Description:
The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) established 10 Common Principles meant to serve as a guide for all schools in the process of re-imagining education. CES believes large- Scale reform of public education begins with individual schools that serve as mentors for others in their dedication to these Principles, which include High Expectations school-wide, personlization, depth over breadth in the acquisition of skills, decency and trust, democracy and equity, commitment and dedication to building intellectual Capacity. (http://www.essentialschools.org/pub/ces_docs/about/phil/10cps/10cps.html)

CES aims not only to increase the number of individual schools regional centers that are working effectively, but to continuously improve upon them as well as increase the amount of exchange of knowledge and ideas that occurs between members of the network. This is also meant to help change public opinion and influence Policy makers. (www.essentialschools.org)

Goal:
"Our mission is to create and sustain equitable, intellectually vibrant, personalized schools and to make such schools the norm of American public education."

(Coalition of Essential Schools Mission Statement, retrieved January 24, 2004 from http://www.essentialschools.org/pub/ces_docs/about/about.html)

The Coalition sees school reform as an inescapably local phenomenon, the outcome of groups of people working together, building a shared vision and drawing on the community's strengths, history, and local flavor. The Common Principles are meant to guide the school in setting priorities and designing practice, as each school develops its own programs, suited to its particular students, faculty, and community. (http://www.essentialschools.org/pub/ces_docs/about/about.html)

Approach:
Although CES schools are all guided by the same Common Principles, each has a responsibility to shape its reform in a way that meets the needs of its students, faculty and community members. National and regional centers assist schools in this process by providing support in the following areas:

1. Design and Organizational Practices: CES assists schools in negotiating the process of designing a new program reflective of the Common Principles through summer institutes on school design, Implementation assessment Workshops, CES University courses, and year-round consultation and facilitation.
2. Classroom Practice: In CES schools the job of a teacher is not to deliver information but to act as a facilitator in the investigation of knowledge. Developing a professional Learning Community is considered key for teachers to begin and continue exploring this process. They develop Inquiry Groups, become involved in Peer Coaching Training, make visits to like-minded schools and take courses on topics such as "Inquiry-Based Instruction" at CES University.
3. Leadership: Collaborative practice is also considered key to effective leadership. School leaders set a tone of equity, trust and decency when participating in truly democratic methods of decision-making. CES also believes that teachers are key school leaders and should be respected and valued as such. Services to improve leadership in CES schools include Principals Institutes, School Leadership Institutes, Cross-School Collaboration Groups, Leadership Team Meetings and CES University courses in leadership, democratic practice and managing change.
4. Community Connections: Community members are considered important to the intellectual life of the school. CES builds connections between communities and schools by facilitating Community Engagement Events and School-Community Partnerships. CES University also offers courses on various aspects of the roles an outside community can play within a school.
   

(www.essentialschools.org)

CES offers the option of creating a free interactive account at http://www.essentialschools.org/cs/homebase/register. This feature allows for further exploration of CES events, projects and resources.

A list of benchmarks designed to help schools understand and implement the Common Principles effectively is also available through the site at http://www.essentialschools.org/pdfs/benchmarks_2000.pdf.

Connection with other Organizations:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sponsoring CES's Small Schools initiative, a five year plan to strengthen its resources and networks, improve upon selected CES schools and create 10 new small high schools.

research:
A study of 22 CES grant schools from Ohio, Maine, Michigan and Massachusetts compared standardized test scores from 1999-2000 with state averages. Although the data provided by this study allowed for initial observations, in some cases it was not sufficient to draw conclusions about the progress of the schools. It did show, however, that the percentage of students from CES schools passing standardized tests increased substantially from the initial year of testing. Many of the schools showed progress in closing the gap between the number of their students passing the tests and the state average (schools in the study started out with students who typically did not test well). Some schools closed the gap and even surpassed the state average (www.essentialschools.org).

Other studies have shown that it can be difficult to put the Common Principles in practice in comprehensive high schools, but even in schools where CES has not been fully implemented select teachers have profoundly altered their classroom practice (www.ael.org).

The Coalition of Essential Schools shares many characteristics with The Center for Effective Schools. Each organization examined and conducted research to identify common aspects of successful schools in order to develop their essential set of correlates or guiding principles. There is a certain amount of universality to these principles, various expressions of which can be found in a number of different reform programs (Written by Alanna Howe).

Costs:
The ninth Coalition principle suggests that expenditures in essential schools should not exceed those of traditional high schools by more than 10%. On that basis, an essential school with 500 students receiving $5,000 per student might spend as much as $250,000 per year. The vast majority of that money would not go directly to the Coalition, however, but would be used to lower the pupil/teacher ratio, provide extra planning time for teachers, etc. In most cases, however, essential schools spend far less, either because they start with a core group of teachers rather than a schoolwide implementation or they implement selected principles rather than all 10. As for direct costs, fees vary from regional center to regional center, but a full range of programs and services including regular on-site coaching, networking meetings, regional conferences, Trek summer institutes and "critical friends" school visits, workshops and seminars on curriculum/assessment/instruction, and evaluation of school progress would cost approximately $50,000 per year.

(Retrieved January 26, 2004 from http://www.ael.org/rel/csr/catalog/coalition.htm)

Implementation Sites:
A complete list of affiliate schools with contact information is available through the website at: Essential Schools