The IMPACT 2012 Initiative   

Impact 2012 Overview
Impact 2012 develops skills to embed formative assessment in classrooms and schools to target instruction to meet every student’s needs and accelerate learning toward grade-level standards.  Features include:

• Team-based professional learning in formative assessment and instructional interventions.
• Site-based year-long professional development for Inquiry Teams of principals and lead teachers. 
• Literacy/ELA and/or Algebra content focuses.
• Planning support for school-wide initiatives based on formative assessment learning.

Focal Student Strategy
Impact 2012 teachers and leaders make a commitment to learn from a small, representative group of high-need focal students to get better at meeting every student’s needs.  Participants follow a formative assessment and intervention cycle to understand the learning gaps at the root of low grades and test scores. Through this guided inquiry process, teachers develop their powers of instructional decision-making, and students make concrete, dramatic progress. Successful approaches used with focal students inform instructional planning across the school.

What Participants are Saying
It really changed my classroom in a positive way that wasn't difficult for me to do. And students came to understand assessment as a time for me to learn from them. Traditionally, they try to hide what they don't know. But they're much more comfortable now with really showing me where they need help. It's not a punitive process anymore. My classroom has changed from "teach and test" to a "partnership of learning." - Middle School teacher

I've been at [my school] for five years and this project was the first time my department met as a team with concrete and productive goals. It was a great advantage having a coach who knows and understands our work. - High School teacher

Now we are talking about what's going to drive us to the next level. There is a lot of urgency among teachers around what to teach next, but less time has been made available for assessments and getting at the real learning gaps. Impact 2012 has changed the dialogue and placed it solidly on real student learning. - High School Principal

Read a transcript of a Roundtable Discussion of teachers and principals who joined the program last year and made remarkable progress.

Results and Evaluation
The SRN/LEADS Center at Stanford University has completed an evaluation of the first year of Impact 2012. Download the full evaluation report here. Among its key findings are:

• Impact 2012 schools gained an average of 42 points on California's Academic Performance Index, which represents a very large increase.
• Impact 2012 schools show a pattern of improvement in student achievement on California Standards Tests (CSTs) overall and in English and Algebra 1 specifically.
• In case study schools, Impact 2012 teachers more closely examined students' learning styles and used formative assessments to gauge student progress.
  

How to Participate
Participating schools assemble an Inquiry Team consisting of the principal, up to four teachers from the target subject areas, and other school leadership. An Impact 2012 Coach works with the Inquiry Team in regular meetings to provide professional learning on assessing focal students, instructional interventions to help improve those students' achievement, embedding formative assessment in classroom instruction, and scaling practices across the school.

BayCES currently has openings for districts and schools to participate in Impact 2012 in 2010-11. For more information, please contact Tom Malarkey, Project Director, at 510-208-0160 x318 or email tom (at) bayces.org.

Program fees vary according to school circumstances.  Please consider using federal Title I and IDEA funds from the stimulus bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA).

The IMPACT 2012 Initiative is made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and additional funding from the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation, The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the Y&H Soda Foundation.