Regional Achievement Centers

Regional Achievement Center Mission Statement:
New Jersey’s Regional Achievement Centers, struggling schools, and their districts will partner to set clear goals for student growth, put proven turnaround principles into action, and use data to drive decision-making and accountability. Working together, we will meet our shared goal of closing the achievement gap and preparing all of our students for success in college and career.
   
      According to the Department Of Education, Regional Achievement Centers are new programs that have been created and launched recently, to help New Jersey's lowest performing school districts who also have the most severe of achievement gaps.  According to the DOE RAC website, These RAC's represent, "a fundamental shift from a system of primarily oversight and monitoring to service delivery and support. Seven field-based Regional Achievement Centers (RACs) staffed with expert school turnaround teams will work directly with Priority and Focus Schools to implement proven turnaround principles and dramatically improve student achievement."
      The criteria used by the NJDOE to determine which schools are chosen as priority or focus schools are by using proficiency rates.  They based their selections on three-year averages of state assessments data, from the 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11 school years.  They also took into account growth that they measured by Student Growth Percentiles in addition to proficiency levels. The averages of performance of every tested student are considered, based on the NJASK, HSPA, and APA.
     Each RAC is going to be lead by an Executive Director for Regional Achievement and  RAC staff members.  These groups will then partner with the Priority and Focus Schools to execute comprehensive School Improvement Plans.  These plans are aligned to eight turnaround principles that are widely known to be central to school improvement:
School Leadership: Meaning, the principal has the ability to lead the turnaround effort
School Climate and Culture: Creating a climate conducive to learning and a culture of high expectations
Effective Instruction: Teachers utilizing research-based effective instruction to meet the needs of all students
Curriculum, Assessment, and Intervention System: Teachers having the foundational documents and instructional materials needed to teach to the rigorous college and career ready standards that have been adopted.
Effective Staffing Practices: School staff honing the skills to better recruit, retain and develop effective teachers and school leaders
Enabling the Effective Use of Data: School-wide use of data focused on improving teaching and learning, as well as climate and culture
Effective Use of Time: Time should be better used to meet student needs and increase teacher collaboration focused on improving teaching and learning
Effective Family and Community Engagement: Increased academically focused family and community engagement 

     School Improvement Plans will be developed based on those turnaround principles and they are also going to incorporate the results of a Quality School Review (QSR) that is going to be conducted in each Priority and Focus School.  The Quality School Review is a baseline evaluation of Priority and Focus Schools with school quality indicators aligned to these eight turnaround principles.  The QSR replaces the Collaborative Assessment and Planning for Achievement Review.   The Quality School Reviews were conducted in Spring of 2011 in Priority Schools and the reviews for the Focus Schools started this fall.  The future School Improvement Plans will incorporate the results of the QSRs.  The Interventions in Priority Schools are going to be monitored for three-years.  They do this for three years because they want to make sure the schools have the time they need to implement the required changes and show improvement in student achievement.  Priority Schools that aren’t able to implement the interventions or fail to show the improvement in student achievement might require more intensive intervention or be closed.  Focus school interventions will be monitored for minimum of two years, during which time a school could actually lose focus school status if all of the requirements for improvement are met.
     The RAC’s are going to be managed and staffed by the Chief Academic Officer that oversees all of department of education school improvement initiatives, which includes the RACs.  Each RAC is going to be led by an Executive Director who will be held accountable for the progress of each Priority and Focus School in their region. The Executive Director will also manage an RAC team, manage relations with school districts, and coordinate with other RAC regions and the Department of Education.  In addition, The RACs are also staffed with school improvement specialists who went through extensive training in those eight turnaround principles during the RAC Academy that took place last summer.
     As far as accountability for progress is concerned, the responsibility is pretty much shared. Schools, districts, and the RAC staff members are all supposedly all going to held accountable for Priority and Focus School’s success.  Priority and Focus Schools that don’t make enough improvements might face to further State action. Additionally, the Priority Schools that fail to implement the required interventions or fail to demonstrate improvement in student achievement might become subject to intervention that is more intensive or closure.
     On the link listed below, you can find the list of priority, focus and reward schools; the criteria used to select them, the specific plans they are implementing, information related to curriculum reform and information on staffing.  The website also indicates that information pertaining to updates and progress in the RACs should be available soon.
References:
http://www.state.nj.us/education/rac/