SALEM in History: The Science and Art of Learning from Evidence and Materials in History

SALEM in History is a three-year project that will increase the depth, breadth, and quality of Salem Public Schools’ (SPS) American history teachers’ knowledge and understanding of United States history. Through intensive summer workshops and monthly seminars, Salem State College’s (SSC) American history faculty will provide all appropriate SPS teachers with the increased content knowledge that will allow them to improve the quality of instruction given to their students. The partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and the National Park Service (NPS) will provide the teachers with access to content experts, a wealth of primary sources, artifacts, and historical sites that will help teachers connect local events to national themes, enliven the classroom experience, and foster their students’ critical thinking skills.  The management structure of this program will insure that the teachers have all of the support that they need to learn about six important themes in American history and to apply that increased content knowledge to their teaching.  The evaluation plan will allow the project’s leaders and participants to document the successes of the program and identify the areas that still need addressing.

A.1.  Quality of Project Design

    Kathleen Anderson Steeves recently observed in the American Historical Association’s Perspectives, “University historians and secondary school history teachers have the potential to create a forceful and productive symbiotic relationship that would benefit all instructors as well as the students they teach.”  SALEM in History aims to create such a productive relationship by accomplishing its three goals: (1) increasing teachers’ American history content knowledge, (2) applying research to curriculum development, and (3) disseminating project results.  SALEM in History will meet these goals by combining the resources and expertise of its partners.

    GOAL 1. Increasing teachers’ American history content knowledge. All SPS American history teachers will receive graduate training in six core themes of American history.
     SALEM in History will provide graduate training for all SPS American history teachers. The project will concentrate on building teachers' knowledge and ability to teach in six core themes:

        Core Theme 1 – The United States in the World: American Foreign Relations
        Core Theme 2 – American Political Thought: The Constitution and American Democratic Institutions
        Core Theme 3 – Social Changes and Social Reform
        Core Theme 4 –Immigration and Migration: Cultural Interaction and the Peopling of America
        Core Theme 5 –An Industrious People: American Economic History
        Core Theme 6 – Salem As Place: Local History in a National Context

        These themes, chosen collaboratively by the partners, are essential to a thorough understanding of the scope and drama of American history. Each theme is broad enough to encourage teachers to see an historical narrative and sequential pattern in American history, not just a moment in time. They also reinforce the new Massachusetts Standards in United States History.

    The partners will develop each theme with emphases on the diverse nature of American society and on the contributions of all groups to the nation’s heritage. This is especially relevant for the diverse student body that attends Salem Public Schools. The themes also reflect the needs of SPS teachers.

Partner/Teacher Scholarly Interaction:  SALEM in History will increase SPS teachers’ content knowledge and improve their teaching of U.S. history in several ways:
Project Design: SALEM in History will employ a full-time Project Director, with a Ph.D. in American history, to coordinate the entire project.  It will also employ a Museum Educator with experience working in schools and with museum collections to help the teachers used the wealth and range of primary sources available in the Salem and Boston areas.  These project staff members will work with SSC faculty members and PEM and NPS staff to develop and teach a graduate-level weeklong summer seminar, offering the participating teachers the valuable opportunity to work closely with leading scholars. Thirty SPS elementary, middle and high school American history teachers will attend each workshop. SPS will provide teachers with a number of incentives to participate, and it expects all of the district’s American history teachers to participate in at least one summer workshop and the related monthly seminars.
    These summer workshops will be graduate seminars with rigorous reading requirements and high expectations. Teachers will receive three hours of graduate credit in history for their participation. Each summer session will concentrate on two of the six themes. Additionally, in order to insure depth as well as breadth of knowledge, every SPS American history teacher will receive extensive graduate training in at least two other central themes of American history through the monthly seminars. With four monthly sessions focusing on each of these two themes, the teachers will greatly expand their understanding of the discussed topics. (Because each of the content areas overlaps with the others—for example, one cannot discuss “immigration and migration” without addressing “social changes and reforms”—all teachers will get indirect exposure to important ideas and information relevant to the other two core themes).  The project staff will record the summer workshops and monthly seminars and make the videos available to teachers who desire additional training. The district will continue to use these videos to train its American history teachers after the grant period ends.
    In these summer sessions, Salem State faculty members will lecture, lead discussions of common readings, and engage teachers in debates about historical methods and recent interpretations of American history. For example, the first year’s summer session will require teachers to read and think critically about the related themes of “Immigration and Migration: Cultural Interactions and the Peopling of America” and “The United States in the World: American Foreign Relations.” For the first theme, teachers will read Gary Nash’s Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America and David Reimers’ Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America, (two books very relevant to the Salem experience), other relevant scholarly articles and book excerpts, and selected primary source documents from the PEM’s and the NPS’s collections. Additionally, for the second core theme, teachers will read Jonathan Dull's A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution and John Gaddis’s We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. They will also analyze primary source documents and materials, review and discuss the PEM’s and NPS’s holdings, and study other texts tracing American diplomatic, economic, and military interaction with other nations and the resulting effects on domestic developments.
    Teachers will complete individual or group research projects at the conclusion of the summer sessions. Drawing upon their increased content knowledge, the teachers will construct detailed historical narratives, prepare materials for their classrooms, and share these materials with their colleagues in print and electronic format.
    The Museum Educator will work closely with the Project Director and the SSC faculty to integrate primary sources into the summer session’s topics. By hosting the SALEM in History website, the PEM will create online access to relevant historical material to provide SPS teachers and students with opportunities to participate directly in historical investigations, learning to recognize how a point of view and a bias affect evidence, what contradictions and other limitations exist within a given source, and to what extent sources are reliable. Finally, through visits to relevant historical sites and the opportunity to handle artifacts, SPS teachers will be able to connect directly with past events and people and to explore ways to make American history real and personal for their students.

