1. What is CDL?
CDL is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that specializes in the development and dissemination of leading-edge scientific research, knowledge, strategies and tactics that improve teaching and increase student learning.
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2. What issues does CDL address?
We address closing the achievement gap by increasing teacher effectiveness. Research confirms that the single most important factor in determining how well a student will learn is the teacher.
Standards set the course, and assessments provide the benchmarks, but it is highly effective teaching that makes substantial and sustained gains in student learning. This means that our most disadvantaged children must have the most highly effective teachers.
Using an on-the-ground, in-the-trenches approach, we advance public education reform by providing educators who teach our most disadvantaged children with professional learning that is specific and relevant to students’ and teachers’ needs.
Similar to the medical model used by physicians, CDL helps educators to (1) identify the problem, (2) match the problem with a specific intervention, (3) implement the intervention with intensity and fidelity and (4) repeat steps 1-3 until the student reaches the desired success.
We work with individual educators, small groups of educators, entire school faculties, and, occasionally, with district-wide capacity-building initiatives.
CDL has special expertise in the areas of learning differences, evidence-based teaching strategies, and building the capacity of teachers. We tackle real-time issues such as ways to remediate struggling readers, differentiate instruction for diverse learners, and build and sustain collective capacity.
CDL’s services fall into three silos:
- evidence-based professional learning for educators – classroom teachers, early childcare providers, administrators, related specialists, and parents and caregivers
- psychoeducational and neurodevelopmental evaluations for struggling students
- public engagement of stakeholders at all levels
The goal of CDL’s professional learning services is to help teachers develop and apply the knowledge and skills necessary to help their students learn to higher levels.
CDL’s professional learning is customized to fit the specific needs of the educators with whom we are working. The educators and CDL professionals together determine professional learning needs and design a plan of action.
The professional learning is sustained, intensive, connected to practice, and
- uses varied formats and media
- focuses on teaching and learning of specific content
- applies research on change
- sustains support for implementation of professional learning for long term change, and
- builds strong working relationships among staff to solve student learning issues.
On an annual basis, CDL convenes educators and experts from across Louisiana and the nation to share the most current evidence-based techniques and strategies. This new information is then looped back into the classrooms, adding new tools to teachers’ toolboxes.
Current CDL professional learning initiatives include:
- Language and Learning – Right from Birth, which provides child care providers and parents of children ages birth to three years with the information, skills and support they need to help their children grow emotionally, physically and cognitively so they will be ready to learn when they enter school
- Read Right from the Start, (K-3) which builds educators’ capacity to provide systematic, explicit and effective literacy instruction to all students in grades K-3 and targeted intervention for students experiencing learning difficulties
- Step It Up for Literacy, (Grades 4-12) which builds educators’ capacity to provide systematic, explicit and effective literacy instruction to adolescent students and targeted intervention for students experiencing learning difficulties
- Learning Profiles: Differentiating Instruction for Diverse Learners, which helps teachers to identify and remediate learning problems with instructional and behavioral interventions that address individual students’ learning profiles
- Plain Talk about Reading, a three-day national institute that focuses on scientifically based reading research, strategies and tactics for educators who serve children ages birth – grade 12
- Greater New Orleans Literacy Institute. In November 2011, CDL entered into a formal partnership with Tulane University, Xavier University of Louisiana, and the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation to found the Greater New Orleans Literacy Institute. The Institute’s goal is to provide a support initiative to ensure that (1) all children ages birth – grade 12 receive effective, evidence-based literacy instruction that advances student achievement, and (2) 100% of Greater New Orleans students will graduate from high school with the literacy skills they need to be college and career ready.
CDL primarily serves Louisiana public school teachers, students and their students’ families, with concentration in the Greater New Orleans area. On occasion, CDL provides services to other schools in the U.S. and Canada.
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8. How is CDL governed?
CDL has a 12-member Board of Trustees, 10-member Community Advisory Council, and a 15-member Professional Advisory Board. All are volunteers.
9. How is CDL funded?
CDL is funded with both public and private dollars.
- Private - Individual contributions, foundation and corporation grants, and individual fees for service provide CDL with funding.
- Public - Schools use their state, federal, and discretionary funds to employ CDL’s services.
All members of CDL's Board of Trustees and staff contribute to CDL.
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