The Past, Present, and Future of Comprehensive School Reform. Research Brief

The last major review of the achievement outcomes of comprehensive school reform (CSR) models was conducted in 2003. Despite the growing evidence base supporting CSR, the program was discontinued by the federal government in 2007. Now, six years after the 2003 meta-analysis, the study's lead author, Geoffrey Borman, revisits the results and interprets how the policy and research landscape has evolved over the years. He concludes that in terms of increased student achievement, CSR appears to: (1) have an overall positive effect; (2) be effective whether a school is relatively lower or higher on poverty measures; (3) increase its effectiveness for an individual school the longer it is implemented there; (4) include a variety of models, with a number of them generating strong evidence of effectiveness over the years; and (5) depend for its effectiveness more on program implementation than on whether it contains a predetermined set of federally required components. Schools and district continue to employ a number of CSR models and fund them with Title I and other monies. (Contains 2 footnotes.) [The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement is administered by Learning Point Associates under contract with the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education. This Brief describes the following study: Borman, G. D., Hewes, G. M., Overman, L. T., & Brown, S. (2003). Comprehensive school reform and achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 73, 125-230.]