    Monthly Seminars: Teachers will receive extensive, on-going assistance from the project staff and partners through monthly seminars that will focus on the two of the four remaining themes not covered in the related summer session. Teachers will receive three graduate credits for participating in the yearlong schedule of monthly seminars. For example, in a monthly session addressing the "Salem as Place: Local History in a National Context" core theme, Emerson Baker will discuss with teachers the significance of Salem’s colonial and Revolutionary history, connecting the discussion to the larger social and political changes occurring throughout the colonies and across the Atlantic. The lead historical consultant for PBS’s upcoming program about life on the colonial frontier, Frontier House, Baker will ask teachers to read Mary Beth Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 and his chapter “Salem as a Frontier Outpost” in the forthcoming book Salem: Place and Memory (2004, Northeastern University Press). Before this session, Baker will work with the Museum Educator to identify specific primary sources that the teachers might use to connect local history to the national themes under discussion. The Museum Educator will make copies of these records, including indentured servitude contracts, treaties with Native Americans, the original Salem witch trial records, and other church records, for the teachers to use in their classrooms. Since Baker is also a trained archaeologist, he will be able to work with the Museum Educator to help teachers understand the importance of non-textual historical sources.  As explained below, the participating teachers will meet later with the Project Director and Museum Educator to discuss how to incorporate their new content knowledge into their teaching.

SPS Master Teachers: SPS will select six teachers to train as Master Teachers during the first year of the program. This component of SALEM in History is based on a training of trainers framework. The selected group will be current SPS teachers of American history, and they will commit to providing in-service training to their colleagues during and after the grant period.

Goal 2. Applying Research to the Classroom. SPS teachers will use their increased content knowledge to create new unit plans and new curriculum guides for use by all SPS American history teachers.
    Robert Schwartz, the president of Achieve, a nonprofit organization working to improve academic performance, recently noted, "Talking about professional development independent of academic content, independent of curriculum, really doesn't make much sense."  SALEM in History must marry content and curriculum to provide sustainable results and systemic improvement. Consequently, project partners will identify and integrate current scholarly research and primary sources into SPS’ history curriculum to develop active, engaging lesson plans that excite and challenge students.

The timing is right for this project to have an immense impact on how SPS teaches American history for the next decade and longer.  Since the Commonwealth of Massachusetts released new standards and frameworks for American history and social studies in early 2003, the school district must create new curriculum guides to conform to the new guidelines.  The  SALEM in History project-enhanced curriculum will be aligned to the new state standards for history, incorporated into district curriculum guides, and posted to the project web site as a reference tool for all American history teachers regardless of location. The positive effects of  SALEM in History will continue well beyond the grant period.
Building on their content sessions with SSC American history faculty, the PEM and NPS interpreters, and the Museum Educator, SPS teachers will create new, more rigorous American history unit plans. For example, in a monthly session related to early 20th century economic history, teachers will read portions of Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 and Upton Sinclair’s The Flivver King: The Making of Ford’s America, and they will discuss the content matter in their regular monthly sessions.

