniel explained.
The SERP Design Center recently hosted the Board of Directors' semi-annual meeting, and will be the location for the Reading to Learn professional development on December 1st. SERP's Word Generation team is using the space to shoot video for new materials.
Suzanne Donovan, SERP's Executive Director, signaled the importance of the Design Center: "Investment in the space marks a shift in role of design in SERP's vision for the future. As we make greater use of the space, we expect design thinking to creep into every aspect of our collaborative work, including our very understanding of the nature of the problems we are addressing." She adds, "our partners have been very generous in contributing office space for our use. We are pleased to be able to now offer design space for their use."
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 Internal Coherence Website Nears Completion
http://ic.serpmedia.org/
SERP's new Internal Coherence Project website is nearing completion. Please take a look to learn more about this important work led by SERP researchers Richard Elmore and Michelle Forman of Harvard University. On the website you will find a description of the protocol they use to help schools to build internal coherence, explanations of underlying and related concepts, interviews with practitioners and researchers, and a glimpse into the work under way in the Boston Public Schools to engage district leaders in the process. Also on the site are interviews with Anthony Bryk of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Amy Edmondson of the Harvard Business School, and Roger Goddard of the Texas A&M Education Leadership Research Center. The staff of Orchard Gardens Pilot School of Boston also agreed to be interviewed periodically as they used the protocol during their continuing work as a Massachusetts turnaround school.
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 Dr. Kirsten Kainz Joins SERP as First Deputy Director
One of the SERP highlights of a busy 2011 was the arrival of Dr. Kirsten Kainz. Appointed to the newly-created position of Deputy Director in February, Kainz immediately immersed herself in the varied landscape of SERP work. Before joining the SERP team, Kainz worked as a research scholar with joint appointments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. She brings to SERP a deep knowledge of academic research, children, and education. Her work as a faculty member included numerous studies of interventions for pre-school and school-aged children. expand »
Paired with her research accomplishments is Kainz's prior service as an elected board member of the Durham, North Carolina Public Schools. In that role, she used academic research to inform decision-making for the school board and promoted the use of evidence throughout the district. The Durham Board of Education, along with Kainz, entered a two-year intensive training led by the Center for Reform of School Systems (CRSS) - an experience Kainz points to as a watershed in developing insights about the complexities of school districts. This knowledge is especially helpful to her as she learns to navigate SERP's partner districts.
Kainz shared that she first heard of SERP from Professor Catherine Snow, SERP's Director of Research in Boston, and was reminded of its mission as she listened to John Easton, Director of the Institute of Education Sciences, talk about the need for practice-based research and development. Interested in knowing more, Kainz went to the serpinstitute.org website. What she read resonated with her own experience with one foot in academe and the other in the Durham Public Schools. She liked what she read so much that she responded to the announcement for the position of Deputy Director listed on the site.
Kainz has taken on a leadership role in SERP's work with the San Francisco and the Oakland school districts. Although she has an office is in Washington, D.C., she spends half of her time in California directing the Bay Area work. As described by Suzanne Donovan: "[Kainz] is remarkably skilled at steering a partnership through challenging terrain with openness and transparency. Her ability to ensure that all voices are heard, and at the same time to keep the work moving forward at a motivating pace, is impressive. We are fortunate that she has chosen to devote her formidable energy to the SERP mission."
Kirsten Kainz has three children aged 22, 20 and 17. She and her husband look forward to a warm weather vacation as a family in the very near future—an antidote to a life lived on two coasts. Please join all of us at SERP in welcoming Kirsten to the team!
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 SERP Appoints Dr. Maria LaRusso as Director
SERP is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Maria LaRusso to the position of director of the Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate (CCDD) project at SERP's Boston Field Site. LaRusso will have a joint appointment with SERP and Harvard as CCDD Director and Research Associate. In this pivotal leadership role, LaRusso will oversee a rich program of research and curriculum development which is funded through SERP's award from the Institute of Educational Science's "Reading for Understanding" research initiative. expand »
LaRusso has an impressive array of research experiences and has spent many years working directly with children and families in the United States and internationally. After her studies at Cornell and Harvard, she worked as a child and family therapist primarily in home-based and hospital treatment settings. And it was as a working therapist in the 90s that she joined a research project in which she collaborated with CCDD principal investigator Robert Selman. The project included work to expand Selman's developmental framework of perspective taking in order to identify small, but significant developmental changes for youth in treatment settings.
