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 performing 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:
College and Career Readiness
- Southern Virginia College and Career Readiness Alliance: Districts in south-central Virginia near Halifax County, and districts in eastern Virginia near Norfolk will focus on dropout prevention and increasing rigorous coursework.
- Southeastern Kentucky College and Career Readiness Collaborative: Districts in Kentucky will focus on strategies for decreasing remediation rates prior to college transition.
- Southwestern Tennessee Rural Education Cooperative: Districts in Tennessee will identify successful approaches to dual enrollment models in rural settings.
Low Achieving Schools
- Kentucky District 180: This alliance, comprised of the Kentucky Department of Education and low achieving schools, will review the effects of new professional development programs on teachers and leaders and identify data available to the school improvement process.
- Tennessee High-Priority Schools: This alliance joins schools identified as high priority due to persistent low achievement and the Tennessee Department of Education to focus on strategies for recruiting and retaining teachers and comparing school improvement strategies across the region.
- Virginia Turnaround Alliance: This alliance focuses on Virginia's "Priority" and "Focus" schools to mine at-risk indicators of middle school and high school students and identify successful leadership strategies in low performing rural and urban schools.
- West Virginia Turnaround Alliance: Schools in need of improvement and the state education agency will work to identify successful student engagement and student achievement strategies, and improve use of available data to inform turnaround efforts.
Supporting Effective Teachers and Leaders
- Appalachia Superintendent Network: Leaders of superintendent associations in the four states will review research on teacher recruitment and retention strategies and on the recent changes in teacher preparation programs.
- Higher Education Leadership Network: Deans of education at nine universities and other higher education leaders in the Appalachia region will improve collaboration and leverage common interests to build a research and professional development infrastructure.
- Kentucky Leadership Networks: Kentucky Department of Education will develop large scale professional development to help teachers transition to curricula aligned with the Common Core Standards.
Corporate Experience
CNA led the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Appalachia 2006–11. CNA also is the lead evaluator for the Northeast Tennessee College and Career Ready Consortium (NETCO), an Investing in Innovation (i3) validation grant. From 2000–05, CNA led the Appalachian Technology in Education Consortium (ATEC), funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, in addition to other government and foundation funded research and evaluation.
Lab Director:
Dr. Robert D. Muller
Governing Board
|
Contractor: |
REL Appalachia Partners:
|