About the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC)
About the Urban Excellence Framework (UEF)
About the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC)
Founded in 2006, the New Leaders' Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) is a core part of New Leaders' effort to improve student and school performance. The EPIC program identifies high-need schools driving the highest student achievement gains within our grant partner districts and a consortium of charter schools and then awards the school leaders and teachers for sharing the practices that lead to the gains. By investigating EPIC award-winners, we learn what is working to transform these high-need schools and use that knowledge to enhance the New Leaders program and provide professional development tools for educators nationwide.
The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), EPIC's school district and charter school partners, and private philanthropic funders.
The primary components of EPIC include:
- The development of value-added models for analyzing student achievement data to identify schools making the greatest gains
- The recognition and rewarding of school leaders and educators in high-gain schools for sharing their effective practices and strategies with other schools
- The creation of comprehensive case studies that are shared with a broad network of schools through an innovative online platform called the EPIC Knowledge System
EPIC operates in the following school districts and partner schools: District of Columbia Public Schools, Memphis City Schools, the National Charter School Consortium, and Denver Public Schools. EPIC's primary funding source, the federal TIF grant, is a five-year grant and the 2010–2011 school year represents the fifth year of the grant. As of September 2011, EPIC has awarded $15.5 million to more than 5,100 principals, assistant principals, teachers, and teaching assistants in over 200 schools.
EPIC is a partnership of several of the leading education organizations in the nation. Mathematica Policy Research (MPR) helped create and continues to refine the value-added models used to determine EPIC awardees. The EPIC value-added model in the charter grant is unique in that it compares gains from schools in different states. School Works supports the work of effective practice identification in EPIC-recognized schools based on a collaboratively-developed and rigorous school visit protocol. VPG Media, a Boston-based media company with deep experience in documenting practices in K–12 schools, partners with New Leaders to acquire, develop and produce multimedia and video content associated with identified effective practices.
For more information about EPIC, please call Susan Bakst at 646-792-1070 x1108 or e-mail sbakst@newleaders.org.
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About the Urban Excellence Framework (UEF)
New Leaders developed the Urban Excellence Framework(TM) to understand exactly what schools achieving dramatic gains are doing and to share that knowledge throughout our community of leaders. The EPIC Knowledge System resources are mapped directly to the Framework's five categories of school practices that are considered central to school improvement.
Among the five categories of the UEF are two primary drivers of student achievement: rigorous, goal and data-driven learning and teaching and achievement and belief-based school-wide culture. Two additional categories of a principal's work are essential to supporting these drivers: building and managing a high-quality aligned staff to the school's vision and instituting operations and systems to put the vision into place. Undergirding all of these categories is the personal leadership modeled by a principal who sets the tone for all student and adult relationships and practices in the school.
Once a principal has diagnosed her school's practices at the key lever level within the categories of the Framework, she can begin to build an effective action plan to move the school forward. New Leaders thinks of great principals as those who, at any starting point, can identify the highest impact areas for change and make dramatic student learning gains as they push to the next stage.
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