The Evolution of an Urban Community School-University Partnership Striving for Sustained School Improvement: A Project Report

1. Introduction

The public education system in the United States is beset by numerous challenges, including chronic absenteeism [1], declining scores on national tests of academic achievement [2,3], and teacher shortages [4]. The challenges are to some degree interconnected, raising the question of how interventions that address them can be coordinated while also accounting for each challenge’s unique features, including the contexts in which they occur.

For instance, urban schools in low-resource communities face numerous challenges that make sustained improvement difficult (e.g., frequent staff turnover and relatively inexperienced teachers) [5]. Officials charged with addressing this matter must determine which interventions merit investment, considering factors such as external pressures to deliver quick, positive results; the intervention's cost; available space to support an initiative; and its impact on existing resources, including personnel who may be tasked with new responsibilities. Given that public urban schools in the United States operate primarily under local rather than federal control, a one-size-fits-all, top-down solution is unlikely. Instead, unique local initiatives may be the best viable options.

Two paramount considerations for a local initiative beyond its effectiveness are its efficiency and sustainability. An effective intervention meets an established objective measure of success, while an efficient intervention is an effective intervention that involves relatively fewer resources than other effective interventions. Ideally, the most efficient intervention available is implemented [6].

A sustainable intervention is one that can be unhesitatingly continued. Employing new interventions that use readily available resources that have not been tapped previously, rather than adding unique resources that may not be available beyond an established timeframe, increases the likelihood that the intervention will be sustained. In the United States, time-limited grants are used routinely to address educational challenges, but the interventions they support may end when the grant expires. An example is the federally funded high-dosage tutoring schools accessed to accelerate their students’ learning following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, interventions based on available resources are sometimes viewed more favorably by philanthropists seeking to support long-term endeavors. These supporters seek evidence that a benefactor has established a way to begin helping themselves before asking for someone else’s assistance.

This paper reports on an initiative that has accounted for many of the variables discussed above. The project involves an urban public community school-university partnership aimed at two interrelated concerns identified by the school and university: improving the elementary school's academic performance while simultaneously addressing other long-term challenges to the education profession (e.g., increasing enrollment in teacher preparation programs) that may lead to sustained urban school improvement if appropriately resolved.

The project has been developed systematically, using evidence-based protocols and instructional strategies to craft a multi-component intervention, a practice which is commonplace within education [7,8]. The initiative involved creating a teacher academy whose members – upper elementary students at the school - learned about the teaching profession while providing supplemental beginning reading instruction to first-grade students as part of the school’s multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS). The academy’s participants simultaneously acquired knowledge about the science of learning that they could apply to themselves.

Accordingly, after discussing the project’s participants, this paper explains the project’s foundational evidence-based approaches: (a) a multi-tiered system of supports, (b) literacy instruction predicated on the science of reading, (c) tutoring, (d) principles from cognitive science, and (e) high-leverage practices for teacher preparation. Then, lessons learned from the project are presented, along with a discussion about its continued development. Altogether, this project report provides one example of a small-scale, sustainable endeavor that has logically and systematically addressed an urban school’s challenges and may serve as a model for replication at a similar or larger scale.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Participants

2.1.1. Urban Community School and Regional Comprehensive University

The project has been developed and implemented in an elementary urban community school in the southeastern United States. The school serves 538 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. Just over 89% of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. According to the most recent state assessment results, 34% of third-grade students met or exceeded grade-level expectations in English/language arts, and 39% met or exceeded grade-level expectations in mathematics. Grade 3 involves the first publicly reported proficiency results on the state assessment. The state assessment for K-2 does not involve proficiency rates because the assessment is designed as a progress-monitoring tool.

The school has operated as a community school for the past eleven years, and will continue in this capacity for the 2026-2027 school year. Being designated a community school enables it to access additional funding for support services; hence, the school partly serves as a social services hub for the students and families in the school’s attendance zone. For instance, the school houses a medical clinic that can be accessed by all citizens ages 18 or younger in the attendance zone, and provides targeted nutritional resources to families in need. Still, the school’s academic intervention resources are limited relative to their students’ needs, which is a challenge faced by many schools [9].

The regional, comprehensive public university located in the same city partnered with the school. The university’s enrollment slightly exceeds 15,000 students, and its School of Education offers coursework leading to certification as a general or special education teacher.