In three separate follow-up meetings (one each for elementary, middle, and high school teachers of American history), the Museum Educator and Project Director will help SPS teachers identify archival holdings that can help them teach the wider themes discussed in each book. The Project Director will help teachers incorporate the new knowledge and archival materials into interesting and challenging, grade appropriate unit plans that will excite students and stimulate historical thinking. In this case, lessons might encourage students to examine review of union posters, work rules in local factories, diaries from industrialists and workers, census data, shipping manifests, and other primary sources helpful in situating local happenings in the context of national events. The project staff will also work with the teachers to help them use computers and other technologies to find historical materials for, and use them in, their classes.

GOAL 3. Disseminating Project Results. SALEM in History will disseminate its methods, materials, and findings through a variety of media.

SALEM in History will employ several dissemination methods. First, Master Teachers and project staff will present at annual, statewide conferences for American history educators, such as the New England Historical Association and the Massachusetts Council for Social Studies. These conferences will allow the SALEM in History’ teachers and staff to present their findings to colleagues, and to learn from people involved in similar endeavors around the region.

Secondly, the SALEM in History web site, hosted on the Peabody Essex Museum web server, will serve as a major dissemination mechanism. This web site will contain several sections that will encourage teachers from within the district and across the nation to use its resources. In the “Professional Development” section, SPS teachers will find practical information about the SALEM in History program, including monthly meeting schedules, reading assignments, summer session agendas, Advisory Board minutes, evaluation reports, and more. In the “Teachers’ Resources” section, all American history teachers, not only SPS teachers, will find useful materials. This section will include links to carefully screened content sites, web reviews and grade-specific lesson plans created during the SALEM in History program, selected PEM, NPS, and other local institutions' digitized primary sources related to the six content themes, and links to professional organizations. This section will also have a threaded discussion board, moderated by the Project Director and a Master Teacher, that will allow teachers to talk to each other about the common readings and the common problems facing teachers in an urban setting.

A.2.  Need for Project
    Salem Public Schools is a small urban district that serves a very culturally and economically diverse student population of approximately 5,150 students PK-12.  School facilities include six PK-5 elementary schools, one PK-8 school, one 6-8 middle school and one 9-12 high school.  According to the October 1, 2002, census report, 64% of the students are white and 36% are minority.  The largest minority group is Hispanic, comprising 28.5% of our enrollment.  Most of these students are from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.  Of the remaining students, 2.6% are Asian, 4.5% are African American, and .1% are American Indian. 

Students reporting that their first language is not English (23.4%) represent more than twenty different world languages.  9.1% of the students are enrolled in classes for students with limited English proficiency.  About 38.4% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals. Many students and their families are in need of basic social services ranging from healthcare to job skills training. 

Since 1998, students in Salem have shown steady improvement in student achievement in all areas, but there is still a long way to go.  Typical of students from other urban districts, test scores still lag behind the performance levels of suburban students.  On the Spring 2002 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam (MCAS), students in all grades and in all subject areas scored well below the state averages.  In the history and social studies test, administered in the 8th grade, only 3% of Salem’s students achieved “proficient” or “advanced” scores.  In other words, 97% of the students fell into the “needs improvement” and “failing” categories.  While this, remarkably, represents an improvement over the 2001 scores, there obviously still exists tremendous room for further improvement, which the SALEM in History project will provide. 
A command of American history content is vital for a common understanding of the American experience, especially in cities with significant immigrant populations such as Salem, and SPS addresses this need by infusing its entire curriculum with American history. SPS teaches American history content at the 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grade levels, with specific American history courses in 8th and 11th grades. Additionally, American history is taught throughout the district in the English as a Second Language program and in a separate Advanced Placement United States History course (APUSH).  The Advanced Placement course has grown recently from 20 to 43 students, indicating increasing interest, but the performance still lags behind expectations.  Over the past 5 years, SPS students have averaged only a 2.6 out of 5 on the APUSH test.

