NSRC Leadership and Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) Initiative

The National Science Resources Center's (NSRC) Leadership and Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) program is a 5-year outreach initiative with the purpose of increasing the expertise of state, district, and school level educators to select, adopt, and implement high quality instructional materials. The evaluations of LASER were divided into four parts over the duration of the LASER program. The first three parts were completed after the first 3 years of the program, and the final part took place over 18 months and was divided into two different evaluations.

The evaluation showed that the NSRC developed many effective programs, products, and services. The NSRC developed leadership capacity at multiple levels in LASER by expanding regional site leaders' knowledge and expertise, developing district leaders, and creating a cohort of local leaders to sustain the regions' work. The LASER Center was extraordinarily successful in creating a broadly shared vision of science teaching and learning as well as what it takes to develop district programs to fully support such a vision.

In the regional sites where LASER fully operated by the end of the grant, this vision is now widely held. LASER also secured significant additional resources for improving K–8 science programs from existing and new corporate sponsors. The NSRC and the LASER Center surpassed their goal of providing 300 school districts with access to resources and expertise. As of February 2003, more than 370 districts had participated, and the development of regional technical assistance networks for sustaining districts' programs helped sustain the program in multiple areas.

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