January 7, 2008
Houston A+ Challenge is pleased to announce the recipients of two new awards specifically designed to encourage the replication of best practices in the Houston region’s schools.
The ten local campuses and two school districts listed below will receive one-time grants ranging from $20,000 to $40,000. Replication Grants provide Houston A+ Challenge partner schools and districts with resources to share what they have learned to benefit more students, and Innovation Grants will help schools springboard what they have learned into a new, sustainable project.
As a key component of the award, grantees will share their successful strategies at this summer's twelfth annual Reforming Schools Summer Institute, scheduled for July 22-23 in Houston. This initiative is made possible through the continued support of the Annenberg Foundation.
Houston A+ Challenge received more than 80 proposals from schools and districts across the Houston region. A community panel helped to review and rank the grant proposals, based on a rubric that was shared with applicants prior to proposal submission.
REPLICATION GRANT
Aldine Academy (Aldine ISD): Arts Initiative Model Expansion Project. Aldine Academy, an exemplary member of Houston A+ Challenge's Fine Arts Initiative since 2003, will use funding from this new grant to document and share their model within their feeder pattern and with other schools through action labs and workshops.
Eisenhower High School (Aldine ISD): Enhancing School Climate through Critical Friends Groups. Eisenhower, which has documented the positive effect of Critical Friends Groups on campus, will expand training opportunities to engage more core teachers in reflective practice and peer observations.
Goose Creek Consolidated School District: Creating Campus and System-wide Critical Friends Groups. Goose Creek will expand Critical Friends Group training to district administrators and teacher leaders system-wide.
Hastings High School and Elsik High School (Alief ISD): Building Capacity Through Collaboration. These two high schools, currently active in Houston A+ Challenge's Regional High School network, will create a cross-campus team of instructional leaders to improve student achievement in their at-risk populations.
Pine Shadows Elementary (Spring Branch ISD): Project AIM - Fine Arts Integration Model - Extensions and Replications. Pine Shadows, a Fine Arts Initiative school, will expand their highly effective visual arts integration program to more fully incorporate music into student curriculum.
Quest High School (Humble ISD): Demonstration of Mastery: Scaffolding Graduation Exhibitions with Performance Task Assessments in High School Courses. Quest will take their innovative senior exhibition program deeper by creating a system of mini-exhibitions for earlier grades, thus allowing students to demonstrate mastery in a variety of ways.
Spring Branch Independent School District: Engaging All Readers. This district-wide grant will enable Spring Branch to adapt successful reading improvement strategies from elementary schools for effective use in middle schools.
INNOVATIVE PRACTICES GRANT
Alief Middle School ( Alief ISD): Student Opportunities for Success. Alief Middle School will train teachers to build leadership on campus and to improve relationships through Critical Friends Groups. Teacher teams will document systems for analyzing student work and improvement strategies such as additional computer lab time, Saturday programs for students who need extra work, and additional hands-on experiences in science classes.
Anderson Academy (Aldine ISD): Building Capacity; An Integrated Curriculum Designed by Teachers for Teachers. A core group of teachers at Anderson Academy will create new instructional units that integrate the arts into existing curricula.
Atascocita High School (Humble ISD): Assessment Literacy: Leaving No Child Behind. Teachers and administrators at Atascocita hoping to create an "assessment literate culture" schoolwide will receive new, research-based training on how to adjust teaching strategies throughout the school year based on ongoing assessments of student progress and needs.
Goose Creek Consolidated School District: A Leader's Perspective: Thinking Systemically about One's District and One's Schools. This districtwide grant will train district leadership in a framework for effective decision making and "systems thinking."
Pine Shadows Elementary School (Spring Branch ISD): Going Deep: Beyond the Surface in Comprehension Instruction Across the Curriculum. Pine Shadows teachers and staff will receive training and time for collaboration to go beyond current practices in literacy instruction to give students a range of strategies for comprehension.
Waltrip High School (Houston ISD): Waltrip CoLABoratory. Waltrip High School will create a "laboratory-like project" to spotlight ongoing work of campus redesign, and invite teams of colleagues from other schools and systems to engage in a process of study, analysis, reflection and feedback.
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