Unfortunately, far too many of the SPS teachers currently teaching American history lack the content knowledge necessary to teach it most effectively.  As a study conducted in 1993 by the National Council for Accreditations of Teacher Education reported, only 65% of colleges and universities required their students majoring in elementary education to take a history course.  Not much has changed since then.  Unfortunately, too many of SPS’s 85 teachers of American history share the burden of this type of training in the content of American history.

SPS recently surveyed its American history teachers to understand the teachers’ training in American history and to get a sense of their self-identified needs. Of the 39 people who teach American history in the elementary schools, only one majored in history, and at least six had absolutely no training in American history at all.  The SPS elementary school teachers averaged a mere 6.4 college credits in American history.  In essence, most of these educators have had only a survey-level introduction to the complexities of American history, and that could have been 25 years ago.

Although one would expect a much more thorough training in American history for middle school and high school teachers, this is not the case in Salem. In the middle school only five out of 33 teachers covering American history majored in history (not specifically American history), and 8 teachers had absolutely no training in U.S. history.  Altogether, the middle school teachers averaged only 9.5 credits in U.S. history, which represents, essentially, two survey classes and one additional course.  Salem’s high school teachers present a slightly more encouraging composite picture.  Three of the 11 majored in history, and two have MA’s in history.  Still, these teachers averaged only 9.5 credits in U.S. history.  As is true for all three levels of teachers, these credit averages include courses taken in the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, and 1970s.  Clearly, the district’s teachers and students could benefit significantly from a project that increases teachers’ knowledge of American history.

    SALEM in History addresses gaps in the American history content knowledge of SPS  teachers and enhances those assets the district currently possesses. It will involve all SPS American history teachers: 39 elementary school, 35 middle school, and 11 high school teachers of American history. Over the three years of the project, these teachers, and through them all of SPS’s 5000 students, will receive enhanced American history content. Students will benefit from having more knowledgeable teachers at multiple grade levels as they progress towards graduation and full citizenship. Of course, subsequent groups of students who attend these teachers’ classes in the future will also receive an enhanced American history classroom experience, so the numbers of affected students will continue to rise.

    This Teaching American History proposal comes at an opportune time, allowing SPS to solidify the importance of American history within the curriculum, while the district writes new curriculum guides to align closely with the new state content frameworks.  The initiation in 2005 of a high stakes history exam, with passage required for student graduation, guarantees that the district’s leadership, teachers, parents, and students will remain committed to this project. 
    By providing content-rich graduate classes, having the Project Director and Museum Educator lead follow-up discussions about integrating the new knowledge into grade-specific lesson plans, offering additional instruction in the interpretation and use of a variety of primary sources, and creating new district-wide curriculum guides that utilize the new knowledge and skills, SALEM in History responds to specific SPS needs in appropriate and necessary ways.

A.3.  Partnerships
        The four partners involved in the SALEM in History project possess the resources and expertise necessary for the success of the project.
    Salem State College: The SSC history department includes eleven faculty members with expertise in American history and is fully committed to this project.  The SSC history faculty members routinely publish important books and articles, present at regional, national, and international conferences, and win prestigious fellowships, including recent ones from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society. The faculty's expertise includes the full range of American history, with special areas of emphasis in early American, constitutional, immigration, gender, and cultural history.
        Through its Secondary Education minor program, the Department has experience working with secondary school teachers and providing them with outstanding resources for the classroom. In fact, the American Historical Association currently features a syllabus from the Salem State “Methods in Teaching History” course on its website, using it as an example of how history departments should be working to improve the content knowledge of history teachers.  The faculty's content expertise and demonstrated commitment to working with K-12 educators make SSC’s Department of History an excellent partner
. 
Peabody Essex Museum Resources: Located in downtown Salem, the Peabody Essex Museum is America’s oldest continually operating museum. It is one of the largest museums in New England, with renowned collections of maritime art and history; American decorative art; Native American art; important collections from Asia and the Pacific Islands; a major research library; and the world’s most comprehensive and finest collection of Asian art produced for the West. The museum and its Phillips Library houses 400,000 volumes and more than 5,000 linear feet of manuscript material. The museum’s architecture collection includes 18 historic structures, of which 4 are National Historic Landmarks and 5 are on the National Register of Historic Places.  The scope and quality of these collections make PEM one of the finest single places to explore the entire spectrum of New England’s artistic, architectural, and cultural heritage.
  SALEM in History would become an important cornerstone of the museum’s outreach programs, and would leverage the museum’s strengths as a resource for lifelong learning, with a highly qualified museum education staff , newly expanded gallery and education facilities, and 100 docent volunteers experienced in gallery-based teaching for learners of all ages. The relevance of PEM’s extensive collections and the institution’s experience in training teachers and students in the use of primary sources make it an integral part of SALEM in History.

