The environment can be a natural context for classroom learning.

In the early 1990s the Trusts’ Education and Environment programs joined forces to strategically link two separate but overlapping areas of interest.

The Education program was supporting standards-based education reform, including professional development for teachers in math and the humanities. The Environment program, in addition to its primary focus on natural-resource conservation and global climate change, sought to help develop a citizenry that understood the fundamentals about the environment. Through an interdisciplinary fund, the programs had jointly supported a locally based K-12 environmental curriculum as well as outreach programs at science museums in the Philadelphia region.

At the time, the environment was a relatively new area of study--only a generation or so old--although most states did mandate it as an area for instruction. But the topic was not part of the new "standards," which set forth clear, high goals for what children should know at various points in their schooling. Yet it seemed that the two could be connected. After all, education reform raised expectations: Students would have rich learning experiences based on real-world, hands-on problem-solving; and educators would be offered ongoing training and collaborations with other teachers. These expectations could potentially be met through environmental education.

The Trusts funded a planning grant for aimed at determining whether and how the Trusts could help advance the nascent field. The Trusts wanted to make a significant impact, not simply add to the existing materials and teacher workshops. Gerald Lieberman, a veteran scientist with a doctorate in ecology, who had done environmental education training for teachers in several Latin and South American countries, undertook the assignment.

Lieberman spoke with leaders in education and in environmental organizations. His extensive survey found that environmental education as a field was fragmented at best and sometimes divided. But he was consistently intrigued by comments from state environmental education coordinators. Because of their unique role between setting policy and overseeing its implementation, they were making connections between the teaching and learning that environmental studies promoted and the teaching and learning that the education reformers sought.

The coordinators had common interests. Each had to figure out how to build standards for environmental studies into the content standards already being developed in their states. They wanted to be able to analyze their work rigorously; they mostly had only anecdotal reports that students learned more in classes that link them, often quite literally, to the world around them and in schools where teachers work together to coordinate units and lessons.

Moreover, some states had significant success with pieces of the environmental-education puzzle. For example, California had produced comprehensive guides to help educators choose among the available environmental-studies curricula. Pennsylvania had policies on training of future teachers. Maryland assessed student learning based on structured activities rather than multiple-choice tests.

But the coordinators were operating in isolation from one another. Because they lacked a network to exchange ideas, they could not share their successes. Filling the research void and providing the network became the focus of the Trusts’ investment.

The State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER) was launched in 1995 with a three-year grant of $900,000 to the Council of Chief State School Officers. SEER, directed by Lieberman, works with state education agencies nationwide to promote educationally effective environmental programs and acts as a clearinghouse for the diverse and widely scattered schools that attempt to link the environment to education through this integrated approach. Originally made up of representatives of nine states, the membership is now 12 states with a demonstrable commitment to both K-12 education reform and environmental education. As their contribution, the states annually provide two weeks of released time for the members to meet, learn from each other and invited experts, and move environmental education forward.

Lieberman and SEER colleague Linda A. Hoody found little in the existing literature on environmental education programs that provided objective criteria for judging educational outcomes, so they were designed their own study. They contacted state departments of education to garner recommendations about successful school environmental-education programs and received some 350 in all. From those, they selected 40 schools that appeared to have successful programs that met the SEER criteria.

They proceeded to interview 250 teachers and administrators and more than 400 students--and they came up with a name to describe the educational approach they were studying: the environment as an integrating context for learning (EIC).

The SEER report was issued in 1998 under the title "Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Concept for Learning." It describes the common features of the programs; highlights "best teaching practices"; examines the factors that advance or hinder success; presents data on student achievement in core subjects; and identifies effects on teachers.

It confirms the hunch of the state environmental-education coordinators: When a school uses its surroundings and community as its basis for study, allows team teaching and flexible scheduling of class time and involves students in hands-on problem-solving and activities, students learn more and the teachers perform better. As an overall methodology, the report argues, EIC meets virtually every standard--qualitative and quantitative--that defines "success" in education.

Although "Closing the Achievement Gap" is mainly qualitative and the sample is relatively small, it is clear that, to the extent that information is available, students in these programs perform better on average than their peers on standardized tests and other quantitative measures. The 14 schools that provided comparative data from before and after implementing EIC programs all saw an increase in academic achievement using standardized measures. Improvement ranged from a 16-percent boost in test scores after switching to an EIC program (Hollywood Elementary School, St. Mary’s County, Md.) to a half-point jump in average grade (Little Falls, Minn., High School).

Academic achievement rose at both elementary and high-school levels, whether students were assigned to EIC programs or chose them. In specific subject areas, particularly language arts and social studies, 36 of 39 schools reporting showed EIC students scoring better on standardized tests than those on the traditional classroom track; improvements are somewhat less dramatic but still strong in math and science. At Dowling Elementary School in Minneapolis, Minn., reading scores rose eight percent for low achievers, seven for middle achievers and six for high achievers over a two-year period.

