San Juan Capistrano Unified School District

We evaluated the effectiveness of a professional development project, Promoting Research in Math and Science (PRISM), in Capistrano. This program is designed to support the enrollment and success of underserved minority students in high-level math and science courses. It entails master teacher teaching students in a summer academy while other teachers, those participating in the professional development opportunity, observed the teaching and learning. After students go home, participating teachers work with the master teachers to expand their content and pedagogical knowledge and to debrief their classroom observations. To review the program's effectiveness from as many angles as possible we 1) developed and analyzed pre- and post-assessments of the content taught in PRISM for both student and teacher participants; 2) tracked the percentage of time teachers and students were actively engaged in academic work; and 3) analyzed the program evaluations completed by all participants.