National Park Service Resources: The Salem Maritime National Historic Site, established in 1938, preserves and interprets a vast array of resources along the waterfront of Salem that exemplify our nation's maritime history including: settlement, colonial trade, revolutionary war, international trade and industrial development. Park rangers conduct educational programs on-site for approximately 3000 students a year. To encourage the "national parks as classrooms" concept, they work closely with teachers. Despite phenomenal local resources, school visits are generally limited to once a year. Exposing educators to Salem Maritime National Historic Site's abundant resources is a tremendous opportunity to meet a greater audience, by bringing the park into the classroom, with minimal impact on resources.

Salem Public Schools Resources: SPS has established a solid groundwork on which to lay a new foundation. The Social Studies Office has established an effective communications network to provide teachers with educational materials, professional development courses, and information regarding educational advances affecting history education.
   Although SPS students have not fared especially well on the MCAS in the past, the district’s recent emphasis on reading and writing at the elementary level has brought up scores significantly. Thus, SPS is at a significant juncture, poised to begin real work in content. Fortunately, the Director of Elementary Education, Dr. Marilyn Gigliotti, is also the Title I Director and grants administrator.  She has managed over $6 million in grant funding, focusing on early literacy, technology, academic support, and enrichment.  She directs the professional development activities of all elementary schools through the Professional Development Councils established at each school.  There is also a district and school improvement plan, which delineates all professional development activities.  As grants manager, she is able to allocate resources equitably through the district and use various funding sources to accomplish district and grant goals. This allows for maximum use of fiscal resources.  In addition, as she completed her doctorate in Educational Administration from Boston College, Dr. Gigliotti conducted several research projects using a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies.  Her experience and expertise will be essential to the success of the SALEM in History project.

B. Quality of the Management Plan
The management plan is designed to maximize the effectiveness of SALEM in History's  teacher training program and advance the other goals by investing the project leaders with the appropriate levels of responsibility and by providing the resources to organize and implement the project’s activities. The full-time Project Director will manage the daily operation of SSALEM in History and work with the Partner Liaisons. The Advisory Board will meet regularly, monitor progress, receive evaluations, and set broad policy. Together, the project staff will provide SALEM in History with the vision, leadership, and resources to improve the knowledge base of SPS teachers and enhance their students’ education.

Partner Liaisons: Each SALEM in History partner (SPS, NPS, PEM, and SSC) will appoint a Partner Liaison to the project who will be the main contact for their respective organizations. They will organize the Project Director search committee, form the Advisory Board, meet with the Project Director twice a month, and present at each Advisory Board meeting.

Project Director: During the summer of 2003, Partner Liaisons will create a search committee to choose a full-time Project Director. The Project Director will hold a Ph.D. in American history and will be responsible for the daily operation of the project. The Project Director will have an office in the SSC Department of History and will work under the supervision of the Advisory Board. The Project Director will help recruit teachers and program leaders; organize the core theme content sessions; coordinate and document the involvement of the partners; meet monthly with all levels of participating teachers about how to apply new content knowledge to their classes; coordinate summer and monthly session logistics; post project schedule and additional material to the project website; coordinate sustainability efforts; make periodic budget reports to all partners, the Advisory Board, and to the Secretary of Education; attend the required Teaching American History project directors’ meetings; and work with project evaluators.

    The search committee will look for candidates with a rich understanding of American history, a passion for teaching, demonstrated organizational ability, and outstanding leadership and communication skills.  To make the position even more attractive, Salem State has agreed to let the Director teach at least one advanced course in American history at the college.

Museum Educator: The Museum Educator will serve as a full-time consultant to Salem teachers.  The Museum Educator will identify artifacts that would support the teachers’ lesson plans and facilitate more frequent and effective use of primary source materials to teach all aspects of American history, especially those subject areas covered in the project’s monthly and summer content sessions.  The Museum Educator’s research in the PEM and NPS collections will eventually result in lessons and curricular resources for the teaching of American history accessible to all teachers through the project web site.  In addition to providing reference and teaching services to the SPS American history teachers, the Museum Educator will assist in the design and development of the SALEM in History web site, participate in summer conferences and monthly seminars, provide training on teaching with primary sources and objects, present workshops on researching in the partners’ collections, digitize and describe primary sources for online access, and bring appropriate archival resources to participating SPS classrooms.

