Scale-Up and Sustainability Study of the LDC and MDC Initiatives

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of high-quality instructional and formative assessment tools to support teachers’ incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Literacy experts have developed a framework and a set of templates that teachers can use to develop content area modules focused on high quality writing tasks closely tied to subject area texts. Math experts have developed Classroom Challenges that teachers can incorporate throughout the year’s curriculum. These tools were introduced and revised in multiple settings throughout the 2010-2011 co-development year; during the 2011-2012 pilot year additional sites came on board and most existing sites saw expansion. For the past three years, Research for Action (RFA) has been studying the early adoption of these tools, focusing on teachers’ response to and use of the tools in 2010-2011, expanding to include an analysis of the scale up of the initiative in 2011-2012 and, in 2012-13, evaluating the status of the initiative and how conditions that support robust implementation are related to scale-up and sustainability of the initiative. Findings presented in this report are primarily based on surveys with teachers, principals, and district administrators involved in the LDC and MDC initiatives. We approach this report with four objectives: To provide a status update on the implementation of the LDC and MDC initiatives as of the 2012-13 school year; to examine the extent to which the conditions that support robust implementation are in place as of the 2012-13 school year; to present the status of scaling up the initiatives; and to understand how the supporting conditions influence the scale up of the LDC and MDC initiatives.