Tsukuba Journal of Educational Study in Mathematics. Vol.

25, 2006

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LESSON STUDY:

PROGRESS AND CHALLENGES IN THE U.S.i
Catherine Lewis and Rebecca Perry
Mills College, Oakland, California

This paper provides a brief history of lesson study in the United States, with a focus on
areas of progress and challenge. Four areas of progress are identified: growth of
interest among educators; growth of tools and resources; growth of understanding;
and emerging evidence of effectiveness. Five challenges are identified: access to rich
models of mathematical instruction; premature “expertise;” simplistic research
models; limited opportunities for cross-site learning; and inadequate feedback loops
linking lesson study to changes in curriculum and policy.

INTRODUCTION
Lesson study is the core form of professional development in Japan, and is often
credited for the steady improvement of Japanese elementary instruction (Hashimoto,
Tsubota, & Ikeda, 2003; Lewis & Tsuchida, 1997; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). U.S.
educators have shown enormous interest in lesson study since the Third International
Mathematics and Science Study brought it to public attention in 1999; however, the
U.S. has a history of educational faddism, in which many promising innovations have
been discarded before being thoroughly understood or implemented (Burkhardt &
Schoenfeld, 2003; Fullan, 2001). Will lesson study suffer a similar fate? This paper
examines evidence of lesson study’s progress and challenges in the U.S. to date.

LESSON STUDY’S PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES

Four areas of progress are identified: growth of interest in lesson study among U.S.
educators; growth of tools and resources for lesson study; improved understanding of
lesson study; and emerging evidence of lesson study’s effectiveness in U.S. settings.
Growth of interest in lesson study.
In 1999, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study brought Makoto
Yoshida’s (1999) work on lesson study to a broad public audience (Stigler and Hiebert,
1999), provoking enormous interest in lesson study among US educators and
researchers. Within three years, lesson study groups emerged in at least 200 U.S.
schools across at least 25 states (Lesson Study Research Group, 2004a), and lesson
study became the focus of dozens of conferences, reports and published articles in the
US (e.g., Brown et al., 2002; Chokshi & Fernandez, 2004; Lewis 2002a,b; Lewis,
Perry, & Hurd, 2004; National Research Council, 2002; North Central Regional
Educational Laboratory, 2002; Richardson, 2004; Stepanek, 2001, 2003;
Wang-Iverson & Yoshida, 2005; Watanabe, 2002; Wilms, 2003).

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We are not aware of a systematic source of statistics on public lessons in the US, but
we do that public research lessons now occur in many regions. For example, in the first
half of 2005 alone, public lessons occurred in Olympia, Washington; Chicago, Illinois;
Fresno, San Mateo, and Sonoma, California; several locations in and around
Watertown, Massachusetts; and Des Moines, Iowa. At least five of these had more
than 100 people in attendance.
Some interest in lesson study in the U.S. has come from quarters where there is not
extensive lesson study in Japan, such as universities. U.S. interest in lesson study in
the U.S. has emerged across grade levels (from preschool to university) and across
subject areas, including science, mathematics, language arts, English as a second
language, art education, social studies, special education, and no doubt other areas as
well (Teaching American History, 2005; University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, 2005).
Growth of tools and resources for lesson study.
Various tools for the pursuit of lesson study have been developed in the U.S., some
based on Japanese practice (e.g, protocols for classroom observation and the
post-lesson colloquium), and others in response to challenges that may be more
prevalent in the U.S. than in Japan (e.g., how to get started with lesson study, how to
develop collaborative norms within a lesson study group). Resources include
individual protocols and agendas for parts of the lesson study process; handbooks;
practitioner-oriented articles; and videos of lesson study in Japanese settings and in
U.S. settings conducted by U.S. practitioners and by Japanese practitioners (Fernandez
& Chokshi, 2002; Lesson Study Research Group, 2004b; Lewis, 2002b; Mills College
Lesson Study Group, 2005, 2003a,b, 2000, 1999a,b; Wang-Iverson & Yoshida, 2005).
Improved understanding of lesson study.
Table 1 illustrates two alternative ideas about the mechanism by which lesson study
improves instruction. We developed Table 1 as a foil for use in workshops, in response
to the theory of lesson study that seemed to underlie questions often posed to us, such
as “When do Japanese practitioners decide a lesson is good enough to be used widely?”
and “If Japanese teachers spend so much time on one lesson, how do they ever get to all
the lessons in the curriculum?” The view of lesson study labeled as hypothesis 1 – that
it improves instruction primarily through the improvement of lesson plans – has
characterized the early lesson work of some sites we have studied. For example, the
teachers of Bay Area School District (BASD) initially used the phrase “Polishing the
Stone” to describe their work, and originally planned to disseminate “polished” lesson
plans on the district intranet as a primary outcome of their lesson study work. However,
during their first year of work, BASD teacher-leaders began to redefine their work as
teacher-led research on practice, and they began to regard the lesson plans as an
inadequate representation of their learning from lesson study. As a result, they chose
alternative methods to share their learning, such as open-house research lessons where
visitors could participate in the whole process of lesson observation, data collection,
and lesson discussion.