2.1.2. Creation and Operation of a Teacher Academy

After collaborating for two school years on an after-school tutoring program, the school’s administration and a special education professor from the university who led the tutoring sought to expand the program to achieve a larger schoolwide impact. The school focused on addressing a void: providing early intervening services in reading and mathematics to their lower elementary students. The university’s School of Education sought to establish a practicum site for preservice teacher candidates, continue efforts at developing partnerships with local public school districts, and address declining enrollment in its traditional teacher preparation program.

The agreed-upon solution was creating a multifaceted Teacher Academy at the community school. At its outset, the academy would provide participants with experiences for exploring the teaching profession and present supplemental reading instruction to first-grade students.

Thirty-four 3^rd to 5^th-grade students completed an application to join the Teacher Academy. Afterward, each student’s teacher submitted a recommendation to the school’s administration. They narrowed the 34 candidates to 18 based on meeting the criteria of good grades, current leadership roles, and citizenship.

The selected students, referred to as Teacher Academy Leaders, met with the assistant principal twice monthly on Wednesdays. They discussed the role of a general education teacher, highlighting the characteristics of effective classroom teachers. Those characteristics included being knowledgeable about the subject matter being taught, establishing a classroom management protocol based on reward systems, creating expectations, properly addressing disruptive students, modeling expectations, and using a loud, confident voice. Role-play scenarios permitted the leaders to practice some skills.

Additionally, leadership roles were created and filled by the teacher academy participants. The roles included serving as judges for the school’s first-grade Black History Project, presenting morning announcements, performing as peer-to-peer mentors, and fulfilling roles during the bi-monthly meetings (e.g., master facilitator, secretary, and timekeeper).

The special education professor from the university’s School of Education participated by helping to coordinate the academy’s selection criteria and organizing, then presenting, tier 2 supplemental instruction in the school’s MTSS (see the discussion below). This instruction aligns with the nation’s federal law that mostly directs special education service delivery in public schools, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) [10], and its early intervening services (EIS) provision. EIS is to be provided to students in kindergarten through grade 12 who have not been identified as needing special education services, but who need additional academic or behavioral support to succeed in general education. EIS is to be prioritized for students in kindergarten through third grade [11].

The Teacher Academy Leaders worked weekly, either individually or in pairs or trios, under the professor’s supervision, providing supplemental tier 2 services to first-grade students. These are regarded as tutoring services involving intensified beginning reading instruction.

2.2. Foundational Evidence-Based Components

Multiple evidence-based components comprise the project’s foundation: (a) a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS), (b) literacy instruction predicated on the science of reading, (c) tutoring, (d) fundamental principles of learning from cognitive science, and (e) high-leverage practices for teacher preparation. Each is discussed below.

2.2.1. The MTSS Framework

The Teacher Academy Leaders worked weekly, either individually or in pairs or trios, under the professor’s supervision, providing supplemental tier 2 services to first-grade students. These are regarded as tutoring services involving intensified beginning reading instruction.

The MTSS framework has gained widespread attention and adoption in the United States. All 50 states have expressed varying levels of support for it [12]. It has been identified as a particularly appropriate mechanism for addressing the needs of English language learners and students with disabilities [13].

Interventions within an MTSS framework are described in terms of tiers, and the framework is intended to address students’ academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs. However, for clarity, this paper discusses an MTSS only with respect to academic instruction.

A commonly described framework involves three tiers. Tier 1 is described as high-quality instruction for teaching the core curriculum, posited to be effective for at least 80% of students. Tier 2 refers to supplemental instruction for 20% of students who do not demonstrate adequate academic achievement after receiving Tier 1 instruction. Tier 3 is also supplemental instruction, and it is only provided to about 5% of students – the ones whose academic achievement deficit is not remediated with supplemental Tier 2 instruction [5].

A key feature is intensifying instruction as students receive the services available in higher-level tiers. Intensifying instruction involves adapting alterable instructional variables to create a more individualized intervention than previously provided, with the expectation that the new intervention will be more effective [14].

Advocates advise that initial efforts implementing an MTSS should focus on continuing a school’s effective, relevant practices so that staff do not view the framework as a new add-on initiative. Additionally, it has been referred to as an all-hands-on-deck evolution, meaning that every resource within the framework must be considered, as students’ needs often exceed available resources [15].

Several noteworthy challenges include identifying the criteria for moving a student across tiers, creating a master schedule that enables students to receive all their instruction (e.g., supplemental tier 2 plus tier 1), and identifying personnel who can present intensive instruction [16].

The school’s long-standing MTSS framework followed a typical three-tier structure [5,16]. Hence, students who receive Tier 1 instruction but do not demonstrate adequate academic achievement on progress monitoring measures receive supplemental instruction. In this project, the supplemental instruction mirrored short-burst tutoring [17,18].

