The San Diego Unified School District's Blueprint for Student Success is one of the most promising examples of large urban district school reform in the United States. In 2001, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation joined with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help fund the San Diego reforms. Other foundations, including Atlantic Philanthropies, Broad, and Carnegie, are also helping to support the reform effort. These grants help support the seven key elements of the district's plan:

• Improving instruction and putting more rigor into the curriculum, with powerful literacy and mathematics frameworks

• Strengthening the leadership capability of principals through professional development

• Enhancing the skills of teachers through ongoing, focused professional development and peer coaching

• Providing more high-quality materials and textbooks in the classroom

• Giving students more time to learn through extensive, targeted intervention and retention programs, and expanded summer school offerings

• Increasing parent and community involvement with Parent University, before- and after-school programs, preschool services, and other strategies

• Marshaling data and information systematically to ensure district-wide accountability

The San Diego Unified School District has put in place a curriculum framework for literacy in all grades, provided numerous hours of professional development to teachers, placed peer coaches in every school, developed a leadership academy to train new administrators, implemented an extended-day reading grant, doubled summer school instruction, and created specific classroom supports and classes for students needing more time to learn.  The Foundation hopes this work will serve as a model for other urban districts around the country, as well as show that improving student achievement requires a dedicated and sustained effort within schools, in addition to strong public and private support.

San Diego Unified commissioned a three-year evaluation of the first phase of the Blueprint reforms conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). AIR explored the extent to which basic elements of the Blueprint were implemented throughout the district and how the reforms contributed to student achievement  in their evaluations of the First Year and  Second Year. In 2003, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) published a baseline evaluation of student achivement in San Diego before the beginning of reforms, Determinants of Student Achievement (also available as a research brief). Future PPIC reports will directly assess the effect of the Blueprint. These studies, together with future evaluations, will provide a rich picture of the progress and results of the first years of the San Diego reforms. 

A second major evaluation, begun in 2004, is funded by the Hewlett Foundation, Gates Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. In this deep and extensive study, AIR will examine the relationships between the specific reform strategies and improved student achievement.  Researchers will study leadership roles, professional development and teacher support, the depth of classroom implementation, and the alignment of central office operations and resources in support of instruction. AIR also will draw on statewide assessment data to estimate growth for San Diego students in comparison to those attending similar schools in other urban districts in California. The AIR proposal for this evaluation is available here.

For more information about the San Diego Unified School District and its reform efforts, please visit the District's website.