Developmental Studies Center


Center for the Collaborative Classroom is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Alameda, CA that was founded in 1980 by Eric Schaps. Collaborative Classroom develops and disseminates literacy and community-building programs for use in elementary schools, and literacy, mathematics, and science enrichment programs for use in after-school environments, as well as provides professional development services tailored to each program. Collaborative Classroom develops its programs with the goal of helping schools and after-school sites create caring, supportive learning environments that help all children acquire the academic skills they need to be productive and successful, and as well as build and deepen their understanding of, and commitment to, values such as kindness, helpfulness, personal responsibility, and respect for others.
Collaborative Classroom reaches over 25,000 new classrooms each year and supports itself largely through earned revenues. Collaborative Classroom's programs have been adopted in over 4,000 schools and 5,000 after-school sites across the United States, including Title I schools serving low-income and minority youth. Collaborative Classroom’s lessons are designed so that the students are the ones doing the hard work of thinking, talking, and interacting in the classroom. Teachers learn how to increase student talk time, ask more and tell less, and acquire a broad cache of effective teaching strategies on which to draw. The lessons are designed to tap into students' innate motivation and curiosity and to engage 100% of the students 100% of the time. Rigorous evaluation studies have shown that Collaborative Classroom’s programs improve students’ academic achievement, strengthen their pro-social inclinations and skills, and reduce their involvement in problem behaviors including drug and alcohol use.

Mission and Research

A nonprofit institution since 1980, Collaborative Classroom’s work has been supported by $85,000,000 in grants from over . That funding has enabled Collaborative Classroom’s mission of developing educational materials that promote academic learning while also fostering children’s social, emotional, and ethical growth. Over the past ten years, the effectiveness and scalability of Collaborative Classroom’s programs have driven a 2000% increase in the rate at which the programs are adopted by schools and districts. In turn, that increased adoption rate has driven a near-complete reversal from grant dependence to organizational self-sufficiency. These programs have been and have been recognized as exemplary by, among others, the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Character Education Partnership, and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.
Formative evaluation is key to the creation of all of Collaborative Classroom’s programs. Programs are developed with extensive feedback from panels of teachers who pilot program lessons. The lessons are revised based on feedback and on classroom observations. The revised lessons are then field-tested by entire faculties in a diverse set of schools, and are again revised before final publication.
Through questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and/or focus groups, Collaborative Classroom's research department conducts ongoing evaluations of staff development offerings and selected program implementation efforts. Collaborative Classroom also collaborates with third-party evaluators to conduct comprehensive outcome evaluations of its programs that assess the programs' effects on students' academic achievement and social/ethical growth. These have shown that when well implemented, Collaborative Classroom’s programs have powerful positive effects on students, including strengthening their motivation to learn, promoting their academic achievement, and fostering their growth as caring and principled human beings.
A major evaluation of its community-building program for elementary schools, conducted in the 1990s in six school districts nationally, found that students in high-implementing schools, relative to their comparison school counterparts, showed:
A summary of this study is reported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped fund the evaluation.
Significantly, a follow-up study tracked students from both program and comparison schools through the middle grades and showed that the program had lasting effects on school success and high-risk behavior: While in middle school, former program students showed:
Collaborative Classroom’s programs incorporate the latest research on effective teaching and learning and are aligned with national standards and those of key states. For in-school use, Collaborative Classroom has created language arts programs that focus on decoding, reading comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. Collaborative Classroom has also developed reading, mathematics, and science enrichment programs specifically designed for use in after-school environments. Aligned professional development is offered for each of these programs.
The major finding of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health was summarized as follows: “Attachment to school and family serve as protective factors against drugs, alcohol use, and violence. The most powerful predictor of adolescent well being is a feeling of connection to school.” The importance of “connectedness” and experiencing a strong “sense of community” in school has been amply documented. For example, compared to more affluent children, low-income children and children of color typically experience less of a “sense of community” in school—less of a sense of connectedness to peers and adults, and less sense of having “voice and choice” during the school day Research further shows that having such feelings of belonging and connectedness are extremely important for all domains of learning. For example, strengthening sense of community significantly enhances academic motivation and achievement; enhances ethical, social, and emotional development; and reduces the tendency to engage in problem behaviors. Strengthening sense of community also promotes school bonding—students’ affective commitment to the school and its goals and values. Each of Collaborative Classroom’s programs integrates a focus on building academic understanding and skills with strategies for creating inclusive classroom and after-school communities characterized by caring connections among students, between teachers and students, and between school and home. Regular use of cooperative learning strategies—partner and small group work—offers students opportunities to work together and learn about, practice, and consciously reflect on values such as personal responsibility, respect, fairness, caring, and helpfulness. Cooperative learning activities also help students build connections to each other and foster their sense of belonging to a school community in which they experience themselves as valued and contributing members.
Collaborative Classroom’s Program Principles guide its development of instructional programs that:
Collaborative Classroom has created research-based in-school programs that are designed to support teachers’ learning as well as students’, so that teachers with varying levels of experience can implement them successfully. These programs include:
Collaborative Classroom offers after-school enrichment programs that are focused on reading, math, and science. Specifically designed for out-of-school settings, these programs provide opportunities to build academic skills in ways that don’t feel like school. These programs include:
Collaborative Classroom supports each of its programs with tailored professional development services that have been fashioned to be seamlessly integrated. Professional development is provided by educators who themselves are experienced, skilled program implementers, providing workshops, follow-up visits, and online courses that offer both conceptual and practical guidance.

Funders

Collaborative Classroom has been funded by the following:
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