STEM Achievement in Baltimore Elementary Schools (SABES)

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STEM Achievement in Baltimore Elementary Schools (SABES), a Partnership between core partners Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), works within neighborhoods to build a Community Enterprise for STEM Learning. Supporting Partners include the Greater Homewood Community Corporation, Park Heights Renaissance, Southeast Community Development Corporation, Greektown Community Development Corporation, Education Based Latino Outreach, Child First Authority, Baltimore National Aquarium, and the Maryland Science Center. SABES is a unique approach to STEM education that builds expertise and excitement for STEM learning within target communities by engaging BCPS teachers and students in grades 3-5, caregivers, community-based organizations, afterschool program providers, faculty and students from JHU, members of Baltimore's high-tech businesses, and local museums. SABES not only directly engages approximately forty STEM teachers and more than 1,620 grade 3-5 students at nine elementary schools in three high-minority, low-income, Baltimore neighborhoods, but it extends far into the wider community, drawing on the expertise of higher education faculty at JHU, museums and STEM business leaders. In the process, SABES prepares afterschool STEM project facilitators in each neighborhood, creating a community-wide culture of STEM learning relevant to the lives of its participants in ways that engage caregivers to sustain student curiosity outside of the classroom. A fundamental premise that undergirds SABES' work is that the integration of science into the learner's world, as opposed to bringing students into the world of scientists, has great potential to enable deep learning, self-efficacy and student agency. Grounded in this perspective, SABES establishes Mutually Beneficial Partnerships (MBPs) in three low-income, majority-minority communities and employs three main strategies to obtain its goals of broad participation in science, increased student achievement in STEM, and increased teacher proficiency. These strategies are: (1) sustained/collaborative professional development including professional learning communities, (2) scaffolds that bridge school learning with applications of STEM in the community including biannual community STEM Recognition Events featuring students' STEM projects, and (3) STEM visiting experts from JHU and high-tech industries as well as field trips linked to careers in action.The SABES research agenda pursues the following questions: 1. If the impact evaluation shows that some intended outcomes are affected in desired directions by SABES, but others not, what theory-building or holistic understandings of educational improvement efforts and mechanisms can emerge from these findings? 2. What aspects of the proposed intervention are most effective for creating a sustainable STEM community where previously there exists little expertise or organized activity outside the school? 3. How does effectiveness vary between neighborhoods or schools that differ in student composition (e.g., race/ethnicity, and English language proficiency), neighborhood resources and infrastructure, and other aspects of school organization (e.g., other high-priority initiatives in a school that might compete with SABES for staff attention, stability of principal or teacher incumbency)? The research design employs the application of a multi-level, ecological perspective which will result in important findings related to developing science literacy in a community, engagement of formal and informal settings and structures as assets for developing teaching and learning in science, and examining the impacts on achievement, particularly related to closing the achievement gap among students of different ethnicities, language proficiencies and income levels.