HISTORY & BACKGROUND
In December 1993, U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg took the nation by storm with a $500 million gift and an accompanying challenge to reform the country's public schools. As President Clinton received the gift at the White House, two powerful forces—strong leadership and financial resources—came together for the sake of the nation's children and future.
In response to the gift, President Clinton stated, "This extraordinary act of generosity and civic concern is a wonderful Christmas present to America's children and a reaffirmation of the importance of public education. We don't have a person to waste in this country. If we are to compete and win in the world economy, we have to increase the educational ability of all Americans to ensure that all of our people are capable of learning over the course of their lifetimes. Mr. Annenberg's gift makes us stronger as a nation, and for that we owe him a large debt of gratitude."
Launching this project immediately, the national Annenberg Foundation began awarding matching grants to various urban and rural areas, including the first grant to New York City in November 1994 and more recent awards to South Florida and Houston.
The Houston A+ Challenge began in January 1997 with the receipt of a five-year, $20 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation's "Challenge to the Nation to Reform Public Schools." Local funds will be raised to match the Annenberg grant one-for-two, resulting in a total of $60 million available to finance school reform in the Houston area over five years.
This grant was awarded following a year-and-a-half planning process that brought together members of the Houston community to participate in school site visits, community forums, planning sessions, and individual meetings. Originally known as the Child-Centered Schools Initiative, the endeavor began in 1995 when The Brown Foundation, Inc., took the lead in bringing the funding community together to discuss a joint effort to improve public schools in the city of Houston. Houston Endowment Inc. joined Brown, and these two foundations invited participation from other major foundations, including Fondren Foundation, Wortham Foundation, Hobby Foundation, and the Greater Houston Community Foundation. In 1996, the initiative became a non-profit corporation, ready to move forward with a proposal to the Annenberg Foundation, thanks to the leadership of the Rice University Center for Education.
In addition to underwriting the grant proposal process, the Child-Centered Schools Initiative began a process of even more in-depth community involvement. In November 1995, a group of ten foundation leaders, community representatives, state legislators, and educators visited the Central Park East Schools in New York. In December, a larger group visited Washington Irving School in Chicago. These groups learned what was working in other public schools, and concurrently, what already-existing practices were working in Houston. Following these site visits, a series of community meetings was held to inform the public of the initiative and ask for their assessment of strengths and weaknesses in area public schools. The initial community inquiry culminated in a community-wide Planning Forum on February 8, 1996, where participants expressed an overwhelming consensus around an initiative centered on children.
In January 1997, the Annenberg Foundation awarded Houston its grant. Once The Houston A+ Challenge received its grant, a staffed office was established, governed by a local board of trustees. Under the board's leadership, the Challenge works to build new capacity at the school level to engage parents, teachers, administrators, and the community in creating effective learning environments at home, at school, and in the community. This multi-district, city-wide campaign focuses the community's energy, political will, and financial resources towards a strategic investment in networks of public schools to work thoughtfully toward whole school change.
INITIATIVES HISTORY
The work of The Houston A+ Challenge is divided into three phases.
Phase I
In Phase I, Houston A+ provided direct funding to 88 schools in six school districts – Aldine, Alief, Houston, Humble, North Forest and Spring Branch. The focus of the support and funding was to show schools how to strengthen academic areas and move beyond traditional schooling by using one or more of the following imperatives or concepts:
Phase I also included efforts to move professional development for educators from the one-shot workshop model to sustained, ongoing activities linked to the classroom. Two of these efforts were:
- A yearly National Speaker Series developed with partner schools that brings in noted education experts on topics such as how to develop teaching techniques to match the changing needs of students.
- The annual Fondren Reforming Schools Summer Institute, which brings together educators, parents, business partners, school district administrators and university professors to examine how to transform public schools into 21st century learning centers.
Phase II
In Phase II, Houston A+ worked to influence other forces shaping the public school system. Begun in early 2000, Houston A+ embarked on these projects:
- Revamping teacher preparation programs in partnership with four local universities, a community college and six school districts. Partnership for Quality Education is a collaboration of Houston A+, Texas Southern University, University of Houston, University of Houston-Downtown, University of St. Thomas and Houston Community College with the goal of restructuring teacher preparation programs so there is a unified, seamless approach to developing skills and content knowledge for teachers beginning with their college years and carrying through the first two years of teaching and beyond. The partnership also created a regional faculty of outstanding educators, business partners and members of the community; integrated technology into teacher preparation and involved content specialists as equal partners in teacher preparation.
- Creating the New Visions in Leadership Academy to show principals how to move to a distributed leadership management style that supports the New Economy model of schooling. The Leadership Academy is a two-year program for principals that provides a series of intensive institutes with nationally recognized speakers on leadership skills and issues in school reform revolving around the Houston A+ philosophy of whole school reform. Principals meet monthly in small teams and also work to meet the state of Texas Principal Certification Standards.
- Working to restructure all 24 comprehensive Houston ISD high schools to provide the skills and knowledge students need for the 21st century. Called Houston Schools for a New Society, the project is a partnership between Houston ISD and Houston A+ to accelerate change and improvement in the district’s 24 comprehensive high schools. Funded by a planning grant from the Carnegie Corporation, the schools are writing a plan to manage and implement changes around building smaller learning units within each school. Upon completion of the planning phase, Houston will apply for an implementation grant from Carnegie of up to $10 million.
- Placing K-5 mathematics specialists in the classrooms. The K-5 Mathematics Specialist Program seeks to improve student learning in mathematics by strengthening teachers’ grasp of content, their understanding of how children learn, and the best way to gather evidence around student learning. The K-5 initiative engages mathematics specialists, teachers, administrators and parents in research based, nationally recognized professional development. Students learn how to make sense out of the numbers they see. Together, teachers and specialists create classroom opportunities for all children to acquire more than a rote memorization of math. The program is a partnership between ExxonMobil, Houston ISD and Houston A+.
- Creating Passport to Success, a pilot after-school program that provides an outstanding opportunity to improve academic performance of participating children. From 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day, children participate in a variety of activities ranging from homework and computer labs to art projects, journal writing and leisure reading. The program is offered at eight area schools and includes field trips each month, whole family retreats and parent classes.
- Critical Friends Groups provide an avenue for teachers and administrators to create what researchers call “professional learning communities.” In the program, teachers collaborate with each other to deepen their knowledge of academic subject matter and examine their teaching practices. More than 400 Critical Friends coaches have been trained to date.
Phase III
The six-year seed money from the Annenberg Foundation, which established the Houston A+ Challenge in 1997 along with major contributions from Houston Endowment Incorporated and the Brown Foundation, expired in December 2002. The Annenberg Foundation awarded another $20 million and the Brown Foundation gave another $10 million to continue the work for five more years. Coupled with $12 million from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Houston A+ has raised more than $100 million to move schools to new models where learning is personal, hands-on and based in the real-world. In 2003, Houston A+ embarked on these additional initiatives:
- Partner with 14 high schools in three districts (Alief, Humble and Spring Branch) in the 21st Century High School Redesign to restructure schools into small learning communities with rigorous, personalized education.
- Create a K-5 Fine Arts model that integrates fine arts into core academic classes in elementary schools.
- Expand Community Engagement to bring student perspective into the high school work
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