The supplemental instruction entailed intensifying a student’s tier 1 instruction. In this project, the intensification process was guided by the National Center on Intensive Intervention’s (NCII) data-based individualization (DBI) protocol [19]. DBI’s data-driven decision-making process, particularly the screening/progress monitoring and diagnostic assessment components, allowed the school to identify the students who were not sufficiently responsive to tier 1 services and the skills they needed to master.

Furthermore, the altered instructional variables included increasing each student’s dosage in terms of their allocated time in reading instruction, changing their instructional format (i.e., the pupil:teacher ratio was significantly reduced), increasing the number of elements of an explicit instruction approach comprising a lesson, and monitoring the number of opportunities to respond and receive immediate feedback per session [20]. The intensified instruction was adapted to exceed an established effectiveness standard of three to five opportunities to practice a skill per minute [21].

2.2.2. Evidence-Based Beginning Reading Instruction

Reading is fundamental to a student’s school and post-school success. Kame’enui and colleagues remarked, “reading opens up the world for children and is the doorway for learning. Unlike any other ability, the ability to read allows access to the collective knowledge, history, and experiences of our shared symbolic humanity” [22] (p. 54). Consequently, when a student struggles to learn to read, educators must act with urgency.

Seminal work has established the subject matter that students must be taught to learn to read [23,24]. The content comprises the five pillars of beginning reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This work is part of the science of reading, which refers to multiple high-quality studies that have identified the critical content that beginning readers must learn to become proficient readers, as well as the effective interventions for teaching it.

The project implemented Foundations [25], an evidence-based program that presents content that addresses the five pillars of beginning reading instruction, as well as writing instruction. The program’s design allows it to be used for tier 1 core curriculum instruction presented in a general education classroom and for a student’s adapted, supplemental tier 2 instruction within the school’s MTSS framework. The content is presented systematically through a kindergarten-to-second-grade scope and sequence. Additionally, the same content presentation routine is followed in each unit of instruction.

An explicit instruction approach was the instructional strategy used to teach the content in the supplemental tier 2 lessons. Explicit instruction is an evidence-based practice [26,27,28,29] that has been identified as the default approach for students with disabilities and those demonstrating ongoing learning challenges [30]. Below, key features of this approach are listed.

• Teaching the content in small amounts to prevent cognitive overload [31,32]. No more than two new skills were taught in any lesson;
• Following a routine that involved an opening, body, and closing. Key features of the opening included stating the lesson’s targeted learning outcome and retrieval practice of prerequisite skills. The body consisted of a teacher demonstration with a think-aloud, guided practice, and checks for understanding to determine if independent work could be assigned during the closing. A review of the lesson’s main activities and a preview of the next day’s lesson were presented in the closing. Also, the student was assigned independent practice if they demonstrated at least 80% correct independent responding during a check for understanding;
• Spaced, cumulative, mixed, retrieval practice occurred daily to ensure maintenance of previously acquired skills [33,34];
• The lessons sought to maximize the students’ active responding followed by immediate feedback within a relatively short timeframe (i.e., 10 to 15 minutes). This arrangement allowed the Teacher Academy Leaders to learn that 10 minutes of daily instruction amounts to 30 hours across a 180-day school year. Furthermore, when students receive 3 to 5 opportunities to respond per minute, a rate associated with effective instruction [21], the students can perform 5,400 to 9,000 active responses during a school year. This outcome is important to students who demonstrate significant, persistent academic achievement deficits and may need 10 to 30 times as many practice opportunities to learn a skill as their typically developing peers [35];
• The instructor maintained a sufficiently brisk pace by adhering to a prewritten lesson plan, having instructional materials prepared and with him, not engaging in digressions (e.g., making comments about unrelated topics), and proceeding to the next task after a student made an appropriate response.

The lesson structure was developed during similar reading and mathematics tutoring sessions presented over the previous two school years by the participating special education professor and the students he supervised from the university’s undergraduate research program. The structure mirrors an intervention described by Loeb [36] and is the type of arrangement Archer [37] argued should be used for initial preservice teacher training. The previous two years’ work also informed decisions about the location, time of day, and instructional groupings for the Teacher Academy.

Initially, the program was limited to three first-grade students. This arrangement was intentional, based on the university professor’s research about other successful tutoring initiatives [38]. More tutees will be systematically added as the Teacher Academy Leaders become skilled at presenting instruction.

