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Pathways to Success

The authors: Julie Tollefson, director of communications, and Jim Knight, research associate, Center for Research on Learning. A version of this article originally appeared in the July 2001 issue of Strategram, a newsletter for SIM teachers.

Pathways to Success, a whole-school improvement project developed and coordinated by the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, stands as a testament to the power of partnership and innovative thinking.

Students in the schools served by the project are showing encouraging gains in reading comprehension and writing skills as teachers, administrators, and KU-CRL project staff work together to help them develop the reading, writing, problem-solving, and motivational skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.

"Our big accomplishment with this project is that it shows you can bring about change on a really big scale," said Jim Knight, KU-CRL research associate and project director. "So far, we've had 141 out of 183 teachers participate. It grows on its own now."

Pathways to Success is a partnership consisting of KU-CRL, the Topeka, Kansas, public school district, and the International Telementor Center. Project staff and Topeka middle school teachers work together to offer a unique combination of targeted academic skill instruction for students, effective professional development and support for teachers, and opportunities for parents to become involved.

Pathways is funded through the U.S. Department of Education's GEAR UP program (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs). GEAR UP's mission is to significantly increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.

The project originally targeted three Topeka middle schools that reported academic scores far below average. Math scores at the schools, for example, ranged from 36 to 43, compared to the Kansas standard of excellence of 80. Economically, 65 to 83 percent of the students at the schools are disadvantaged, compared to the 31 percent state average.

Because of its success in the originally targeted schools, Pathways has expanded to include all of the middle schools in the Topeka district. It will be implemented at Topeka high schools in the 2002-2003 school year.

Pathways in the classroom

Pathways puts a spin on the traditional approach to teaching strategies. Instead of offering strategies to students with learning difficulties in a pull-out setting, most strategies instruction during this project occurs in general education classrooms with all students participating.

"The thing we've really tried to accomplish is to get good at teaching strategies to large classes and still get really good results," Knight said. "We're still working on that. We've come a long way, but we're watching the data carefully to see what works and what doesn't. It's important that we study this and validate our methods through research."

Because the Strategic Instruction Model was designed for small-group instruction, the Pathways project staff and teachers have had to make adjustments to instructional methods to teach strategies in the larger general education classes.

They have significantly increased the amount of modeling involved in learning strategies while at the same time simplifying scoring. They have developed devices to help students with the reading strategies, looked at alternate feedback structures, and created supplemental activities and games.