Description:
The Child Development Project creates a school-wide network through the revamping of each school's organization and its teaching and learning process. It fosters community through Professional Development and leadership support. It holds the social, emotional and ethical development of students as essential to their intellectual development.

"The CDP seeks to transform schools into communities where children feel cared for and learn to care in return — communities that help students develop the academic and practical skills needed to function productively in society, and the ethical and intellectual skills needed to function humanely and wisely." (http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/catalog/ModelDetails.asp?ModelID=6).

Goal:
"The Child Development Project (CDP) is a multi-year School Improvement design that fosters students’ decoding skills, reading comprehension skills, and caring, respectful connections among students, educators, and parents. The integration of academic, social, emotional, and ethical development gives schools a school-wide support system to reach their goals."

(Goal Statement, Child Development Project. Retrieved November 16, 2003, from http://www.devstu.org/cdp/index.html)

Approach:
In addition to professional development and leadership support, CDP has two major phases of Implementation focused on the areas of community, decoding and comprehension. (http://www.devstu.org)

Phase I involves community building in the classroom and throughout the school. A component of the program known as "Caring School Community" (CSC) involves building relationships through class meetings, a cross-grade buddy system, "Homeside Activites" to promote conversations between students and parents, and a guide to building community between schools and families. (http://www.devstu.org)

Phase II involves building literacy and interpersonal skills through the use of two major modules:

1. SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phoneme Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words) is designed to establish the level each student is working from so that teachers can differentiate instruction based on the needs of individuals. Students work independently and in small groups on enhancing their decoding skills and phonemic awareness. SIPPS includes "little books" and many other materials that can be used as supplements to any basal reader program. (www.devstu.org)

2. Making Meaning, the comprehension portion of the literacy program is based on nine specific strategies meant to assist in the development of social as well as comprehension skills.

The nine strategies include:

1. Re-telling
2. Making connections
3. Sythesizing
4. Summarizing
5. Understanding text structur
6. Making inference
7. Wondering/questioning
8. Visualizing
9. Determining important ideas

The program includes structured lessons and books that have been designed to accompany the strategies being taught. (www.devstu.org)

Samples of lessons can be downloaded from the site at: http://www.devstu.org/making_meaning/grade/gradek.html

Although it is not mentioned in the program description, CDP also has a Mathematics curriculum called Number Power. It along with many other materials are available through their online catalogue and bookstore.

research:
A diverse selection of 17 CDP schools and 17 comparison schools have participated in three different quasi-experimental studies of CDP over the past 16 years. According to these studies the programs results in increased sense of community and school-related attitudes, improved conflict-resolution skills, strengthened sense of commitment and decreased drug use. (www.nwrel.org)

The studies did not focus on academic achievement but one showed that in 3 CDP schools sixth graders scored higher than control schools on CDP developed tests, but the same results did not occur in a follow-up study at the middle-school level. Another study showed little difference between the standardized test results of CDP schools as opposed to comparison schools, except in a single district where CDP students significantly out-performed those from control schools on state-developed math, science, social studies and reading tests. (www.nwrel.org)

In some CDP schools, however, there is evidence to suggest that undeniable academic improvements have been made a result of the program. Over 20 CDP schools have reported serious drops in the number of "novices" in basic reading and math skills as characterized by the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System. In one school the percentage of reading novices dropped from 41 to 3 five years later. (www.nwrel.org)

In a two year study of socioeconomically disadvantaged, Hispanic and limited English proficient students from West Sacramento, CA, English speakers on average gained 1. 6 grade levels in decoding ability each year and English Language Learners gained 2.6 grade levels each year. (http://www.devstu.org/sipps/pdfs/sipps_research.pdf).

Costs:
According to the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in 2001 the cost of implementing CDP for the first two years including materials, training and onsite support was approximately $65,000 depending on the size and need of the school. The third year was estimated slightly less at $55,000, not including additional costs for all three years of highering substitutes for teachers to attend offsite trainings and compensation for summer institutes as well as a half-time literacy coordinator. (www.nwrel.org)