2.2.3. Tutoring

The supplemental instruction provided through the Teacher Academy was an iteration of the after-school tutoring from the previous two school years. Tutoring refers to instruction presented by a person, referred to as a tutor, to one or a small group of students (i.e., tutees) to target an instructional need that is not being addressed satisfactorily in the tutee’s existing school program.

Robinson and Loeb remarked about the extensive research that has documented tutoring’s effectiveness: “Research consistently demonstrates that tutoring interventions have substantial positive effects on student learning” [39] (p. 1). Students have demonstrated learning gains across content areas and grade levels [40], through more than 150 randomized trial studies [41]. An important research finding for the project discussed herein is the positive outcomes that have been reported for students in schools serving communities with low SES households [42].

The project aims to provide high-impact tutoring. The features of this tutoring that are evident in this project are listed next.

• At least three sessions per week of 30-50 minutes, which can be adjusted to be developmentally appropriate (i.e., shorter sessions for younger students) [17,18,43];
• Tutoring sessions that are embedded in the school day;
• Small group size (ideally one-on-one but no more than four students in a small group);
• Use of high-quality instructional materials and curricula aligned with the tutees’ general education classroom instruction;
• Consistent tutors who build beneficial relationships with their tutees;
• The provision of coaching to the tutors, as well as ongoing, proper oversight; and;
• Data-informed instruction that includes identifying students’ needs and formative assessments [39,44].

2.2.4. Science of Learning

The science of learning refers to the body of research that has identified the behaviors students must engage in to learn new content. Appropriately managing working memory, engaging in relatively high rates of active responding, and completing proper practice (judicious, spaced, cumulative/interleaved/mixed, and retrieval) comprise the most essential behaviors [45].

Hence, fundamental learning principles established through cognitive science research have been followed in this project to teach beginning reading skills [31,32,46]. To account for students’ limited working memory, the content is chunked so that one or two new skills are taught in a lesson. Students are required to engage in judicious practice involving overt responses, which are followed immediately by affirmative or informative, corrective feedback. Students read and write connected text to ensure that any isolated skills they master generalize to conditions that are present in their general education classroom. Finally, spaced, cumulative, mixed, retrieval practice of mastered skills is presented in each lesson to ensure skill maintenance [33,34].

2.2.5. High-Leverage Practices for Preservice Teacher Preparation

High-leverage practices refer to a limited number of key practices that capture the heart of effective teaching. Moreover, these practices function as the foundation for practice-based teacher education. Explicit instruction, data-based decision-making, and intensifying instruction are central high-leverage practices for students with learning challenges and, therefore, must be mastered by the teachers who will instruct them [47].

Central to effective preservice teacher education programming is acknowledging that aspiring teachers learn similarly to the students they teach, meaning aspiring teachers need multiple opportunities to engage in the high-leverage practices while receiving feedback to master them [48,49]. This occurs in the project through the coaching provided by the university professor to the Teacher Academy Leaders.

3. Results

The results involve lessons learned from the project’s evolution and the first-grade students’ progress mastering beginning reading skills. The project’s collaborators engage in an iterative process involving refinements to effective aspects of the project and adaptations to ineffective aspects.

3.1. Features of a General Education Teacher’s Job

The project’s approach allowed the Teacher Academy Leaders to learn about three salient features of a general education teacher’s job: classroom management, whole class instruction, and supplemental instruction. The bi-weekly lessons provided a forum for adequately addressing the first two topics, and the tutoring sessions with the first-grade students addressed the third topic.

The tutoring sessions followed an initial teacher training approach advocated by Archer [37]. She remarked that the first practica should consist of an instructional arrangement with a low pupil:teacher ratio (1 or 2 students per instructor) and emphasize mastering a highly effective, evidence-based teaching strategy. Consequently, the lessons evinced elements from the research on explicit instruction [30] and cognitive science [31,32]: critical content was presented in obtainable pieces (e.g., no more than two new items were taught simultaneously), a statement of the targeted learning outcome was presented at the outset, and teacher demonstration with a think-aloud followed. Next, the tutees engaged in guided practice, and the tutor conducted periodic checks for understanding to determine whether to adjust the instruction or assign independent practice.

Notably, the Teacher Academy Leaders demonstrated a need for more guided practice in presenting these lessons than they received. They were released too soon to function independently as tutors.

Once aspiring teachers have demonstrated a basic level of proficiency with the generic instructional strategy, they should be given opportunities to apply it to different subject areas [37]. This shift has not occurred in the project, though it is being considered through the addition of mathematics tutoring. Hence, the remaining lessons learned from the project discussed below are based on the supplemental instruction component of beginning reading instruction.

