Past Events

Jul
1
2010
Implications for California
Topic

CA is one of many states facing important decisions on how to assess its students. This conference is an opportunity for policymakers, educators, education researchers, administrators, funders, and community partners to discuss the potential and challenges of performance assessments to support deeper and more rigorous student learning. A panel of leading education researchers, administrators, educators, funders, and community partners will discuss assessment policies and practices that support improved student achievement in CA.

Apr
23
2010
Clearing Away the Smoke and Mirrors
Topic

In this seminar, Douglas N. Harris discusses the strengths and weaknesses of value-added assessment, both as a means to assess teachers and as a means to assess schools. Harris identifies the strengths and weaknesses of value-added measures, and discusses the errors that are often made in using and interpreting such measures. As a part of a system including other performance measures, Harris concludes that value-added assessments can be used to support progress in CA schools and classrooms.

Mar
5
2010
Topic

EdSource, in collaboration with faculty from Stanford University, has conducted a large-scale study of middle grades practices in California and their relationship to student outcomes on 6th-8th grade CSTs in English Language Arts, Math, and Algebra. The analysis was designed to identify practices and policies that differentiate higher from lower performing schools after controlling for student background. This study of the middle grades is the largest of its kind ever conducted and will be discussed by Trish Williams and Mike Kirst in this seminar.

Feb
12
2010
Topic

The CAHSEE has been criticized as being unfair to English Learners, special education students and some racial groups, as well as being ineffective in raising student achievement. Some have called for eliminating passage of the CAHSEE as a graduation requirement for CA students. In this seminar, Julian Betts discusses whether the requirement and funding for intervention is helping or hurting students academically, with a focus on who has been failing the exam, how early we can identify students at risk of failing, and when school districts might intervene to help students at risk of failure.

May
22
2009
Improving Schools Within Budget Constraints
Topic

As CA continues to wrestle with the challenges of providing sufficient funding for schools, understanding the relationships among school funding, effective school resources, and outcomes is essential. In this seminar Norton Grubb addresses four principal questions: (1) What kinds of school resources make a difference to outcomes? (2) Why is the relationship between spending per student and outcomes so weak? (3) Why are outcomes so inequitable? (4) And what should CA do now, in both school finance and other areas of school policy, to avoid further damage to the state’s education system?

Apr
24
2009
Topic

In this seminar, Sean Reardon and Michal Kurlaender will present student-level data from four large California school districts was used to examine the impact of the California High School Exit Examination exam on student achievement and graduation rates. In particular, they focus of the effects of failing vs. passing the CAHSEE in 10th grade on the subsequent achievement and graduation rate of students with relatively low math and ELA skills.

Mar
20
2009
Why Have Accountability and Assessment Policies Failed to Close the Equity Gaps in Higher Education?
Topic

Although policy makers have been talking about and drafting policies to address inequities in student higher education experiences and outcomes for decades, problems of racial-ethnic inequities have proven to be intractable under current accountability and assessment policies. Estela Bensimon and Alicia Dowd discuss research findings from college sites in California and Wisconsin that are using their multi-disciplined approach and tools to help policymakers, leaders, and practitioners make sense of accountability data from the perspective of equity for racial and ethnic minority students.

Nov
14
2008
Crafting an Effective Federal Role in School Reform
Topic

This seminar will feature a round-table discussion to assess No Child Left Behind from a variety of perspectives, asking what we have learned since 2001, and can the federal government rethink its historical mission of equalizing education opportunity and results.