RMC's involvement in education reform dates to our accountability support for Title I services in the 1970s. Continually involved in refining and implementing educational policies, we have operated federal technical assistance and comprehensive centers from 1978 to the present and engaged with states on large-scale reforms of schools and districts in need of improvement. In addition to supporting leadership and building organizational capacity through ongoing policy consultation and professional development, we focus on teaching and learning, developing supports for effective instruction in key disciplines such as literacy and mathematics. We also offer support for policy innovations such as charter schools and supplemental educational services. See also Best Practices and Innovation.

Highlights:

New England Comprehensive Center
RMC leads the New England Comprehensive Center, a federally funded regional technical assistance center, in partnership with Education Development Center, Learning Innovations at WestEd, and The Education Alliance at Brown University. The Center works with state education leaders on regional initiatives to create and sustain statewide systems of support and advance student literacy and numeracy; in response to requests, the Center also works on state-specific initiatives such as RTI, English language learning, accountability, literacy, and quantitative literacy.

Supplemental Educational Services in New York
RMC has provided technical assistance and support to the New York State Education Department in its oversight of Supplemental Educational Services for students in under-performing schools who need additional academic assistance. We also designed and conducted an evaluation of all Supplemental Educational Services provided in the state.

New York Statewide System of Support
In our work with the New York State Department of Education under a New York Comprehensive Center project, RMC collaborated with the EducationCounsel LLC to assist the Department in designing comprehensive recommendations for its system of school and district support and accountability. The work drew on staff knowledge of instructional practices, school improvement, district capacity building, research findings, and best practices in state systems of support to analyze New York's system of support in light of federal mandates.

Single Sex Schools Evaluation
To study the effects of public single-sex schools, RMC convened expert panels and collected other professional input, then collected student data from an Internet survey and from school and classroom observations. The project compared the effects of single-sex schools on males and females.

Northeast Regional Educational Laboratory
For ten years RMC was a partner in the Northeast Region and Islands Regional Laboratory (the LAB), created by the U.S. Department of Education to ensure that state, local, and regional educators have access to the best available research and practical knowledge of school improvement. With the Education Alliance at Brown University, RMC documented and analyzed emerging state and district responses to No Child Left Behind, specifically those designed to improve low-performing schools. Read the policy report on Leadership in Complex Environments.

Other work:

• Massachusetts Charter School Accountability Inspections
• Management of the Blue Ribbon Schools Program involves conducting and documenting site visits to exemplary high-poverty, high-achieving schools across the country