Breakout Presentation 6
A Longitudinal Analysis of the Achievement Gaps Before, During, and After High School
(David Chamberlain, Victor Manchik, Chris Weber, Michelle Wrenn Benham)
Panelists will discuss a study that examines the achievement gap by merging longitudinal assessment data from elementary, middle, and high schools and post high school college records (matriculation test scores and course placement, grades in college level math and English courses) for 20,954 Capistrano Unified School District high school graduates over the past eight years. They’ll describe gaps at each educational level and school- and district-wide strategies for addressing the gaps. Learn strategies for greater access to quality instruction among all students: making the matriculation process smoother, using high expectations when reclassifying English learners, and employing effective math course placements and CAHSEE remediation practices.
A Mindset is a Difficult Thing to Change: How Educators’ Attitudes, Behaviors, and Expectations Can Perpetuate Inequality of Educational Opportunity
(Gail Thompson)
In schools throughout the nation there are common mindsets and school practices that can impede student achievement and perpetuate inequality of educational opportunity. In order to solve these problems, we must eliminate these mindsets and practices. During this presentation, Dr. Thompson will describe several mindsets that are harmful to African American students, explain the related consequences, and offer recommendations to educators and policy makers. This session is an extended session. It continues through 2:45 p.m. Please plan on attending the entire session.
Bootstrap Your Way to Excellence: How to Revolutionize Your AP Program/School on a Starving-School Budget - No Bake Sales or Begging Necessary!
(Rosemary Jacobs)
This presentation explains how to expand your Advanced Placement (AP) program through a dependable self-funding approach that increases the number of students who take AP exams, raises the bar for honors classes, expands participation, and creates support programs that will improve your school. Ms. Jacobs will introduce a funding program developed at George Washington in San Francisco for students who could not afford to pay for AP exams. She’ll inspire you with results, such as a standardized AP/honors program, increased participation (35 percent of 11th and 12th graders take AP classes), a peer tutoring program, website with teacher-generated lessons for differentiating instruction, and six years ranked among the top schools in the U.S. by Newsweek.
California State Board of Education Panel
(Gary Borden, Allan Bersin, Yvonne Chan, Theodore Mitchell, Kenneth Noonan, Johnathan Williams)
This panel focuses on issues of student achievement and the gaps in statewide student achievement by some of the state’s leading policy makers for K-12 education. In this moderated discussion, members of the California State Board of Education promise to provide an informative discussion on both the state’s role in ensuring student achievement and the successes and challenges they have individually experienced as education professionals in California’s public school system. The State Board of Education is one of the state’s primary bodies responsible for public school student achievement across the state of California. Join these individuals as they share their rich experience in addressing these matters.
Closing the Achievement Gap: The Promise of a Whole State Approach
(Lynne Faulks, Justo Robles)
Recent efforts to close the achievement gap have stressed the importance of holding all students to high standards of academic achievemnet. The Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 established for public schools in California the highest content standards in the country. The 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) established an accountablity process which held public schools accountable for the performance of all students. The actions, however, have placed a strict focus on outcomes and only passing attention to the conditions which must be met for both students and schools to succeed. Varioulsy know as "input," "opportunity to learn," "infrastructure," and "context," these factors have, to date, received only passing attention. The panel will discuss a comprehensive strategy that strikes a balance between expections and resources. Specifically, discussion will focus on the Quality Education Investment Act, a research-based program that targets and extraordinary level of resources to schools of greatest need.
Developing Academic Language Through Parent Partnerships
(Rita Koski, Jan Stockton-Miller)
Researchers estimate it takes 41 hours a week to provide at-risk children enough out-of-home word exposure to equal the rich language experiences of children from higher income families. This session describes how Nuview’s Early Reading First Program closes this gap by enlisting parents as “language therapists.” Learn how communities present a context for rich discussions and how to elevate the quality of parent/child interactions to create receptive and expressive vocabulary gains in English and Spanish. See how parents mediate their children’s experiences by targeting vocabulary, directing attention, describing and relating what children see to what they already know.
Improving English Learner Achievement and Assessment: The Dynamic Interplay of Policy, Practice, and Research
(Jamal Abedi, Richard Durán, Kathryn Lindholm-Leary, Marguerite Ann Snow)
English learners (ELs) in California number nearly 1.8 million students in K-12 schools and constitute about one-quarter of all students. They are students for whom English is a second language and who are identified as needing additional development of English skills in order to benefit from instruction in English. Effective strategies for educating these students need to take into account the immense diversity in backgrounds of these students and ways that schooling practices can provide the services benefiting students given this diversity and education achievement goals stipulated in policy. This session examines strategies responsive to this concern based on careful analysis of education policies, practice and research that contribute to 1) improved identification and assessment of EL students; 2) instructional programs at the school and classroom level serving the learning needs of EL students in their primary language and English; and 3) instructional practices assisting EL students in acquiring critical thinking and language skills supporting learning of subject matter content. For more information on Jamal Abedi, Kathy Lindholm-Leary or Marguerite Ann Snow please visit the “Featured Speakers” page on this Web site.
Multiple Pathways To Success: Preparing Students for College & Career
(Bill Giovannetti, Matt Perry, Roman Stearns)
Through applied learning strategies that integrate standards-based academic courses with challenging career technical education, multiple pathways prepare high school students for both college and career – not one or the other. Organizing learning around broad career interests helps students understand the relevance of their coursework and motivate them to succeed. This session describes research on California Partnership Academies and similar models across the country where multiple pathways are presenting a promising approach for improving high schools and student achievement. Learn the essential elements for effective pathway implementation.