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Emerging evidence of effectiveness of lesson study in U.S. settings.

When the senior author first gave talks about lesson study (in 1994), it was common for
U.S. audience members to make comments like “lesson study is a good idea but it
would never work in the U.S. because we are not a collaborative culture,” or “Lesson
study works in Japan because teachers know a lot of mathematics, but that’s not true in
the U.S.” However, there are now emerging some “existence proofs” that U.S.
teachers can use lesson study to build collaboration and content knowledge. The video
of the U.S. lesson study cycle “How Many Seats?” illustrates how U.S. teachers can
use lesson study to build both collaboration and content knowledge. In the segment of
“How Many Seats?” excerpted in Table 2, Teacher 1 moves from confusion about the
relationship of triangles and perimeter units (“tables” and “seats”; see problem in Table
3) to clear statement of the relationship between the two. Likewise, Teacher 5 gains
insight into the physical reason for the numerical pattern. Solution and discussion of
the problem to be presented to students and careful data collection during the research
lesson support teachers’ learning in these instances.
The teachers in “How Many Seats?” also build collaborative capacity, by setting norms
for their work together, choosing one to monitor at each meeting, and sometimes
changing their group operating procedures based on these discussions. For example,
the group of teachers in “How Many Seats?” decides on a more active role for the
(rotating) facilitator in confirming and marking group decisions, after monitoring of
their norm “Sticking to the Process” reveals that some members are confused about the
group’s decisions. The following conversation occurs on Day 2 of the group’s work,
when group members are reflecting, at the end of the meeting, on the norm they chose
to monitor that day: “sticking to the process.” After one member comments that many
ideas were discussed without a clear decision on them, another member suggests that
the facilitator needs to take a stronger role.
Teacher 6: I second what Teacher 3 says about, I think the facilitator’s role is to stop,
make sure you are on the process and make sure that everybody’s, you know
everybody’s opinion is counted, you know.
Teacher 5: hmm. So maybe we are hearing too that the facilitator needs to be a little
bit more aggressive, a little bit you know more in there, saying let’s slow down,
let’s poll everybody, let’s say what we are doing right now. Would you feel more
comfortable with that?
(Nods, assents all around)
The following day, when teacher 5 begins a segue into a new topic of conversation,
the new rotating facilitator implements the more active role agreed upon the prior
day: .
Teacher 5: So this would be a good place for us to anticipate what we think is going
to happen, misconceptions that might happen when they do 4, 5, and 6.

