School Reform Initiative Increases Student Achievement in Kansas City, Kansas
Too Early to Tell If Replication of "First Things First" Is Working in Other Districts

(New York) — Middle and high school students in Kansas City, Kansas — where a comprehensive school reform initiative called First Things First was first adopted — registered increased rates of student attendance and graduation, reduced student dropout rates, and improved student performance on state tests of reading and mathematics, according to a new study from MDRC, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. First Things First seeks major changes in school structure, instruction, and accountability and governance policies in both middle schools and high schools with large proportions of low-income students.

Confirming and expanding on earlier studies, MDRC found that academic gains in Kansas City were sustained over several years and were pervasive across the district’s schools. Research results in four districts where First Things First was later replicated — Houston, the Riverview Gardens School District in suburban St. Louis, and two districts in Mississippi (Greenville and Shaw) — are less certain: It is not yet clear whether these expansion sites, which had operated the initiative for only two or three years at the time of the study, will achieve the impressive findings produced in Kansas City.

The study, The Challenge of Scaling Up Educational Reform: Findings and Lessons from First Things First, comes at an important time. Recent political and public focus has centered on low-performing high schools, where many students fail to graduate and where those who do are often unprepared for the challenges of postsecondary education and work. Nearly four years after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, students, schools, and school districts continue to struggle with meeting high expectations for performance in times of fiscal uncertainty.

“First Things First is a complex intervention that seeks to transform both the way schools are structured and how students learn inside those schools,” said Janet Quint, MDRC senior associate and lead author of the study. “From the outset, the Kansas City, Kansas, school district embraced First Things First, committing resources for many years, which helps account for its success.”

What Is First Things First?

Now operating in more than 70 schools in nine districts across the country, First Things First includes three central components: small learning communities of up to 350 students and their key teachers who remain together for several years; a family advocate system, in which each student is paired with a staff member who meets regularly with the student, monitors his or her progress, and works with the student’s parents to promote success; and instructional improvement efforts aimed at making lessons more engaging and rigorous, as well as better aligned with state and local standards.

Initially launched in Kansas City, Kansas, First Things First was subsequently tested in 12 middle schools and high schools in four additional districts through the Scaling Up First Things First Demonstration, a five-year research and demonstration project supported by the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education. The study is a collaboration between the Institute for Research and Reform in Education (IRRE), which developed the program model and provided support and technical assistance to the schools and districts, and MDRC, which evaluated the initiative. MDRC’s evaluation compared the performance of First Things First schools with their own past performance and with similar schools in the same districts or in other school districts in the same state.

Key Findings

Other findings from the study include:

• In Kansas City, there was a double-digit increase in the percentage of students who scored “proficient” or above and a double-digit reduction in the percentage who scored “unsatisfactory” on state tests.
• One large, highly diverse high school in Houston, where the program was especially well-implemented, registered positive effects. Otherwise, no clear pattern of positive findings emerged among the expansion schools in Houston, suburban St. Louis, or Mississippi. This may reflect the uneven implementation in these sites, the short follow-up period available for their evaluation, and the small number of high schools and middle schools in the study from each district.
• The creation of small learning communities was popular among teachers and students alike and was less challenging than changing teachers’ instructional practices. Instructional improvement efforts were implemented most fully in Kansas City.
• Implementation progressed further in settings where district and school leaders provided consistent support for the initiative and where schools received intensive technical assistance.
• IRRE, the developer of the First Things First model, has learned from both successes and challenges of implementation and continues to refine the model.

To set up an interview with an expert from MDRC, contact John Hutchins, (212) 340-8604 or john.hutchins@mdrc.org.

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Headquartered in New York City, with a regional office in Oakland, CA, MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization with 30 years of experience designing and evaluating education and social policy initiatives.