Our History & Mission

 

Our History

The Center for the Future of Public Education (CFPE), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, began in the early 1990s as the administrator of the Mid-California Science Improvement Program, a 10-year effort funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to improve science education using the Kovalik ITI (Integrated Thematic Instruction) model. MCSIP started in Monterey County then expanded into five additional counties from the Bay Area to the Sierra foothills with more than 500 teachers.

From these roots in California, CFPE’s mission moved to Arizona then to Washington State and now back to California.

When Susan Kovalik retired for the fifth (and the last!) time, the Center for Effective Learning closed its doors and passed its mission to us. Thus, the Center for the Future of Public Education is now the trustee of the Kovalik ITI (Integrated Thematic Instruction) Model, later known as the Highly Effective Teaching (HET) Model, and now renamed the Learning-Centered School Model.

The ITI/HET/LCS Models have a long and storied history across 42 states and internationally—Australia, Canada, and Switzerland and adopted schoolwide in American Schools in Italy, Jakarta, and Japan.

National recognition of the model includes:

• Selection by the American Youth Policy Forum as one of 28 educational models in the U.S. that supports service learning and one of 11 rated highly compatible, 2002

• Selected by the U.S. Department of Education as one of 32 entire-school models in the U.S. for replication in the federally funded Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program (CSRD), 2000

• Selected as one of 56 educational models considered comprehensive for both curriculum and instruction for inclusion in the college text Instructional Design Theories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory edited by Charles Reigeluth, Indiana University, 1999

International recognition of the ITI Model includes:

• Gold medal from the Slovak Minister of Education for helping the country create an alternative to their communist system of education following the Velvet Revolution

• Gold medal from Trnava University acknowledging adoption of the ITI Model as the basis for teacher certification

Adopted schoolwide and districtwide as well as implemented by teams of teachers and those implementing on their own, more than 30,000 teachers and administrators have been trained in the models.

CFPE and the Clayton-Bradley Academy, a preK–12 campus in Maryville, TN, are the only licensed providers of LCS trainings. CBA provides a preK–12 being there experience with the LCS Model plus a variety of other professional development opportunities and extended support.

Our Mission

Our mission is to demonstrate the power of using neuroscience in classrooms and schools by:

• Providing professional development opportunities in the Learning-Centered School Model and ensuring its brain research base remains up to date

• Creating replicable programs for addressing the needs of all pre-K–12, especially underachieving and second language learners, by teaching to long-term memory the first time, thus significantly reducing the need and costs for remediation

Center for the Future of Public Education

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