In the context of increasing standards for student achievement, CUNY and the NYC DOE collaborated on and received in 2004 a Math Science Partnership (MSP) targeted award (MSPinNYC) to address the high failure rates of students in math and science Regents-based courses. The MSPinNYC focused on building partnerships among specific CUNY colleges and the Manhattan and Bronx districts. It was a multi-faceted project with numerous components involving IHE STEM and Education faculty; DOE administrators, guidance counselors, teachers, and district leaders; and NYC DOE and CUNY students. MSPinNYC conducted professional development (PD) for over 242 teachers in over 43 schools, and involved 14 higher education STEM and12 Education faculty, and 8 CUNY Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs). At the core of the work was the commitment to serve low-income, primarily minority students in economically disadvantaged areas. Almost 7,000 students were impacted directly by program participation and more than 20,000 students were impacted indirectly through teacher PD. Central to the project was a summer school for students who had failed the Regents exam in mathematics, Living Environment (biology), or chemistry. The MSPinNYC summer school served as a professional development laboratory for high school and college faculty. Student success in the summer schools was remarkable (Table 1 below).
MSPinNYC student performance on the August administration of the Regents exams was always high and exceeded city averages by factors of two to ten.
The Evolution to PERC
A primary goal of the original proposal was to improve student performance on Regents exams during the academic year by improving teacher quality. In the first three years of the grant, the PD program consisted of MSPinNYC summer schools where high school teachers collaborated with IHE STEM faculty in planning and teaching, an academic year lesson-study program, and many targeted PD sessions, totaling more than 200 hours of PD per teacher each year. Despite the success of the summer schools and the extensive amount of PD, student scores during the academic year failed to improve.The intransigence of academic year scores in high-need schools motivated the MSPinNYC partners to consider a novel hypothesis:
Perhaps the urban, high-need high school classroom is simply too complex to expect to overcome the Achievement Gap through change in individual teacher practice.
While examples of extraordinary individual teachers exist, it is difficult to build a workforce based on uncommonly talented teachers.
Perhaps the classroom could be conceived differently to enable a typical teacher to succeed, building a workforce of successful teachers in the urban setting.
Given the success of the summer schools with the targeted population, the research and evaluation teams were charged with determining what elements of the summer school were important to student success and could be ported to the academic year classroom. The evaluation of the data (which consistently pointed to the summer tutors as the vital factor), academic year realities, and some logical leaps led the MSPinNYC partners to create, define, and pilot a new model for the urban classroom beginning in the fourth year of the project: PERC.
PERC Literature
The development of PERC drew upon the robust literature on the impact of peer tutoring, peer teaching, and peer leadership on the academic performance and personal growth of general and special education students in a range of settings and subjects (Anderson, 2007; Gordon et al., 2007 and references therein; Gosser, 2001, 2010; Greenwood et al., 1989; Harper and Maheady, 2007; Maheadyet al., 2006; Paquette, 2009; Robinson et al., 2005; Showers, et al. (1996); Spencer, 2006; Topping and Ehly, 1998; Topping, 2001; Vogelwiescheet al., 2006). While the literature is clear that this use of peers is generally favorable for all concerned (Cook-Sather, 2002; Gafney and Varma-Nelson, 2007; Karcher, 2009; McQuillan, 2005), there has been no prior successful model for systematic incorporation of high school peers into the high school classroom on a daily basis, where it is central rather than supplementary to initial instruction. Recent work demonstrates that this model has a profound effect on student learning, self-efficacy, and other socio-emotive variables (Gerena, 2011; Weiler, 2009).
Table 1 - Regents Passing Rates in MSPinNYC vs. Traditional DOE Summer Schools
|
Class |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
DOE control |
|
Math |
41.7% |
56.7% |
60.7% |
46.8% |
91.1% |
23% |
|
LE |
88.2% |
90.6% |
76.5% |
58.8% |
63.9% |
29.5% |
|
Chem |
89.4% |
70.0% |
73.1% |
- |
- |
6.5% |
References
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Cook-Sather, A. (2002). "Authorizing Students' Perspectives: Toward Trust, Dialogue, and Change in Education." Educational Researcher, 31(4): 3-14.
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Gerena, L., Keiler, L. (2011). “Supporting English Language Learners in Urban At Risk Secondary Schools: Using Literacy Strategies to Support ELL Learning of Science in A Peer Enhanced Restructured Classroom.” Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Education. Honolulu, HI.
Gordon, E. E., Morgan, R. R., O’Malley, C. J., Ponticell, J. (2007). The Tutoring Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield.
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Vogelwiesche, U., Grob, A., Winkler, B. (2006). “Improving computer skills of socially disadvantaged adolescents: Same-age versus cross-age tutoring.” Learning and Instruction, 16: 241-255.
Weiler, J. (2009). “Outcomes of a Mathematics and Science Program to Support Urban High School Students: The Social, Academic and Political Empowerment of Peer Tutors.” Eastern Sociological Society, Baltimore, March 2009.
