UB's Graduate School of Education and the Buffalo School District look to BUILD relationship at troubled school

An article in the Buffalo News reports on the partnership between the UB Graduate School of Education and Buffalo’s BUILD Academy, one of the city’s lowest-performing schools that is scheduled to close at the end of the school year and reopen in the fall under a new model and with new school leadership, and quotes Suzanne Rosenblith, dean of the Graduate School of Education. “We see a whole lot of ideas thrown into schools and too often there isn’t a research base to it,” she said, “so if it works we don’t know why it works – and whether it can be replicated elsewhere.” The article also quotes Thomas Ramming, clinical associate professor of educational leadership and policy in the Graduate School of Education, who is involved with the project. “We’d like to build on what’s already there and hopefully bring our faculty – with both a practical background as well as those heavily involved in research – to analyze and study more in depth what’s going on with curriculum, learning, structure of the school, class size,” he said.

An editorial praises the Graduate School of Education for volunteering to take over Buffalo’s troubled BUILD Academy in order to improve outcomes at the pre-K to eighth-grade school. “UB President Satish Tripathi and Suzanne Rosenblith, GSE dean, gave their support to the college’s application. Superintendent Kriner Cash made positive, although non-committal, comments regarding the UB proposal. It would give GSE full authority at BUILD starting in 2018-19, and act as a partner with the school district,” the editorial notes.