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Teacher 1: Okay. But first let’s hear from everybody I think, because we had kind
of a proposal on the table and I think one of the things that happened yesterday was
we would have a proposal and we sort of assumed everyone was on board, but we
weren’t. Is everybody on board with this? (Each member assents.)
This segment suggests that the group has actively used one of the tools provided
(norm-setting and monitoring of norms), to create a more effective way of working
together.
Other U.S. lesson study evidence suggests other types of teacher learning during lesson
study. For example, the U.S. kindergarten teachers studied by Murata (2005) made
connections between state standards and their own curriculum knowledge in the course
of their lesson study work, shifting their view of the state standard in question from “no
way” our students can do this to confidence that it can be mastered and knowledge
about how go about it.
A technology-based “lesson-study inspired” innovation studied by Ermeling (2005)
led U.S. high school science teachers to increase the student inquiry basis of their
classroom lessons.
At one U.S. elementary school, teachers voted to practice lesson study on a
school-wide basis in 2002, after volunteer groups of teachers found it to be useful, and
this teacher-led lesson study has continued in every year since, growing from
mathematics to include other subject areas at the instigation of the teachers. Table 4
shows the scale scores for the school on the state mathematics achievement test, along
with those for the district and state as a whole. Over 2002-05, the three-year net
increase in mathematics achievement for students who remained at this school was
more than triple that for students who remained elsewhere in the district as a whole
(90.5 scale score points compared to 25.8 points), a statistically significant difference
(F=.309, df=845, p‹.001). While a causal connection between the achievement results
and lesson study cannot be inferred, other obvious explanations (such as changes in
student populations served by the school and district) have been ruled out.
School-wide lesson study appears to be a primary difference between the professional
development at this school and other district schools during the years studied. ii.

CHALLENGES TO LESSON STUDY IN THE UNITED STATES

Five areas of challenge have also emerged as lesson study has unfolded in the United
States: access to rich models of mathematical instruction; premature “expertise” about
lesson study; simplistic research models; limited opportunities for cross-site learning
about lesson study; and inadequate feedback links between lesson study and changes in
curriculum and policy.
Access to rich models of mathematical instruction.
Kyouzai kenkyuu (investigation of teaching materials) is a facet of lesson study that
may enable teachers to deepen their understanding of mathematics, pedagogy, and
student thinking (Hashimoto, Tsubota, & Ikeda, 2003; Takahashi et al., 2005).

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Visiting Japanese educators often ask U.S. teachers how a particular topic is presented
in the textbook, or suggest that U.S. teachers study a topic’s presentation in several
textbooks. This may be useful advice if the textbook’s approach reveals interesting
features of the topic. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. One group of
mathematics coaches in California conducted a lesson study cycle on proportional
reasoning. Accounts of Asian treatments of proportional reasoning provided some of
the richest material for discussion (see Table 5, from Lo,Watanabe & Cai, 2000); in
contrast, a U.S. textbook might provide few examples for teachers to deepen their
thinking about the mathematics or pedagogy of proportional reasoning (see Table 6).
Premature “expertise.”
Lesson study is a simple idea but a complex process. Even after a decade of studying
lesson study in Japan, we are all still learning about lesson study’s many forms and
purposes. Remarkably, some U.S. trainers seem to believe that participation in one or
two lesson study cycles qualifies them as lesson study experts who can provide
definitive blueprints to others. Premature expertise may pose a substantial threat to
lesson study, by generating a “been there, done that” attitude instead of a realistic
expectation that “the road is created as we walk it together.” iii
In contrast, a learning stance seems to characterize the work of settings such as BASD
where lesson study has been sustained. During the first year of lesson study work, one
of the BASD leaders answered a question about the attitudes essential to lesson study
in the following way: .
That you can always get better at teaching. That you’re never at the end of the
road…If you came into [lesson study] and you were [acting] like ‘I’m the hottest
thing out there and I’ve got all these great ideas and I’ll share them with you
guys’....you’re not going to get anything out of it.
The expectation that teachers will learn about subject matter and its teaching-learning
through lesson study has been a steady theme throughout the five years of the lesson
study effort. For example, a video shot in 2002 and widely used to introduce BASD’s
lesson study work prominently features teachers’ initial struggle to understand the
mathematics of a problem and their strategies to build their own mathematical
understanding (Mills College Lesson Study Group, 2005). In 2005, as one BASD
lesson study group shifted its focus from mathematics to writing instruction,
experienced teachers readily volunteered that they did not believe they had effective
strategies for teaching writing. Two members commented afterwards on how lesson
study fostered and was fostered by a culture in which “You’re learning. You don’t
know everything. You’re not busy hiding what you don’t know.”
Simplistic research models.
When we ask a roomful of U.S. educators to raise their hands if they have ever seen a
promising innovation discarded before it has been thoroughly tried, virtually every
hand in the room goes up. Simplistic research models may be one contributor to

