I do believe that merely accumulating hours or other measurement of participation does not equal improvement in instruction, and we took our measure by focusiing on what was happening in the classroom. Sabra Lee, our outside evaluator from the Program Evaluation and Research Group at Lesley University, actually conducted two evaluations for us. One evaluation was to meet HRI requirements and the second was to address our own questions. We funded PERG for the additional time and received two separate reports. Sabra used a matrix of multiple tools including classroom observations and teacher inteviews to measure program results. The feedback told us what went well, what had impact and what did not show evidence of changes in instruction. We also had nearly 500 teachers who operated on site at 60 schools in some capacity as teacher leaders. These folks became our eyes and ears regarding day to day happening in the classrooms of their schools.

Our gains in elementary mathematics were the most observable. Teacher leaders gave significant evidence of gains. Teacher interest and request for "next steps" also came so rapidly we could barely keep up. We had to train 20 additional teacher leaders to help deliver the classes. We also had encouraging student data. Our SAT scores went up in every grade every year of the project.

Elementary science was not as successful, for a variety of reasons. One shortfall was the failure to use teacher leaders as effectively in science as we did in math.

As to goal "d" ANY gain in our very conservative community would has been cause for celebration! Later today Perry Montoya, who has coordinated this part of the project, will add his thoughts. Thanks, Larry, for challenging us.