Reports

Stone Foundation Reports & Publications

Organizational Growth and Change Management: Emerging Challenges and Lessons Learned. 2011 Convening of Education Grantees
The Stone Foundation hosted its fourth annual convening of education grantees in the fall of 2011. Representatives from grantee organizations in Boston, Chicago, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area gathered for a day-long session to discuss common challenges they face as they attempt to grow their work and scale their impact. Case studies of two grantees—Partners in School Innovation and the Boston Plan for Excellence—served as the centerpiece for the day’s deliberations and anchored the meeting in real-life organizational growth and management issues. Discussions focused on change management, organizational development, evaluation and relationships to school districts. The report synthesizes key themes and ideas as these education leaders shared and learned from each other.

Building to Scale: Best Practices for Using Evaluation to Improve Programs and Increase Impact
For the third year, the Stone Foundation convened its education grantees for a one day session to discuss challenges, compare lessons and develop strategies for strengthening their organizations. The 2010 Convening focused on best practices for using evaluation to improve programs and increase impact. Twenty education leaders from the Foundation's four grantmaking cities participated in discussions on the link between impact and scale, the value of formative evaluation and the role of a theory of change. Education First Consulting Group helped plan and facilitate the meeting and prepared the Convening report, which provides ideas and advice that can help nonprofit organizations as they work to quantify their impact.

Challenges and Considerations in Scaling Nonprofit Organizations
Scaling up in the nonprofit sector was the topic of the Foundation's second convening of its education grantees. Twenty education leaders from the Foundation's four grantmaking cities came together for this one-day session focused on the challenges and considerations involved in scaling up their organizations' work. Themes that surfaced included the importance of organizations understanding their impact before going to scale, the applicability of for-profit strategies to nonprofit growth efforts, and the complexities of the education sector that make going to scale especially difficult. Education First Consulting Group helped plan and facilitate the meeting and prepared the convening report, which includes grantee growth stories and key lessons from the day's discussions.

Developing Human Capital to Improve Urban Education
In October 2008, the Stone Foundation convened its Education grantees from Chicago, Boston, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area to explore what they are learning from their work and how these lessons inform future practice and policy opportunities. Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago facilitated the Convening and documented outcomes of the day in this report, which summarizes discussions that took place and highlights common themes that emerged: the challenges of taking individual programs to scale; meeting the needs for organizational capacity and development in order to implement reforms; and undertaking meaningful assessment and evaluation of education reform efforts.

The Convening was a starting point for articulating and advancing grantees' collective knowledge. The experiences of the grantees both during and following the Convening validate the idea that the candid exchange of information is empowering to programs as they seek to gain the most benefit from and to sustain their innovations. Given the success of the Convening and the high level of interest in urban school reform, the Foundation will be exploring a number of ways to facilitate continued grantee collaboration and shared learning.

Conversations With Leaders Report
Grantee insights on their work, the field & philanthropy
We believe it is important to document and share what we are learning from our grantees — to add to a body of knowledge that informs our thinking and aids the work of our grantees and other grantmakers. With this in mind, in early 2007, the Stone Foundation contracted with a consultant, Perry Chen from Pear·e Consulting, to conduct a series of in-depth interviews with eight of the foundation's Education and Youth Development grantees. The purpose of these conversations was not to evaluate each grantee's work, but rather to distill lessons about effective practices and strategies that could benefit the field and inform the Foundation's grantmaking. Program leaders embraced this opportunity to reflect and candidly share their perspectives on their work and their sector. This report highlights their observations about successful strategies, trends in youth development and educational reform, and thoughts for philanthropy. While these reflections will be valuable to funders and grantees alike, as the report notes, . . . the most valuable result may be simply opening this space — to continue these conversations and to keep learning from the field.

Learning From The Field
Report on Stone Foundation Youth Development Convening
In 2006, the Stone Foundation convened its youth development grantees from New York and San Francisco so they could learn from each other and develop connections that would strengthen their work with young people. Capacity-building was a key issue echoed throughout the day. Participants underscored the need for help with strategic planning, financial systems development, fundraising and other areas that are central to their organizational health and sustainability. Read about the themes and recommendations that emerged from this Convening, as well as steps the Foundation has since taken to launch a capacity-building grants program.

Grantee Reports & Publications

John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University

How might middle schools support the full development of young adolescents?.

Youth in the Middle (YiM) is a free guide and set of tools based on a three-year partnership between the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities (JGC) at Stanford University and Kennedy Middle School in Redwood City, California to offer some practical solutions to this question.

The YiM guide offers adaptable tools to help a school:

Engage multiple constituents in developing a shared youth-centered vision
Build on school strengths while expanding the school’s capacity to support the full development of adolescents
Create a school climate in which students feel safe, supported and inspired to learn

Sample tools include:

Professional development resources and activities
School climate assessment rubrics
Research-based effective practice briefs

This resource is available at: http://gardnercenter.stanford.edu/resources/YiM_Guide_Overview.html.

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
Preparing Teachers of Young Children: The Current State of Knowledge, and a Blueprint for the Future

By Marcy Whitebook, Deanna Gomby, Dan Bellm, Laura Sakai, and Fran Kipnis

This two-part paper examines the early care and education (ECE) and K-12 research literature in depth to assess the current state of knowledge about the effective preparation of excellent teachers, and charts a research and policy agenda for the future.