LaRusso was eager to learn more about the school and neighborhood contexts in which the problems she encountered as a therapist emerged. She therefore returned to Harvard to earn her doctorate. As a researcher, she focused on the study of school climate, social development and high-risk behaviors. She was later awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the American Psychological Association and Institute of Education Sciences which she served first at the University of Pennsylvania and then New York University. As a Fulbright scholar, LaRusso was invited to Bogotá, Colombia to examine school climate and experiences of conflict in public schools there. She has since continued to work on both small and large studies in both New York City and Bogotá. Most significantly, she has worked since 2005 on an experimental evaluation of a social-emotional and literacy intervention. She has also worked on a longitudinal, mixed-method study of school climate that has followed a cohort of New York City public school students, starting in their elementary schools and then continuing through middle school.
Maria LaRusso is married to medical anthropologist Cesar Abadía. They both love travel, film, and dogs, although most of their time together these days is spent marveling at their 17-month-old daughter.
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 Dr. Lowry Hemphill Talks About The Purpose Behind STARI
"In many struggling urban schools, as many as 50-60% of kids are more than two grade levels behind in reading, and even in suburban districts 20-25% are significantly behind expectations. There simply are no good resources for them," Dr. Lowry Hemphill, Principal Investigator on the STARI project, said in an interview on November 9th. "There is a real sense of urgency to develop curricula and teaching strategies to work with these students." expand »
The Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI) emerged through a series of discoveries and surveys during the early portion of the SERP partnership with Boston Public Schools (BPS) in 2005. The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study had just looked at two of the most widely implemented reading interventions and, according to Hemphill, found that students were only achieving minimal gains equivalent to a one-point increase on a standardized test over a year's attendance in the programs. SERP and BPS decided that they would concentrate their efforts on creating a different approach.
Hemphill was selected as the higher-education half of a partnership with Lori Brodure, a 7th and 8th-grade social studies teacher at McCormick Middle School in Dorchester, MA. Together, they developed principles to guide the project that would later become the foundation for the STARI program.
"Adolescents who struggle with reading need to be engaged with intellectually challenging material. More than just relevant topics, they need material that addresses important issues in their lives. The topics must be addressed thoroughly, and offer opportunities for discussion and debate," Hemphill explained.
Over the last 6 years, the program has blossomed into a complete intervention that is used as both a supplemental reading program and a core Language Arts class for middle school students who are two or more grade levels behind in basic reading competencies. The program is aligned with the Boston Public Schools Language Arts curriculum and the new Common Core State Standards.
"STARI aims to take students from about a fourth-grade reading level in seventh and eighth grade and increase that about two years in a single year, to sixth- or approaching seventh-grade level," Hemphill said. "Kids who enter high school three to four years behind in reading level can't pass their courses and drop out at high rates. We want to move kids into the middle of the pack so that they have a chance in mainstream classrooms at high school." The program exclusively focuses on this particular segment of students; it is not intended to help students who are at a third-grade or lower reading level because their needs are much more basic and require small group or individual support. Nor is it for the program targeted at students who are at the early stages of learning English.
The SERP team identifies students who are candidates for the program through an assessment called the Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation (RISE) that SERP developed in partnership with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and with confirmatory data from the state standardized test. In combination these tools pinpoint students who have the specific needs that STARI is designed to address.
During the first pilot of the program in the 2008-2009 school year, the STARI team learned that many teachers who had great skill in teaching literature and composition lacked understanding of how to implement the components of STARI. "[The teachers] told us they knew little about how to teach reading and needed support implementing fluency routines and scaffolding good discussions about reading," Hemphill said.
The solution, they found, was to bring experts in these topics and the methods that STARI uses into the classroom to work side-by-side with teachers as coaches. According to Hemphill, the coaches orchestrate partner work, as opposed to whole-class instruction that teachers generally gravitate toward. They emphasize practices that surveys pointed to as teacher weaknesses, like breaking words into syllables and breaking sentences into phrases. And they give feedback in the classroom.
The coaches have been chosen for their significant experience working with middle school teachers on innovative curriculum, and for working within complex social contexts of urban schools. They are also selected for their personal excitement and experience teaching literacy, and their ability to listen to teachers and students and act flexibly and non-dogmatically.
"If it were easy to do some of the things we're trying to do, we wouldn't be faced with the reality that we have, with no models for successful programs," Hemphill explained about the need for coaches. "This is hard, setting out to work with the weakest of the weak [students]."
Thus far, the STARI team has developed three of four planned 'level two' units (intended for 7-8th grade) with the final one due to be finished this winter. Two of four 'level one' units (intended for 6th grade) have also been completed. In addition to finishing the complete set of eight units, Hemphill wants to improve the integration of the program in the schools. "We are interested in following students the year after they go through STARI to observe their integration into the regular classroom. And we will continue to work at more precisely identifying students who need STARI rather than another intervention."
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The staff and partners of the SERP Institute would welcome hearing from you.
Comments and letters to the editor may be sent to us at [email protected]
SERP Institute
1101 14th St. NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 223-8555
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