$1M walkthrough; Broad Prize site visit this week

A team of national educational experts from the Broad Foundation will tour the Brownsville Independent School District this week to help decide whether BISD wins the 2008 Broad Prize for Urban Education, the nation's largest education award.

BISD is one of five finalists for the $1 million Broad Prize, the largest education prize in the nation given to a single school district. The award honors school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among ethnic groups and between high- and low-income students.

While some nervousness would be understandable, BISD Superintendent Hector Gonzales said there's really no way to prepare for the visit. Rather, the Broad team will evaluate the body of work accomplished by BISD in recent years in raising student achievement.

The weeklong site visit, which begins today, will include interviews with district officials, principals, teachers, staff, parents and community organizations, as well as classroom observations.

"They're here to see if the data they have matches what's going on here in Brownsville," Gonzales said. "They want to see it in action.

"There's no such thing as preparing, because what we do every day is what got us there," he said. "We did not close the achievement gap by manipulating data, we did it with just good, hard work."

The evaluation team is led by SchoolWorks, a national educational consulting company based in Beverly, Mass., which qualitatively analyzes district policies affecting teaching and learning according to quality criteria developed for the Broad Prize.

The criteria are grounded in research-based school and district practices found to be effective in three key areas: teaching and learning, district leadership, and operations and support systems, according to the Broad Prize Web site, www.broadprize.org.

"It's a pretty grueling process," said Erika Lepping, spokeswoman for the Broad Foundation. "There will be focus groups with teachers, both beginning and experienced, and with experienced and beginning principals, as well as district leaders of all types and kinds.

"They will interview the superintendent, school board members, union leaders, parents, leaders of community organization. They're looking for evidence of best practices and they'll ask for documentation."

At the end of the site visit, the team will prepare a series of qualitative reports for the selection jury that will select the winner.

This summer, a jury of prominent national leaders including the last two U.S. secretaries of education, former governors, CEOs and civic leaders will review student achievement data and the site visit reports and select a winner.

The 2008 Broad Prize winner will be announced Oct. 14 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that time, BISD's best practices, along with those of the other four finalist districts, will be shared with the nation in a 10-page report.

The Broad Prize winner receives $500,000 in scholarships for graduating seniors, which are given to students who demonstrate both grade improvement over their high school career and financial need. The other four finalist districts each receive $125,000 in such scholarships.

On the Web

Broad Foundation: www.broadfoundation.org

Broad Prize: www.broadprize.org