The NSF strategy is a reflection of the growing and widely held view that meaningful reforms in schools are most likely to be achieved through state initiatives that set clear and ambitious learning goals and standards; align all of the available policy levers in support of reform; stimulate school-level initiatives; and mobilize human and financial resources to support these changes. Two premises underlie systemic reform: (1) all children can meet significantly higher standards if they are asked to do so and given adequate opportunities to master the content, and (2) state and local policy changes can create opportunities by giving schools strong and consistent signals about the changes in practice and performance that are expected. Because this is an enormous investment of Federal resources that is intended to bring about deep, systemic improvement in the nation's ability to teach science and mathematics effectively, the NSF has contracted with a consortium of independent evaluators to conduct a review of the program.

The first of the SSI's were funded in 1991, sufficiently long ago to begin to formulate some initial impressions of their impact. Take, for example, the various SSI's statements of "good educational practice." Most SSI's began their initiatives by establishing clear goals for what students should know and be able to do, reflecting the emergence of a national consensus for broad standards for just about every aspect of the educational process. The concerned persons in each SSI--policy-makers, educators, mathematicians, and scientists--have not necessarily reached the same conclusions about what children should learn or even what efforts are needed to put the necessary changes in place, but they are focused on common goals as expressed locally. The recent national dialogues about goals and standards have provided the basis for a remarkably consistent image of what states--at least the SSI states--consider good educational practice. The differences that do occur across states reflect variations in demographics, geography, resources, values, and educational structure.

All the states with SSI's, regardless of their primary strategy, have address the professional development of teachers. Collectively, the SSI's reported that professional development services were provided to more than 50,000 teachers during the past year, which is approximately eight percent of the public school teachers in the participating states. The number of teachers participating varied by grade level and subject matter. Some states, for example, reported reaching more than one in every five middle-school mathematics teachers, but only one in every 20 high-school mathematics teachers. Focusing SSI resources on the professional development of classroom teachers implies changing their skill levels, knowledge, and beliefs. Attitudes and perceptions of administrators also changed in the process. The challenge lies in developing a strategy that provides on-going, in-depth professional development that reaches a significant portion of those who teach mathematics and the sciences. Not only must an effective development model(s), be provided, the infrastructure to accommodate all teachers must be created as well.

Most states' strategies include building statewide capacity for professional development beyond the opportunities sponsored directly by the SSI's. Three factors are explicitly recognized: (1) the SSI's do not have the resources to reach all teachers in most states, (2) the SSI's funding will eventually run out, and (3) the need for professional development will be on-going. Some states have developed regional centers to serve the on-going professional development needs of teachers. Another capacity-building strategy involves the use of technology to support teachers' efforts to change their practices. New non-governmental organizations are also playing key leadership roles in a number of states. Such organizations are of particular interest because they have the potential to build broad-based, bipartisan support that can sustain the SSI vision and its activities across electoral cycles.

One of the central tenets of systematic reform is the alignment of the myriad of public policies governing the educational enterprise, from teacher credentiality to student assessment to textbook adoption, with the new goals and standards. In localities where the revision of state policies is simply not considered a fruitful strategy, strong traditions of local control are to be found.

Some SSI's are working to improve the preparation of teachers. A common strategy has been to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to institutions for higher education to design and implement innovative pre-service teacher education programs. Scientists and mathematicians can have an enormous impact on this aspect of the SSI's mission, by becoming intimately involved in the development of courses that are meaningful for would-be teachers. This is the area where scientists and mathematicians can leverage their technical knowledge and skills to help educate teachers.

Creating and sustaining a coalition of groups powerful enough to launch fundamental reforms in public education is challenging. The coalition must be able to reach consensus on a vision of reform and, then, sustain the reform over an extended period of time. This is not easy when power and authority are highly fragmented (and perhaps at odds), where interest groups live or die on confromtation politics, when public and private sectors exhibit a basic distrust of one another, and when everyone is an expert--real or imagined--on topics more-or-less related to education. In addition, the SSI's are operating in a turbulent climate. Policy makers may be working on standards-based reforms in K-12 education at the same time they are seeking efficiencies in state government, consider deregulation, and experiment with integrated social services. Criminal justice, health, and welfare are competing in state capitols for the resources required to bring about education reforms. And, within this shifting policy landscape, the SSI's are seeking higher priority for mathematics and science, as well as attempting to develop the infrastructure and capacity to support change in the schools. Simply keeping mathematics and science education high on the agenda of state policy-makers is a challenge.

Each of these component strategies of the SSI's is important. The critical question is whether, in a given state, the SSI strategies, when combined with other state reform initiatives, form a coherent, comprehensive plan for improving public education. While the oldest of the SSI's are only in their fourth year of activity, it is already clear that the reforms they are seeking will take longer than five years to accomplish. (The SSI's are supported by five-year grants from the NSF.) The instructional reforms advocated by the SSI's require time to implement, and once in place, additional time to produce results. Elected officials often focus on the short-term, and they can become impatient when the results are slow. There appears to be no ready solution to the conflict between the long-run agendas of school reforms and the short-term needs of legislators. This is clearly a race for long-distance runners.