Preventing Special Education Through Early Intervention
(Cherisse Baatin, Jennifer Banks, Debra Bradley, Gerry Klor, Kathryn Stratton)
In this session, presenters describe efforts underway in Sausalito Marin City Schools to reduce the numbers of economically disadvantaged African-American students entering special education through prevention and early intervention. At Bayside School, students who demonstrate delays in acquiring literacy are provided with reading intervention using the research-based Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) model to help students acquire literacy before they fail. Resource teachers provide intervention based upon the "neverstreaming" approach used so successfully in the Elk Grove School District. Student progress is monitored continuously and the teachers are provided with consultation and data to guide classroom instruction on targeted students. The presentation will address the importance of providing immediate access to remedial instruction, the role of data to set high expectations, and how to implement successful instructional strategies for economically disadvantaged minority students.
Puente Project: Partnering With California School Districts to Create a Pervasive College-Going High School Culture Through Academics, Community, and Culture
(Jane Pieri)
This presentation unites district administrators and Puente trainers to describe their partnership and how the Puente model is implemented in the high school. Ms. Pieri will also compare Puente and non-Puente students in the district using CAHSEE, "A-G", graduation, and college-going data, and showcase the Puente strategies for working with students, high school faculty, parents, and community.
Schools That Work Panel
(Jorge Lopez, David Silver, Karen Williams)
This panel discussion focuses on schools that have reduced the achievement gap. California school administrators will share strategies and programs that led to their success.
Solving California’s Dropout Crisis
(Terry Hilliard, Russell Rumberger, James “Greg” Scott, Darrell Steinberg)
Fewer than 70 percent of ninth graders in California graduate from high school, with the percentage for Latino, African American, and linguistic minority students closer to 50 percent. The social and economic welfare of the state depends on finding a solution to this educational crisis. This panel will discuss current efforts to address the dropout problem in California, including the work of the California State Senate Select Committee on High School Graduation, chaired by Senator Darrell Steinberg, and the work of the California Dropout Research Project, directed by Russell Rumberger, which is funding a series of studies on the nature of—and potential solutions to—the dropout problem in California. The panel will also include a presentation by a high school dropout, Terry Hilliard, who enrolled in a special charter school that enabled him to earn his GED and attend college, and by the founder of the school, James “Gregg” Scott.
State P-16 Council Subcommittee on Strategies
(Jose Ortega, Rhonda Rios-Kravitz, Barbara Ross)
The Strategies Subcommittee of the California P-16 Council will present and discuss their draft recommendations on what the state can do to close the achievement gap.
Listen to an audio recording of this presentation:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
The Empowerment of Hope
(Ken Davis , William Huyett)
Ken Davis and William Huyett make an unlikely pair of leaders who are working together with a common purpose of closing the achievement gap in the Lodi Unified School District (LUSD). Mr.Davis will relate his personal experiences with his children to his motivation to run for the School Board. After 15 years as a Board member, his dream of closing the achievement gap is beginning to unfold. William Huyett came to LUSD to build schools and get students off year-round education. After the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act identified LUSD as a Program Improvement (PI) district, the priorities changed to close the achievement gap. Mr. Huyett will describe the work done to change the LUSD's focus including his call to action to end institutional racism and close the achievement gap.
Using Data to Close the Achievement Gap
(Ramona Bishop, Shelley Jones)
Current state and federal reporting systems call for data to be disaggregated by race. The data reveals that there has been little progress made to improve performance levels of students of color, and those living in poverty. Many schools have taken the necessary steps to devise action plans, based on having honest conversations with staff members. This workshop will give participants some strategies for engaging staff members in the difficult conversations about the data that will lead to improved teaching and learning environments for students. Participants will gain innovative ideas for addressing what has become a cultural disconnect between staff members and Latino and African-American students, and ideas on how to work with their staff members to improve academic achievement for all students, particularly students who have not performed as well as their peers. For more information on Romana Bishop or Shelley Jones, please visit the “Featured Speakers” page on this Web site.
Using Family-School Partnerships to Increase Student Success and Academic Achievement
(Jeana Preston)
As a foundation for its work, the California Parent Center (CPC) uses the research-based Six Types of Parent Involvement Framework developed at Johns Hopkins University by Dr. Joyce Epstein, a leading researcher and national expert in the area of school, family and community partnerships. This lively discussion explores research about the positive impact parent involvement has on a child’s academic achievement, especially with Latino and African American children from low income families.
Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) speaks to NCLB
(Kris Alexander, Nancy Carr, Armalyn DeLaO, Kathy Kratochvil)
This session will provide real world applications of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) core academic learning that includes visual arts. San Bernardino City School District and Riverside/Inyo/Mono/San Bernardino project will present on their work to ensure student success in learning that provides visual and performing arts instruction and will share the ensuing results.
What Makes the Difference Between High Achievement and Mediocrity?
(Joseph Johnson)
Although achievement gaps are pervasive, some schools and districts have successfully narrowed or eliminated gaps in achievement among diverse racial, ethnic, and socio-economic populations. How have leaders in these schools and districts influenced these impressive results? How are policies, programs, and practices in these schools and districts different from those found in other schools and districts? What nuances in leadership behavior might stimulate the attitudes, behaviors, systems, and cultures that maximize learning for underserved students and minimize achievement gaps? Dr. Johnson will synthesize and describe research findings that address these important questions. For more information on Dr. Johnson, please visit the “Featured Speakers” page on this Web site.
Worst to First
(Don Davis)
Three factors contribute to student success—program, culture and instruction. This session explores breakthrough approaches to delivering “teacher-directed instruction” based on Waterford High School faculty’s commitment to research-based instructional norms that occur every day in each classroom. Discover why professionals throughout California have visited the school to learn the techniques that raise student engagement and promote checking-for-understanding. Their case study will inspire you with instructional strategies to close the achievement gap.