Overview
NUA has been a partner with P.G. County since 1991. It has been the longest collaboration NUA has had with any school system. In the P.G. County Title 1/ NUA program teachers are introduced to cognitive strategies that promote literacy and develop students’ higher order critical thinking skills in all content areas. The strategies presented by NUA are designed to facilitate instruction and learning, and they are correlated with Dimensions of Learning and MSPAP (Maryland Performance Assessment Program).

A major goal of the NUA project is to improve student performance on various statewide and district-wide assessments such as MSPAP and CTBS.

Program Objectives

1. To identify skills involved in developing understanding and creating meaning;
2. To explore correlations between critical thinking skills identified in the Dimensions of Learning and teaching for understanding;
3. To provide teachers with supporting cognitive strategies that motivate and enhance the teaching of reading and writing in the content areas and the use of mathematical concepts and calculations across the curriculum;
4. To integrate strategies which dynamically assess critical thinking involved in understanding;
5. To create integrated lessons for developing understanding and contextual meaning;
6. To guide teachers in identifying performances which illustrate understanding;
7. To strengthen the current P.G. County initiatives through their integration in the NUA/P.G. County Title 1 project;
8. To train teachers in the direct link between MSPAP, Dimensions of Learning and the NUA staff development

The NUA project is primarily a literacy initiative that focuses on reading, writing and mathematics. Schools elect to participate in one of three strands: mathematics, writing, or reading.

Mathematics Strand
The mathematics strand is designed to provide selected schools with assistance in mathematics instruction. This year there are 18 schools in the mathematics strand. NUA consultants work with administrators and teachers to address issues related to mathematics instruction and to assessment as measured by MSPAP and CTBS. NUA consultants present learning and teaching strategies that support the new standards of NCTM. Since the mathematics program is viewed within the broad-based context of literacy, there are several objectives:

1. Understanding and implementing a broad based literacy perspective to mathematics that includes reading, writing, thinking and talking mathematics;
2. Going beyond the basics by encouraging and developing problem solving skills;
3. Integrating mathematics and literature;
4. Insuring high quality mathematics for all as it relates to equity and gender issues.

To achieve these objectives NUA provides strategies that focus on reading in mathematics, writing to learn mathematics, questioning and explaining skills, and problem-solving skills. These strategies are presented in workshops and are also demonstrated in classrooms.

Writing Strand
The writing strand is designed to provide selected schools with assistance in writing instruction This year this strand is the largest with 26 elementary schools. NUA consultants work with administrators and teachers to address issues related to writing instruction and to assessment as measured by MSPAP and CTBS. NUA consultants present learning and teaching strategies that support a balanced writing program in which students engage in both “write-to-learn” and “learn-to-write” classroom activities. Since the writing program is viewed within the broader context of literacy, there are several objectives:

1. Understanding and implementing a broad-based literacy perspective to writing that integrates reading, speaking, listening and critical thinking;
2. Understanding and implementing write-to-learn strategies that facilitate learning and comprehension of texts across all disciplines;
3. Understanding and implementing learn-to-write strategies that engage students in the stages of the writing process;

To achieve these objectives NUA provides a variety of strategies that can serve as instructional tools for teachers and as writing/learning tools for students when they are engaged in:

1. Reading and the gathering of information (which involves creating, constructing and interpreting meaning)
2. Writing and the communication of information (which involves sharing or demonstrating their understanding in different forms of representation).

Three purposes for writing are emphasized: a) writing to inform; b) writing to persuade and c) writing to express personal ideas and feelings.

The NUA strategies are presented in workshops and are also demonstrated in classrooms.

Reading Strand The reading strand is designed to provide selected schools with assistance in reading instruction This year there are 11 schools in the reading strand. NUA consultants work with administrators and teachers to address issues related to reading instruction and to assessment as measured by MSPAP and CTBS. Since the reading program is viewed within the broader context of literacy, there are several objectives:

Service Delivery: On Site Professional Development There are 55 elementary schools in the P.G. County Title 1/ NUA program. The lowest performing schools receive four site visits and the others receive three.

Specific reading, writing and math strategies are introduced to the teachers at the onsite workshops. Three or four site visits by regular NUA consultants allow them to work with teams of teachers and building administrators. They practice the strategies, plan together, reflect on the outcomes of implementation and identify issues and impediments to progress at the building level. The long-term goal of this component of the program is to build an infrastructure at the building level that will continue to support on-site professional development.

NUA consultants conduct faculty seminars, model strategies in selected classrooms, encourage team building, help participants to coach each other and to assess progress in application of the strategies and program development. Most site visits include both workshop presentations and demonstration lessons. The demonstration lessons are formatted to include a briefing session, demonstration lesson and a debriefing session. In some cases, workshops are provided for the entire staff during or after school.

Service Delivery: Specialty Consultants
Subject specific NUA consultants with expertise in reading, writing and mathematics conduct three workshops for Title 1 staff consisting of Integrated Learning Teachers(ILT’s). The ILT’s are presented with an overview of the NUA cognitive strategies designed to facilitate and enhance the teaching of reading and writing in the content areas and to facilitate the teaching of math concepts across the curriculum. NUA consultants introduce recent research and practice and address instructional related issues, such as ways for the ILT’s to facilitate and monitor the implementation of NUA strategies by classroom teachers involved in the project.

District/Title 1 Office Personnel
To facilitate achievement of program goals, the Title 1 office administrators will do the following:

• survey schools to determine which of the strands (reading, writing or math) they want to engage in;
• provide and collect feedback/reflection sheets for consultant site visits;
• provide ILT’s to facilitate consultant site visits;
• support the application of the NUA strategies across the disciplines;
• communicate with NUA with timely responses to messages.

Successes
As reported in an article entitled “National Urban Alliance Professional Development for Improving Achievement in the Context of Effective Schools Research” by Daniel Levine, Eric Cooper and Asa Hilliard III, there have been many successes in the NUA professional development program (NUAPDM) in P.G. County. Some of the earlier research findings are as follows:

1. The 1991-92 school year started with 320 participants from 41 schools, and grew to more than 1000 participants from 61 schools in 1994-95.
2. Participants generally gave high ratings to the NUA workshops, e.g., on a scale of 1 to 4, the average rating by PGC participants for reading workshops was 3.65 and in mathematics, 3.86.
3. Students at participating schools made sizable gains in reading achievement. For example, CTBS reading scores at the 4th grade improved by 3 NCE points in 1991-1992, 7 NCE points in 1992-1993, 10 NCE points in 1993-94, and a whopping 16 NCE points in 1994-95. Only in the 5th grade did the average reading scores decline somewhat.
4. Students eligible to receive Title 1 services made impressive gains in acquiring reading skills required to function successfully in their schools. Over the four-year period from 1990-91 to 1993-94, the percentages of students reading above the 18th percentile cut-off for Title 1 eligibility steadily increased from 26% to 51%. What is most significant is the movement of students from the 1st quartile to the 2nd and 3rd quartiles.

Assessing these and other data on the implementation and the impact of the NUAPDM project, a program evaluator explicitly acknowledged that many positive interventions have been initiated to help the Title 1 schools in P.G. County, but concluded that the NUAPDM “appears to have had the most impact on the success of students.”