Part I: Teacher Preparation and Professional Development in Grades K-12 and in Early Care and Education: Differences and Similarities, and Implications for Research (pdf)

Part I summarizes the differences between the K-12 and the early care and education fields. The researchers found more than enough similarities to warrant a close consideration of the combined wisdom of both fields.

Part II: Effective Teacher Preparation in Early Care and Education: Toward a Comprehensive Research Agenda (pdf)

Part II contains an in-depth review of the ECE and K-12 teacher preparation research and outlines what remains to be learned. It concludes with a set of key recommendations for research and policy.

Executive Summary (pdf)

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
Degrees in Context: Asking the Right Questions about Preparing Skilled and Effective Teachers of Young Children
The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment and the National Institute for Early Education Research have jointly published a NIEER Policy Brief, "Degrees in Context: Asking the Right Questions about Preparing Skilled and Effective Teachers of Young Children." In this Policy Brief, Marcy Whitebook and Sharon Ryan argue that too much attention has been given to debating the baseline qualifications required of preschool teachers - AA vs. BA. They contend that it is just as necessary to take into account the nature of the education teachers receive en route to a degree, supports for ongoing learning, and the effects of the workplace environment on teaching practice.

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
Staff Preparation, Reward, and Support: Are Quality Rating and Improvement Systems Addressing All of the Key Ingredients Necessary for Change?
As quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) increasingly become the key strategy for improving the quality of early care and education, it is critical to understand and examine how such systems define quality, the benchmarks used to indicate quality, and the opportunities in place to support improvement. This report examines the extent to which QRISs support the professional development of practitioners and include in their rating rubrics key ingredients - staff qualifications, direct compensation, and the factors related to work settings - that have been linked to quality.

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
Learning Together: A Study of Six B.A. Completion Cohort Programs in Early Care and Education, Year 3
The Year 3 interviews of the Learning Together study reveal that the vast majority of students successfully graduated from their B.A. cohort program. Year 3 interviews focused on two issues of concern about higher education programs – the practicum experiences for employed students and the adequacy of attention to working with children from linguistically diverse backgrounds. The graduates overwhelmingly reported that their B.A. classes provided them with skills and strategies needed to communicate with children who speak a language other than their own. While the majority of students reported that their practicum experiences helped them do a better job at their workplace, they also identified several areas for improvement. The Year 3 study also reports on the graduates' perspectives about support at their jobs for ongoing learning and any changes in employment and/or compensation upon completing their degree.

New Visions for Public Schools
Leading School Improvement with Data: A Theory of Action to Extend the Sphere of Student Success
This is the first in a series of three evaluations of SAM (Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model), the primary methodology New Visions for Public Schools is using with its PSO schools to build capacity for ongoing gains in student improvement. The evaluation, led by Dr. Joan Talbert of the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching at Stanford University, examines SAM's theory of change, which posits that teams of educators can continually expand a school's "sphere of success" by using data to identify specific skill gaps among targeted students and design interventions aimed at accelerating student learning. Dr. Talbert's findings point to four key principles for the success of SAM's inquiry-based approach to reform, including:

"keeping the focus small" by helping educators address specific, identified skill gaps in order to accelerate student learning;
shifting the classroom focus from what is being taught to what is being learned;
challenging assumptions and practices that limit student success; and
navigating colleague resistance and facilitating adult learning.

The RAND Corporation
California Preschool Study
The RAND Corporation has undertaken the RAND California Preschool Study, a landmark study of the utilization and quality of preschool programs for 3- and 4-year olds in California. RAND researchers surveyed a representative group of 2,000 parents with preschool-age children and more than 700 providers and observed about 250 child care and preschool centers. The study's findings hold significant implications for the future of early childhood education on this state. To date, RAND has competed 3 studies with a fourth to be released in the winter of 08. The three studies currently available are: Who is Ahead and Who is Behind? Gaps in School Readiness and Student Achievement in the Early Grades for California's Children; "Early Care and Education in the Golden State: Publicly-Funded Programs Serving California's Preschool-Age Children; and Prepared to Learn: The Nature and Quality of Early Care and Education for Preschool-Age Children in California.

These studies as well as policy implications may be found at the following link: http://www.rand.org/labor/projects/ca_preschool/.

Center for Court Innovation
2006-07 Youth Justice Board Report & Recommendations
Stand Up Stand Out: Recommendations to Improve Youth Participation in New York City's Permanency Planning Process by Members of the Youth Justice Board, a program of the Center for Court Innovation
Written by the 16 teenage members of the 2006-2007 Youth Justice Board, this report proposes 14 specific recommendations to improve the court experiences and outcomes for adolescents in foster care. The Youth Justice Board, which consists of New York City youth 15 to 19 years old, spent several months researching New York City's permanency planning process, interviewing over 40 child welfare and court professionals, conducting two focus groups of youth in care and observing Family Court proceedings in Kings County, Bronx County and New York County Family Courts.
http://www.courtinnovation.org/_uploads/documents/YJBreport%20final_2007.pdf