In this seminar Trish Williams and Matt Rosin present new findings from an analysis of longitudinal data on the 7th and 8th grade math and Algebra I CST scores of 70,000 California students. Jennifer O’Day shares lessons and perspectives from CCDR districts on student access and success in algebra and higher level mathematics. The session touches upon the state’s recent adoption of Common Core state standards, and what their implications are especially for 8th grade math.

Despite rising awareness of educators about the importance of addressing the needs of English Language Learners, there has been almost no systematic attention to supporting school and district leaders. Instructional strategies for addressing the language and content needs of ELLs has nevertheless been working itself into the mainstream. In this seminar, Kenji Hakuta and Rich Smith discuss their work on how districts and school leaders can play an active role in structuring and supporting appropriate programs for ELLs, and the policies necessary to improve the educational achievement of ELLs.

Although there is broad agreement that teacher quality is related to student achievement, there is far less agreement about the degree to which school districts and administrators are constrained in making policies that affect the employment and working conditions of teachers. In this seminar, William S. Koski discusses the extent to which California law and the collective bargaining agreements governed by state law, constrains or facilitates district-level discretion over teacher employment policies and practices.

The RAND Corporation, in collaboration with the University of California and San Diego State University, is conducting a study that explores district and school leader responses to the Tier 3 initiative and federal stimulus dollars. In this seminar, the study team discussed qualitative data collected at 10 districts during the spring of 2010. Initial findings suggest that after one year, the Tier 3 flexibility is playing a critical role in helping districts to backfill budget gaps as the state crisis continues.

Pivot Learning Partners, Policy Analysis for California Education, and Full Circle Fund sponsored a one-day conference for school district teams with an interest in redesigning their teacher/principal evaluation systems in the larger context of strengthening teacher/principal effectiveness. In addition to listening to a panel of experts, team members had the opportunity to network with other district leaders from across the state.

The history of LAUSD over the past five decades, reveals an organization pulled up from its early 20th Century Progressive Era roots. Decades of reform efforts have provided a lively audition for what a new institution of public education could look like. In this seminar Charles Kerchner shows how successive reform efforts have outlined the design of a more effective educational system, and identifies some policy levers that can help to create a new institutional structure for public education, in L.A. and for all of California and beyond.

Since 2009, AIR and Pivot Learning have successfully formed partnerships with the Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Twin Rivers Unified School Districts. This team has made a great deal of progress in initiating the activities necessary to implement the basic policy elements of Strategic School Funding for Results at the local level. At this briefing, representatives from each district will discuss the partnership’s progress and the challenges, and offered recommendations for state policy and other districts.

Since 2008, Fresno and Long Beach Unified School Districts have been engaged in a formal district partnership designed to help the districts achieve a common a set of goals. With the generous support of the Hewlett Foundation and Stuart Foundation, the American Institutes for Research, in collaboration with Pivot Learning Partners, has been documenting the districts’ work together. This panel featured the leaders of these two districts who discussed their Partnership and its implications for policy and practice.

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.

Bringing the Common Core to California: A Discussion Morning Presentations. Welcome and Overview by David N. Plank, Executive Director, PACE and Scott Hill, Compliance, Programs and Policy An Introduction to Common Core by Keith Gayler, Program Director, Council of Chief State School Officers The Common Core Standards English/Language Arts by Sue Pimentel, Co-Founder, StandardsWork The Common Core Standards Mathematics by Hung-Hsi Wu, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley Afternoon Panel Discussion. Implementing the Common Core in CA: Reflections on Standards

California participates in President Obama’s goal of increasing participation in postsecondary education the state needs to add roughly 100,000 students a year for the next ten years. Public institutions do not have the ability to meet these needs under current fiscal and structural constraints. What might be the role of private and for-profit colleges and universities in meeting the needs of the state? In this seminar, William G. Tierney addresses this question and more.

This conference cosponsored by PACE and Pivot Learning examines the reform efforts of the Los Angeles Unified School District amidst one of the largest budget crisis known to the district. The panels featured multiple perspectives discussing how resources are allocated to afford greater autonomy for schools, greater budget transparency for the community and greater equity of results for students.

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.

In 2005-06 almost half of the pupils in California’s public schools were Latinos, but Latinos only received about 15 percent of the BA degrees awarded by public and private colleges in the state. Texas has a comparable Latino population but does significantly better than California in getting Latino students through college. In this seminar, Martin Carnoy explored the reasons why California’s education system falls short in ensuring post-secondary access and success for Latino students and identifies steps that the state could take to increase the number of four-year college graduates.

Community colleges are the first point of access to public higher education for many language-minority students who attended CA high schools. These students face language-related challenges that present potential barriers to completing academic goals. Community colleges struggle to meet the needs of those who do not fit the linguistic profiles of monolingual English-speakers in developmental English courses nor of ESL programs. In this seminar, George Bunch presents his research on language testing and placement policies and practices while discussing implications for policy.

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.

Lifting early school achievement depends on the quality of early learning environments—but what do we know about these environments that most effectively stimulate young children’s growth? How can we enrich children’s daily activities? In this seminar, Alison Gropnik and Bruce Fuller discuss key findings on quality, including play, close interactions with caregivers, and exploration—all which have been shown to have lasting effects on children’s development.

The Early Assessment Program is an academic preparation program developed by the California Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and CSU. The stated purpose of the program, now in its fifth year, is to bridge the gap between K-12 educational standards in English and mathematics and the requirements and expectations of postsecondary education at the California State University. In this seminar Michal Kurlaender and Jessica Howell discuss how participation in the Early Assessment Program affects college going behavior and the need for remediation in college.

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.

The ADP has sought to strengthen alignment between standards and expectations in K-12 schools and post-secondary education and training. In the first year the ADP has worked toward agreement on a common standard of readiness for non-remedial college coursework across the three segments of California’s higher education system. In this seminar, members of the ADP team discuss progress to date and next steps in the effort to ensure that more California students are prepared for success in college and careers.

Increasing the percentage of highly qualified teachers in public schools is a priority for California. In this seminar, Lora Bartlett highlights the role overseas trained teachers have played in addressing this goal. She presents data on the number and distribution of overseas trained K-12 teachers in California public schools, highlighting their concentration in high poverty districts and schools. She also examines the implications of different definitions of teacher qualification, and traces connections between education and immigration policy.

California’s education system continues to struggle to close persistent achievement gaps that often exist at school entry, and the state’s dire fiscal situation certainly doesn’t help. But real progress is possible, even now, as new strategies to build seamless early learning systems are being developed and supported through federal efforts. In this seminar, presenters discussed the critical components of PreK-3rd systems, provided specific examples of how these systems are working locally to improve school readiness in California, and offered up new opportunities for statewide leadership.

Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public school funding, the U.S. now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. In this seminar, Eric Hanushek concludes the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Hanushek proposes a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions on running schools, leading to improved student performance.

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?

As part of the Legislature’s February 2009 budget revisions, school districts were granted more flexibility in the use of some categorical grants. These actions offer an exceptional opportunity to reform California’s confusing system of categorical grants. This seminar provides an overview of the purposes of categorical grants pertaining to local v. state control over the use of educational resources to improve student performance. Lawrence O. Picus offers suggestions for ways California’s myriad of confusing categorical programs can be reformed to focus on student learning.