    The Museum Educator will have an office at the Peabody Essex Museum, working closely with the PEM’s Director of Education, the Project Director, and the National Park Service’s Partner Liaison. This person will have at least a Master’s degree in American history and a minimum of 2 years teaching experience in either a classroom or a museum setting.  He or she must also have a demonstrated commitment to using primary source materials in teaching, a familiarity with the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks, and excellent written and verbal communication skills. 

Advisory Board: The SALEM in History Advisory Board will play an important role in the overall management plan and in the project’s continuing evaluation process. The Board’s primary goal will be to ensure that SPS teachers receive the content training they need to improve the teaching and learning of American history in the district. The Board will meet three times during the first year, and twice each of the next two years, although the Board could decide to meet more frequently. The Board will make certain that SALEM in History continues to address its stated goals, as well as respond appropriately to unanticipated challenges.
    The Board will include representatives of all the project’s stakeholders as well as outside experts who will be able to offer fresh ideas and perspectives on the project’s activities. Members will include representatives from: SPS (two parents, an elementary, middle, and high school American history teacher); SSC (an American history faculty member); PEM (an archivist or museum educator); and NPS (site interpreter), as well as outside experts (an American history public school teacher, and an American history faculty member). Partner Liaisons will serve as ex-officio members.
Once constituted, the Board will develop any policies or procedures needed for its efficient operation. Minutes of Board meetings will be available on the SALEM in History web site. The Board will send annual reports to the Superintendent of Salem Public School, President of the Salem School Committee, the Dean of the SSC School of Arts and Sciences, the Chair of the SSC Department of History, the Superintendent of the NPS site, and the Executive Director of the PEM. This will keep the highest levels of the partner institutions aware of the project’s progress, and it will also assist the efforts to craft local consensus for sustainability initiatives.

Timelines and Milestones: The Project Director, Museum Educator, Partner Liaisons, and Advisory Board will work together on all aspects of SALEM in History. They will assure that all goals are accomplished on time and on budget, that effective planning occurs, and that all activities are geared to increase the depth, breadth, and quality of SPS teachers' knowledge and understanding of American history. Setting and meeting clearly identified short- and long-term timelines and milestones are indispensable components of that process. At the same time, circumstances may warrant minor adjustments to those plans. Adjustments would come only after careful consideration by the Advisory Board and would be based upon input from evaluators, reports from the Project Director, and conversations with SPS teachers.

    The best strategy for meeting timelines is giving all parties specific responsibilities. All participants have been charged with specific goals and given the resources to complete them. Partner Liaisons will organize the early stages of SALEM in History. The Project Director will have clearly defined job responsibilities, the appropriate resources to meet them, and will be able to call on the experience and resources of the Partner Liaisons, and through them, the full resources of each partner. The Museum Educator will work closely with the Project Director, Partner Liaisons and SPS teachers to select appropriate primary sources to enhance the teachers' learning experiences, strengthen curriculum and lesson plan development, and disseminate SALEM in History through the web site. The Board will set overall strategy and strengthen the best practices of the SALEM in History staff. 
    Appendix G includes an organization chart and a table outlining selected elements of the timeline and project milestones. The budget narrative contains information about the resources dedicated to the elements of the management plan. 

C. Quality of the Project Evaluation
The project evaluation includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses to measure the outcomes of the project design. The purpose of this evaluation project is to understand the relationship and influence of a professional development project for teachers of American history and the practices and strategies that enhance student achievement in the acquisition of a sound knowledge base in American history. Project staff and the Advisory Board will use the evaluation results to identify strengths and weaknesses in the SALEM in History project, allowing them to improve the program continuously throughout the grant period.
    The study will use a quasi-experimental approach where there will be a matched comparison between two groups of teachers and students in grades 3, 5, 8, and 10. In order to minimize critical differences between the two groups, groups will be selected and tested at the same times. Since the project sample consists of public school teachers and children, both groups will need to volunteer to participate and sign a written consent to participate form as the intervention and control groups. Based on past experience, the district does not anticipate any problems in getting this consent. Both groups will use teachers with similar teaching styles and classroom make-up; i.e. number of children, number of children with special needs, number of English Language Learners, years of teaching experience and background in American history.  Once the SPS has been notified of the grant award an application form will be sent to all elementary, middle and high school teachers in grades 3, 5, 8, 10. The teachers will need to submit a letter of intent to participate in this project. The matches will be determined by this group of volunteers. The intervention groups will participate in all components of the SALEM in History project. The control groups will use the district curriculum and materials for instruction in American history.

