March 1, 2001

ibmsite.pdf

Named, in part, due to IBM Chairman and CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.'s book on educational transformation of America's public schools, Reinventing Education is a $45 million initiative to create working partnerships between major urban school districts, rural states and the IBM Corporation. More notable than the size of this corporate philanthropy is its substance: rather than just supply cash or hardware and software donations, the IBM Corporation has used the investment to engage IBM researchers, technical talent, and consulting services, along with smaller contributions of hardware, in addressing significant educational problems facing public schools.

Although the work occurring at each Reinventing Education site is as diverse as the locations are dispersed - the initiative spans the country from California to Florida and from Vermont to Texas - the overarching goal of the program has been to create lasting change leading to higher student achievement. All of these sites were selected through a competitive Request for Proposals process that looked for a commitment to change and for identified barriers that were likely to be relevant to other districts and states involved in systemic change.

CCT conducted a three-year evaluation of the Reinventing Education initiative. This evaluation, which began in spring 1998 and ran through December 2000, builds upon earlier research we performed in Winter 1997, which examined the planning process and early pilot work undertaken by each Reinventing Education site. This Report picks up from that point and looks at the Reinventing 1 sites during the period in which they moved from initial pilots to full scale implementation and it offers a preliminary look at the Reinventing 2 sites that adopted some of the emerging solutions.

The description of the process through which each project went in building upon its partnership with IBM, and the evidence of each project's institutionalization, is central to this report. Although we paid close attention to the many particulars that characterized the education reform efforts in each site -from the political climate to the geographic location, and from the way each school and district was structured to the work styles that project leaders brought to their jobs - we also looked for elements that we could generalize. As such, this report is intended not only for those whose work we have evaluated but for others engaged in education reform initiatives, especially those involving technology integration, more broadly. We have gathered important evidence about how technologies can be enlisted to address a range of difficult problems in a variety of settings, and have attempted to arrange the sections from the general to the specific.