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premature innovation death. For example, lesson study might be regarded as

something like aspirin, an easily transported treatment that interacts little with local
site characteristics. Or lesson study may be regarded as a “recipe” that can be
implemented at a site according to some fixed external instructions (perhaps with
minor adjustments like one would make when using a recipe at high altitude).
Neither the metaphor of aspirin or recipe captures lesson study, because of the
extensive interaction between lesson study and the local setting. What is needed to
practice lesson study in a site where there is a coherent curriculum, tradition of
collaboration, and history of careful study of student learning may be quite different
from what is needed in sites where these do not exist. Lesson study might more
appropriately be thought of as a system of learning with certain core principles, as
sketched out in Table 1. Spreading a culture from one geographic location to another is
perhaps the best analogy for lesson study; such cultural spread is something that can
happen and has happened many times in human history. However, cultural spread is
distinctly different from simply spreading the tools or recipes of a culture.
Limited opportunities for cross-site learning.
The United States is geographically large. Even though there are many lesson study
efforts springing up, many U.S. teachers have little opportunity to experience lesson
study outside of their own setting. To the extent that this is true, sites will reinvent the
wheel, rather than learn from one another. For example, the idea of setting group
norms and choosing one to monitor at each meeting, developed by teachers in one U.S.
school district was eagerly embraced by others when they saw it in a workshop.
Opportunities to see research lessons and post-lesson colloquiums conducted by
teachers from other sites can provide an opportunity for immersion in another culture
of lesson study, providing a vantage point on one’s own assumptions, practices, and so
forth.
Cross-national learning that includes educators from Japan may be a particularly potent
form of cross-site learning, judging from U.S. teachers’ reflections on cross-national
workshops. Comments from U.S. teachers who engaged in cross-site lesson study with
Japanese colleagues in August 2001 illustrate the kinds of reflection about lesson study
and mathematics teaching-learning that may be stimulated by cross-site collaborative
lesson study:
[I learned that lesson study] is not so much about lesson planning as it is about
research and watching children’s learning
I love the Japanese teachers’ polite, validating comments to the students. “I don’t
require the correct answer.”
At the beginning of the week, I was more focused on the teacher. Now I can see
and record students’ mathematical thinking.
There is no shortcut to doing the lesson planning and participating in lesson study
yourself to become a helpful observer – DARN!

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Effective observation involves skills, knowledge and preparation. This includes a

“record of lesson” sheet, a copy of the lesson plan itself, and how effectively you
can link teacher action to child’s expression.
Create a need (hunger) for mathematical language; don’t just give it to kids.
The blackboard is a record of the lesson. I often use the overhead (thus, erasing a
lot) or erase what I’ve written on the blackboard due to lack of space. Mr.
Takahashi’s use of the blackboard has made me think of how I will use it in the
future.
Inadequate feedback loops linking lesson study to changes in curriculum and
policy.
In Japan there is an intimate relationship among lesson study, textbooks, and the
national Course of Study. Advances in one arena tend to reshape the other arenas as
well. For example, when Japanese elementary teachers used lesson study to try out
lessons on solar energy (which was not then in the curriculum), this topic was picked
up by other teachers, noticed by policymakers, and eventually became part of the
national Course of Study (Lewis & Tsuchida, 1997). New elementary lessons are
expected to prove themselves widely in public research lessons before finding their
way into textbooks, and teacher-authors of textbooks are typically very active in lesson
study, incorporating successful new approaches into textbook revisions.
MEXT (the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology)
provides funding to schools across Japan that apply to be “designated research
schools” for curricular innovations under consideration. Over a period of several years
when an innovation is being considered or initiated, teachers at designated research
schools engage in repeated cycles of lesson study, often inviting in university-based
specialists and nationally known teachers interested in the particular innovation (Bjork,
2004; Lewis & Tsuchida 1997, 1998; Tam, 2004; Tsuneyoshi, 2001, 2004). Teachers
at the designated research schools study existing curricula and materials (often
including approaches from abroad), adapt or develop approaches they think will work
in their own settings, and study students’ responses to the new types of instruction.
After cycles of internal lesson study, teachers conduct public research lessons that
bring to life the local vision of the innovation, enabling visiting educators to observe
the instructional approach and the students’ learning and development, and providing a
public forum for lively discussion of the local theory of the innovation. In this way,
instruction, textbooks, and standards can evolve in tandem.
In contrast, the hard work of U.S. teachers to understand, for example, how a particular
standard might be brought to life for first-graders (Murata, 2005) may remain within
their group.. The major information conduits linking lesson study, textbooks, and
educational policy in Japan are missing or sparse in the U.S.: for example, the
well-known educators who travel to many lesson study sites to provide public
commentary; the teacher-authors of textbooks who are heavily involved in lesson
study; and the regional and national policymakers who attend research lessons and use

