This article introduces Project PREPARE, a 5-year project that sought to develop a collaborative site of practice and inquiry among two universities, the primary and elementary schools in a poor rural town, and the district that served these schools. Three types of collaboration were undertaken over the life of the project: (a) providing consultative and material support to changes initiated by the district, (b) creating new collaborative structures that could serve as sites for advancing teacher and student learning, and (c) providing conceptual leadership to help the district develop a long-range systemic change initiative. During the course of the project, there were steady improvements in student achievement in reading and mathematics on multiple measures, including state-mandated criterion-referenced tests and curriculum-based measures. The combined reading and math increases were greater in the project school during the study period than were 9 of the 10 closest comparison schools in the state, though the overall achievement levels remained lower than the state average in both subjects.
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