    The Project Evaluator will be responsible for developing the evaluation plan, conducting the evaluation, and disseminating the results. Dorrie Bonnie Kehoe, an outside evaluator familiar with the PEM and SPS, has submitted a letter of support for this project and has agreed to supervise an outside evaluation team that also includes a university professor of American history, a public school history teacher, and a museum educator.  According to contractual specifications for the city of Salem, the project cannot identify all of the evaluators without a formal bidding and application process; this process will begin immediately after notification of the grant award. The evaluators will collect pre and posttest information from teachers as well as children. The pre and posttests, created by the Project Director, will use multiple choice as well as open-ended responses. Teachers will also be asked to identify and discuss artifacts and primary documents, contextualizing these items within the broader themes of American history. The proposed major outcomes or dependent variables of the study are; an increase in the knowledge base of the American history teachers; the application and implementation of this knowledge into units, lessons and classroom settings; the dissemination of methods and materials within the district and community, and increased student knowledge and achievement in American history.
A variety of qualitative measures will also be employed. The instruments will include surveys, exhibitions of student work based on rubrics, direct observation checklist, and observations of focus group sessions. The Project Evaluator will determine the appropriate questions and focus for gathering data based on the outcomes of the project design.  Appendix G provides more specific information about how the leaders of SALEM in History will implement and benefit from this quasi-experimental evaluation plan.

Conclusion

The cost effectiveness of this project is demonstrated in two ways. First, at a minimum, SALEM in History will directly impact 80-90 SPS teachers, and all of the district’s more than 5,000 students, most at several stages of their intellectual development. With the systematic integration of project materials into the SPS curriculum guides and the improved teacher training into the professional development program, the impact of the project will be repeated for subsequent students and SPS teachers well beyond the period of the grant. Second, with the regional dissemination network created by the project, the potential exists to reach students and teachers in many other urban districts as well as institutions of higher education throughout the state and beyond.

    The partners have integrated into the project design a number of means to ensure the sustainability of the program beyond the period of funding. A primary means to secure the sustainability of any new program is to infuse the strategies and activities of the program into the infrastructure of the institutions. In this project, the training of teachers program is integrated into the ongoing SPS professional development program and into the teaching responsibilities of the university faculty. The subject areas will be infused into the SPS curriculum guides, the state’s social studies standards, and into the course offerings at the university. Salem State is also committed to partnering its history student teachers with  SALEM in History-trained American history teachers, so that the next generation of teachers, both inside and outside of Salem Public Schools, will share in the benefits of this program.  Thus, this project will benefit pre-service teachers as well as in-service teachers.

    The SALEM in History project sustains itself in additional, intangible ways that will have great significance for SPS teachers and students. By having the SSC, PEM and NPS experts treat the SPS teachers as colleagues and scholars throughout the process, the project will help foster a greater sense of professionalism and pride among the SPS teaching corps. This should, in turn, reenergize the district’s American history teachers and lead to a greater retention rate for them. Moreover, by creating a district-wide community of teachers who have shared training experiences and have developed overlapping expertise, SALEM in History will generate sincere enthusiasm for learning and teaching history. As a result, this project has the potential to change fundamentally the way an entire generation of Salem teachers and students understand American history and view its importance.
Salem Public Schools, The Peabody Essex Museum, the National Park Service, and Salem State College are deeply committed to improving the quality of American history education in Salem. This project will provide an infrastructure to make that commitment a reality. The importance of the SALEM in History initiative ensures that the partners will sustain the project beyond the grant period. With the confluence of new state standards, the initiation of a new MCAS history test, the expansion of the Peabody Essex Museum, and the growing immigrant population in Salem Public Schools this an especially opportune time to launch such an important and worthwhile project.