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them as formative data on the strengths and shortcomings of policy and its
implementation (Watanabe, 2002).
Conclusion.
In this international symposium, we have a valuable opportunity to find out whether
the advances and challenges of lesson study experienced in the U.S. are similar to those
found in other countries. We also have a valuable opportunity to share strategies for
building progress and overcoming obstacles. As the Japanese say, “When three people
gather you have a genius.” I hope we can work with the great genius we have
assembled here.

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Table 1: How Lesson Study Results in Instructional Improvement: Two Conjectures

Professional Development Through Lesson Study: Progress and Challenges in the U.S.
Intervening Changes
CONJECTURE 1
LESSON STUDY IMPROVES LESSON PLANS
CONJECTURE 2
VISIBLE FEATURES OF LESSON STUDY
LESSON STUDY STRENGTHENS 3
PATHWAYS TO INSTRUCTIONAL
• Consider long term goals for IMPROVEMENT:
student learning and development 1.TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE, e.g.:
• Knowledge of subject matter
Improvement of
• Study existing curricula and • Knowledge of instruction Instruction
standards
• Capacity to observe students
97

• Connection of daily practice to

• Plan and conduct research lesson long-term goals

2.TEACHERS’
• Collect data during research lesson COMMITMENT-COMMUNITY, e.g.:
• Motivation to improve
• Present and discuss data from • Connection to colleagues who can
research lesson, draw out provide help
implications for future instruction
• Sense of accountability to valued
practice community
3. LEARNING RESOURCES, e.g:
• Lesson plans that reveal and
promote student thinking
• Tools that support collegial learning
during lesson study

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Date Evidence Researcher’s Inference

8/7/02 Planning Meeting Teacher 1 is trying to
Teacher 1: I thought when we added a understand the
triangle we were adding two, but the output meaning of the “plus
chart here is adding one, and I’m not, I two” pattern in the
don’t understand why that is….. chart. She initially
Teacher 6: Because the third one is now a merges the plus one
combined one. pattern (each additional
triangle adds one
Teacher 2: One plus two. It’s plus two this perimeter unit) and the
way (moves finger horizontally across plus two pattern (the
Teacher 1’s chart, to show comparison number of perimeter
between seats and tables). units is two more than
Teacher 1: Oh. Wait a second (studying the number of
triangles). triangles). Through
trying different
Teacher 5: So maybe it would be a good
numbers with the
time for us to do the activity?
manipulatives, she
Teacher 1: (Laughing), yeah maybe! grasps the plus-two
[teachers work problem with manipulatives numerical pattern.
and discuss]…
Teacher 6: Because if you have one triangle
you have three [sides], but then when you
have two [triangles], one of those three
[sides] becomes a combined.
Teacher 1: Two of them become combined,
that’s why you don’t have 5. Cause I’m
thinking, how come I don’t have 3 plus 2?
Teacher 6: I just did the same thing!
Teacher 4: You don’t count the shared side.
Teacher 5: It’s the number of triangles plus
two.
Teacher 2: It’s all plus two. It’s plus two
this way. [Gesturing across Teacher 1’s
chart, comparing triangles and perimeter
units]…
Teacher 1: But now why is that?… I’m still,

