The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Appalachia serves the applied education research needs of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. REL Appalachia has identified three priority research areas—ensuring college and career readiness, improving low-achieving schools, and supporting effective teachers and leaders. The CNA research team will focus on a targeted research agenda in these areas in partnership with research alliances of state and local school officials in our four states.
Research Alliances
The REL achieves its mission through a series of research alliances:
Ensuring College and Career Readiness
- Southern Virginia College and Career Readiness Alliance: The Southern Virginia College and Career Readiness Alliance is composed of superintendents from 15 districts located in eastern Virginia and 22 districts in central southern Virginia near Halifax. Alliance members currently are focusing on strategies to identify students at risk of dropping out and to increase access to college-level curricula and dual enrollment opportunities.
- Eastern Kentucky College and Career Readiness Collaborative: The Eastern Kentucky College and Career Readiness Collaborative is an alliance of 22 school districts that have partnered with each other and REL Appalachia through the Southeast/South Central Educational Cooperative. Superintendents and their designated staff meet monthly to discuss common challenges, with a particular interest in reducing the need for remediation at all stages of secondary education.
- Southwestern Tennessee Rural Education Cooperative: The Southwest Tennessee Rural Education Cooperative brings together 12 rural school districts, the College of Education, University of Memphis, and the Southwest Tennessee Development District, to improve college entry and persistence rates in its region. This cooperative focuses specifically on challenges particular to rural, low-income schools, including limited access to advanced courses and college counseling services.
Improving Low Achieving Schools
- Kentucky District 180: The overall goals of the Kentucky District 180 Alliance are to address staffing needs in low-achieving schools and to understand data related to school improvement processes. The alliance brings together REL Appalachia, the Office of District 180 at the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE), Kentucky's Centers for Learning Excellence (CLE), and more than 40 persistently low-achieving schools.
- Tennessee Focus Schools Alliance: The Tennessee Focus Schools Alliance includes schools designated as Focus Schools under the state's waiver from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The alliance's central goal is to narrow achievement gaps in Tennessee schools with the largest variation in academic performance among students from different subgroups.
- Virginia Turnaround Alliance: The Virginia Turnaround Alliance comprises 26 elementary, middle, and high schools identified as needing improvement, as measured by state or federal performance standards. Its goal is to develop the structures and processes necessary to build leadership and data-use capacity in low-achieving schools.
- West Virginia Turnaround Alliance: The West Virginia Turnaround Alliance is a group of 33 schools identified by the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) as in need of additional support. The REL partners with districts and the SEA to support research on professional learning communities and to identify research-based indicators of school improvement.
Supporting Effective Teachers and Leaders
- Appalachia Superintendent Network: The Appalachia Superintendents' Network is an alliance of the directors of the state superintendents' associations in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The Alliance was formed to provide information that will enable its members and constituent superintendents to improve school administration policies and processes, in particular, personnel policies related to recruiting and retaining effective teachers and principals.
Corporate Experience
CNA is a multi-disciplinary, non-profit research and analysis organization that provides solutions to a range of clients in the public sector. In addition to operating REL Appalachia, CNA Education serves as the lead evaluator for the Northeast Tennessee College and Career Ready Consortium (NETCO), funded by an Investing in Innovation (i3) validation grant. Under support from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), CNA is implementing a randomized controlled trial examining the effectiveness of a professional development program aimed at helping teachers enhance their ability to use data. In 2011, CNA Education was awarded another multi-year grant from IES to conduct research evaluating the Florida College and Career Ready Initiative (FCCRI), a program to ensure students are prepared for college and careers across the state of Florida.
Acting Lab Director:
Dr. Justin D. Baer
Governing Board
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Contractor: |
REL Appalachia Partners:
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