The SEER report also presents the qualitative evaluations of the impact of EIC on students. Based on 165 teacher evaluations, 98 percent reported that EIC increased student engagement and enthusiasm; 89 percent noted that students were more willing to stay on task; and 94 percent saw a rise in their ability to adapt to varied learning styles. Teachers also noted improvement in problem-solving and clarity of thought.

Perhaps most revealing of the extent of student engagement is the reduction in behavior problems. Tahoma (Wash.) High School, which conducted the most thorough assessment of student attitudes, reported an 8 percent drop in disciplinary incidents. At the Huntingdon (Pa.) Middle School, 17 percent of students took part in the environment-and-ecology program but accounted for only 1 percent of disciplinary problems. "You know who this works best for?" Lieberman asks. "Those at-risk kids, the ones who sit in the back and throw spitballs. When we take them outside, they become leaders--that was consistent. Why? They're hands-on type kids, not sit-at-the-desk type kids."

EIC benefits the local community as well. Students make presentations at civic meetings and state legislative sessions. In Huntingdon’s program, called STREAMS (Science Teams in Rural Environments for Aquatic Management Studies), students performed water-quality tests and uncovered high bacteria levels that they were able to track to a crumbling sewage system. Ultimately, the Borough of Huntingdon received a state grant of $250,000 to correct a problem that might have remained hidden for years. The students became better thinkers and investigators as well as better citizens. And the program won a 1998 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence.

Teachers appear to benefit from EIC as much as students. Veteran teachers--the core of EIC instructors nationwide--found themselves revitalized by the switch from texts to team teaching and hands-on activities. In the SEER video Beyond Walls, Across Disciplines, Barry Fountain, a teacher at Tahoma High, comes across like a life force that could move mountains--and minds. "I still had doubts the first semester" about EIC, he recalls, but in the end, "it changed me forever."

Lieberman says that EIC works in virtually every type of school--private, public, urban, suburban, rural. Still, nearly 75 percent of the 40 schools cited in the report serve high- or high-middle-income students, perhaps because of greater parental acceptance of new educational models. Then there’s the program at Wheatley Elementary, an inner-city school in Louisville, Ky. Every Friday, Wheatley’s EIC students spend the day in Black Acre Preserve, outside the city; each student observes a personal 100-square-foot plot of land, then makes reports and designs class activities.

What were the results?

According to a Trusts-sponsored evaluation of SEER in 1998, the Roundtable had helped demonstrate that EIC’s integrated form of environmental education can be fruitfully tied to educational reform. The evaluation continued: "The Roundtable has given credibility and clout to state environmental education representatives, where traditionally little existed, and improved the effectiveness of the states’ efforts."

The evaluation also felt that SEER should more thoroughly document the results of the EIC approach on improving student success. Through the current three-year round of Trusts’ support, SEER is developing two assessment tools: one to gauge student achievement and the other to measure how well EIC is implemented in the classroom. Other projects include the creation of a professional development system for teachers to help schools implement EIC programs. SEER distributes two self-evaluation guides, one on developing community support for EIC, the other on implementing a program. SEER also holds regional week-long workshops with teams of teachers in a guided planning process.

The signs are positive that adoption of approach will be further multiplied. For each dollar of Trusts’ support, notes Lieberman, SEER has helped states leverage $18 for EIC programs from other sources. Based on the state coordinators’ and SEER’s work, for example, the superintendent of schools in Washington state has requested resources to help 100 schools adopt EIC programs. And SEER anticipates the implementation of EIC programs in 150 additional schools in the other 11 states, expanding and rooting this new model for environmental education. Moreover, the Education Commission of the States has listed EIC as a "promising practice," which means that underperforming schools can use this approach to improve their performance and access federal dollars to help implement it.

What did we learn about grantmaking?

Finding the right point for investment is one of strategic philanthropy’s greatest challenges. From the SEER undertaking, staff learned about the importance of a thorough needs assessment and of learning from past investments in order to increase the scale of impact, rather than simply adding to the existing pool of programs and materials. They also learned the critical importance of timing--this effort took advantage of the period when the states were building their educational standards.

Staff decided to focus at the state level, not directly on programs and curricula that serve teachers and students, because the latter approach would have provided a limited impact: it would reach only a relatively small number of teachers over a span of a few years. Teachers and environmental leaders said that there were already many good curricula available. Based on the assessment, staff felt the environmental education and school-reform communities could be brought together in ways that made environmental studies part of the mainstream educational fabric and, in turn, created a demand for the teacher-prep programs and materials. The proper route, as Lieberman demonstrated in the assessment, lay at the state level because, he notes, "It’s where educational standards are set, where teacher-credentialing and testing dollars flow."

The states involved in SEER are: California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.

The State Education and Environment Roundtable is located at 16486 Bernardo Center Drive, Suite 328, San Diego, CA 92128. The phone number is 858.676.0272. The executive summary of "Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning" is available at SEER’s Web site, http://www.seer.org/.