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though, why isn’t it if I add a triangle…why

am I not…[continues to work with the
triangles, initially with puzzled tone of
voice, then increasingly matter-of-fact as
she tries different numbers of triangles]
Three. So there’s the two….[With
confidence] This does not fit for zero
triangles. This formula is not an n formula,
it is not like “in any case” cause it has to fit
for zero stage, right?
Teacher 2: I don’t know. I’d have to ask.
Teacher 1: If the number of triangles is
zero, you do not have two sides when you
have no triangles.
8/9/02 Planning Meeting Now teacher 1 clearly
Teacher 1: (Reading from group’s describes the plus two
instructional plan goals). Students will pattern in her own
discover a pattern and they will represent words as she advocates
the pattern as a rule. They will understand for it in the lesson
what a mathematical rule is and will be goals.
introduced to the idea of representing the
rule as an equation.
Teacher 2: So, representing the rule as an
equation, that’s a little bit..
Teacher 3: going in another direction
Teacher 1: But it is an equation. We’re
saying: Number of tables plus two equals
the number of …seats; that is where we
want to get them to at the end of the easel
time.
8/12/02 First teaching of research lesson: Teachers
record the activities and speech of selected
students, trying to create a complete record
of what the selected student heard, saw, and
did during the lesson.
8/12/02 Colloquium of First Teaching Observation of student
Teacher 2: I noticed kids counting the seats counting methods
different ways, and this was a kind of a big enabled Teacher 2 to
aha for me… When I’ve done the problem understand the
mathematics of the

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myself I’ve always counted [shows problem in a new way:

counting around the edge] and it didn’t that the two ends
occur to me there was another way of contribute the “plus
counting it…But [student name] had laid two.”
out 20 triangles…and she was counting
[demonstrates counting top and bottom
alternately, followed by ends] and then it
looked totally different to me; I could see
there’s 10 triangles on top, 10 on bottom,
and a seat on either end. Now I was seeing
the pattern a different way. Up until then, I
had always seen it as you’re taking away a
seat and adding these two, taking away a
seat and adding these two [shows adding a
triangle and subtracting the side that is
joined]. I was seeing a pattern from
somebody else’s perspective. That's why I
thought it might be helpful to have kids
talking about how they’re counting it. How
are you seeing the seats, and the numbers,
and the increases, and where does that come
from? So I think definitely having the kids
use the manipulatives is important, and
watching how they use them is going to tell
us a lot about how did they see the pattern.
Table 2: Excerpts From The Lesson Study Cycle “How Many Seats?”

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We have a long skinny room and triangle tables that we need to arrange in a row
with their edges touching, as shown. Each side can hold one “seat,” shown
with a circle. Can patterns help us find an easy way to answer the question:
How many seats fit around a row of triangle tables?

Table 3: Illustration of Problem Used In Lesson Study Cycle “How Many Seats?”

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 Catherine Lewis & Rebecca Perry

450

400

350

300

250 School
District
200 State

150

100

50

0
2002 2003 2004 2005

Table 4: California Standards Test in Mathematics: Mean Scale Scores, Grades

2-5

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Table 5: Ideas about proportional reasoning introduced from

research on Asian curricula (Lo, Watanabe, & Cai, 2004)

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i
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant No. 0207259. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
ii
To rule out competing hypotheses about causes of the increasing achievement, we
identified other reform efforts that the school-wide lesson study school
participated in during 2001-2005, and identified all other elementary schools
(five) that participated these reform efforts. Gains in achievement for students
who remained at each of these schools for longer than one year were compared
with gains for all students who remained in the district. Only one school other
than the lesson study school showed any statistically significant achievement
gains relative to the district as a whole, and that school did not show sustained
gains over three years. (The school that showed these gains was initially an
Integrated Thematic Instruction school like Foothill, but the program was
discontinued.)
iii
From “Proverbios y Cantares, XXIX” by Antonio Machado,
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/5205/Proverbios_y_cantares.html;
translator not given.

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