Professor Donald Peurach, new to the Department of Leadership and Counseling, negotiated a National Science Foundation (NSF) sub-grant of $50,000 with the University of Michigan. Peurach, who completed his Ph.D. at U-M in 2005, explained that the grant will be used to support continued involvement in the Study of Instructional Improvement (SII) at the University of Michigan. SII is a longitudinal, mixed methods study of three of the most widely adopted comprehensive school reform programs in the United States:

• Success for All (SFA)
• America’s Choice (AC)
• Accelerated Schools Project (ASP)

SII consists of three primary components: a survey component involving 120 schools; one case study component involving 12 schools; and a second case study component focused on the design and organization of the three participating programs. Spanning components, the primary research focus is understanding efforts to increase the academic achievement of at-risk students by improving the day-to-day work of regular classroom instruction. Peurach began work as a researcher on SII during its initial conceptualization in 1996, and he will continue working on SII through its analysis and dissemination phase in 2007.

The primary findings of SII, explained Peurach, suggest possibility for making meaningful change in instructional practice and student achievement in schools serving large populations of at-risk students. At the same time, developing and supporting effective designs for improvement has proven to be exceedingly complex work. Findings from SII are expected to be of central interest to policy makers, program developers, and educational leaders committed to large-scale educational reform.

In addition to working on multiple publications summarizing research on SII, Peurach has drawn on SII data both as cutting-edge content for his educational leadership courses and to construct teaching cases for use in his courses.