Success for All: An Education for Every Child

The Success for All Foundation (SFAF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping all students achieve at the highest levels, especially disadvantaged and at-risk kids in pre-K through grade eight. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, SFAF believes all students deserve an education that will inspire, challenge, and prepare them for a brighter future. Using research, the Foundation creates programs and services that help schools better meet the needs of their students.

SFAF was founded by Dr. Bob Slavin and Dr. Nancy Madden, who met in the 1970s as students at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. The duo shared a passion for improving education and spent hours talking about how to ensure all children received the education they deserved, particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds. Both Dr. Slavin and Dr. Madden were studying psychology and quickly became fans of experimental research. They subsequently moved to Maryland, Dr. Slavin's home state, to continue their studies and apply their ideas in the real world.

By 1980, Dr. Slavin and Dr. Madden's group at Johns Hopkins University had discovered how to harness the power of children working with children. The Success for All program evolved from this basic research on cooperative learning strategies. Dr. Slavin and Dr. Madden subsequently designed the Team Assisted Instruction and Cooperative Integrated Reading Composition programs, both of which were found to have strong positive effects on student achievement. In 1987, the Success for All program was implemented at a pilot school, Abbottston Elementary.

Since then, the Success for All Foundation has served many more schools, helping them make a difference in students' lives. At Success for All schools, social and emotional learning, cooperation, and behavior are given as much importance as academics.

SFAF continues to work closely with Johns Hopkins University to advance the quality of education and human services. In 2009, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education released a report on its comparison study of Success for All, America's Choice, and the Accelerated Schools Project. The study showed that SFA students scored 10 percent higher in reading proficiency than those in other comparison schools.