The Impact of the Classrooms for the Future Program Revealed

Penn State's College of Education in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Education recently released a Three Year Evaluation Report analyzing the effectiveness of the Classrooms for the Future program in promoting school reform. According to the report the preliminary results indicate that the program has generated significant progress toward achieving its goals. Significantly, the report says that the evidence analyzed so far in connection to CFF indicates that there have been notable changes for the positive in several areas, including student and teacher activity, student engagement and classroom organization.

According to the report, it appears that Classrooms for the Future created a more personalized and collaborative educational experience for students. Students in CFF spent less time listening to a lecture from the teacher and more time working independently, working in groups and talking with the teacher in one-to-one or in small group conversations. Teachers, in turn, spent less time lecturing in CFF classrooms and more time working with individual students and walking through the room observing and interacting with students. Additionally, observers reported that the physical layout of classrooms in the CFF program evolved away from the traditional "desks in rows, teacher up front" design. CFF classrooms typically were arranged in clusters of three to five desks, a layout that promotes student collaboration and group work.

The Classrooms for the Future initiative was introduced to North Schuylkill during the 2007-2008 school year. Since its inception, over $245,000 in equipment grants were received by the district providing 33 teachers and their students with laptops, Promethean boards, printers and other 21st Century classroom tools. The program has led to a shift in pedagogy among North Schuylkill's teachers, which in turn has led to significant gains in student achievement.