3.2. Proper Time Management

The school’s administration reconfirmed the importance of proper time management. Arguably, the time available for instruction, the allotted time, is a teacher’s most valuable commodity. It sets an upper limit to the amount of content that can be taught. Consequently, establishing time in the school’s master schedule for supplemental instruction and properly managing it sets the stage for effective supplemental instruction.

Scheduling issues included identifying a time for tutoring that was appropriate for the tutors and tutees, tutoring at the same time each day to provide consistency for the students and to make the classroom teachers’ oversight easier, and minimizing the time that the first-grade tutees missed in special classes (i.e., they participated in tutoring sessions during part of the time when art, music, and physical education was scheduled for their general education class). Also, efficient transitions into and out of the tutoring session were important given the time involved.

3.3. An Established Scope and Sequence Enhances Effective, Efficient Instruction

The Foundations curriculum resolved the challenge of identifying the curriculum content to teach that had been experienced during the previous two school years in the after-school tutoring program. Foundations’ kindergarten-to-second-grade scope and sequence was an improvement over the piecemeal approach used in the previous two years to identify isolated reading skills students had not mastered. Moreover, the curriculum allowed for a structured literacy approach comprising two components: establishing the critical content to teach and allowing for evidence-based practices to teach it.

Furthermore, the curriculum established a context for discussing with the tutors aspects of the science of reading and the science of learning that they could incorporate into their self-management strategies. This aspect of the project is relevant because, prior to their participation, some of the Leaders expressed concern about the adequacy of their reading skills.

Likewise, they were taught about matching instructional strategies to their standing in the instructional hierarchy. This information included concentrating on the teacher’s demonstration of a skill during the acquisition stage; engaging in repeated, timed practice to build fluency; performing mixed and retrieval practice to ensure skill maintenance; and demonstrating skills learned in isolation in another context to establish generalization (e.g., reading words that had been practiced individually among connected text).

3.4. Active Student Responding is the key Variable

Time management is separate from what takes place during the lesson since a focus on allotted time might mask a more important variable: opportunities to respond. One student behavior, active responding, is paramount since it has been identified as the variable having the greatest impact on students’ academic achievement [50,51]. Data revealed that some first-grade students engaged in more active responding when taught in a five-minute lesson with a one-on-one instructional format than during a fifteen-minute lesson with a three-to-one instructional format.

3.5. Data-Based Decision Making

Mastery measurements and the school’s general outcome measurements can document students’ progress and the effectiveness of each intervention. The school’s general outcome measurement data at the end of the last school year revealed that one first-grade tutee exceeded expectations, and the other two met expectations for their academic achievement gains.

3.6. Teacher Academy Participants May Impact Education Without Becoming a Teacher

Program developers must acknowledge and be comfortable with the fact that there is no guarantee that Teacher Academy Leaders will become teachers. Instead, they may work in other professions while advocating for public schools and the teaching profession based on what they learned from their academy experiences. They may also apply what they learn to tutoring the children they raise. Thus, indirect contributions that enhance the teaching profession may be realized, but in ways that are difficult to measure.

4. Discussion

At a post-school-year meeting in May 2026, the school’s administration and the university professor decided to continue the program, but with kindergarten students replacing the first graders. A block for supplemental tier 2 instruction for the first graders is in the school’s master daily schedule, so this instruction continues to be addressed. The time this project’s tutoring is scheduled aligns better with the kindergarten’s master schedule so that the students will not be pulled from formal instruction. This arrangement also enables the school to extend the EIS being provided to this group of students.

Both reading and mathematics interventions are being considered. Yet, those overseeing the program recognize that doing so would involve a trade-off, as the tutees' total active responses would be split across two subjects.

Social validity data will be solicited from the school’s staff, the program’s students, and select caregivers. It will be analyzed to determine the value placed on the program's rationale, its implementation, and the outcomes achieved. A matter of particular interest is whether the respondents believe the program helps develop the school’s culture, which is described in reference to the school’s Owl mascot: “Owls helping Owls.”

5. Conclusions

For the school and the university, the project addressed two pressing matters that are among the top challenges that public school systems in the United States face. One matter is students’ suboptimal academic achievement. A second matter is insufficient instructional resources.

Importantly, the project addressed each matter by using evidence-based practices with sustainable resources. Evidence-based practices increase the likelihood that an effective, efficient resolution will be implemented, rather than relying on multiple trial-and-error approaches that must be validated with supporting data. Hence, the project may be an exemplary small-scale model for others to consider replicating or upscaling to address similar interconnected challenges.