Penn among recipients of $18.3 million grant

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education -- which seeks to improve schools providing research to legislators and administrators -- recently received an $18.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund its research until 2006. CPRE, founded in 1985, is a group of five universities that includes Penn. The grant will be spread across programs at all the schools. The universities will use the funding for a variety of studies. Topics include everything from holding school systems accountable for student performance on standardized tests to the relationship between increases in standardized testing and high school dropout rates. "[The grant] will enable us to build on research we've been doing over the last 15 years, improving instruction in schools, looking at the ways school districts and schools use their respective resources to further education reform," Graduate School of Education Professor and CPRE Director Margaret Goertz said. GSE Dean Susan Fuhrman said that, in the past, CPRE's evaluation of the Children Achieving Initiative -- a series of educational reforms -- in the Philadelphia school district helped shape many of the school system's current features. "We study accountability, from how teachers are reported, to increased assessment," said Fuhrman, who chairs the Managing Committee of CPRE. "We study how school reform efforts are trying to build capacity in schools, we study teacher compensation." One central issue that researchers will seek to address over the next few years is the accountability of school districts and teachers for their students' test scores. "In states where the students bear all the consequences [of poor test results], but where the cumulative school score doesn't matter all that much, the teachers don't take it as seriously," Fuhrman said. One new study will attempt to evaluate the value of reforming the criteria for teachers' salaries. "We're studying teacher pay, whether pay that is based in an assessment of knowledge and skills that teachers have [is more beneficial]," Fuhrman said. "It's normally based on salary scale -- for each year they work, for each credit they take, they receive more pay. Several states are trying to pay [teachers] based on what they know." Research includes classroom observation and statistical analysis. Goertz explained that CPRE then reports their findings to legislators and administrators at all levels of government, who use findings to improve the quality of instruction and professional education.