A handful of California district superintendents have been hosting focus groups as part of Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell’s work toward closing the achievement gap. The five superintendents and the districts contributing their time and energy for this important effort include Edna Davis-Herring of Rialto USD, John Snavely of Porterville USD, Patrick Godwin of Folsom-Cordova USD, Don Iglesias of San Jose USD and Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana of Pomona USD.
O’Connell has identified closing the achievement gap as the primary goal for his second term, and he has asked the P-16 Council, a high-level group of leaders from pre-K-12, higher education, business and philanthropy, to assist him in developing a comprehensive approach for California.
The first phase of the superintendent’s plan focuses on gathering data and other information about the issues and concerns related to the achievement gap. Results of the data gathered will lead to the superintendent’s State of Education Address in February 2008 in which he will set forth an agenda for closing the achievement gap.
The California Department of Education has selected WestEd as the external agency to conduct focus groups and surveys to gather the necessary data for phase one. ACSA is working with WestEd on the focus group effort of this data-gathering phase by identifying five districts in which to conduct the focus group.
The participants represent different demographic groups, including rural and urban educators, those from underperforming schools, new teachers, and those who have curriculum and administrative responsibilities. Each set of focus groups includes separate focus groups for students, parents, teachers, administrators and school board members.
The conversations revealed positive factors that have been helpful to schools and districts in closing the achievement gap, including the following:
• Dedicated funds for staff development and instructional materials.
• Disaggregating student data and examining it for long-term trends in achievement.
• Standardizing instruction across a district and having curriculum content standards, as these moves have clarified what all students should learn and provided a common language for district staff.
• Programs for teachers like Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment.
• Programs for students and families like AVID and the Latino Family Literacy Project, as they broaden students’ exposure to the outside world, raise the level of expectations for them, and link to students’ families.
A number of common themes have emerged from the focus groups. Because students in many of these districts come from families facing poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, homelessness and ethnic and language barriers, district and school staff saw the following avenues for addressing needs:
• Bringing social services into the schools and increasing the number of counselors and nurses available to work with students.
• Requiring all students to attend day-long kindergarten and consider moving up the date by which students must be 5 years old to attend from December to September.
• Reducing the number of students in each classroom, as teachers with 35 students cannot provide the individual attention students need if they are to learn the core curriculum.
Participants indicated a number of areas where state action would be helpful, including the following:
• Providing greater flexibility on the use of categorical funds, as this would enable districts and schools to move funds where they are needed to support students.
• Providing opportunities to acknowledge the progress schools are making, as communities become disheartened when they are making positive strides, but changing performance targets conveys the message that they are not good enough.
• Additional funding for professional development, as teachers want to work effectively with their students and professional development gives them tools that help them diagnose and address students’ needs.
• Expanding kindergarten to a full-day program.
• Increasing teacher credentialing requirements to ensure that new teachers receive sufficient training to understand the cultures of students from ethnic and language minorities and how to work effectively with these students.
ACSA’s Patrick Godwin, superintendent of Folsom-Cordova USD, had six focus groups: district level administrators, principals, parents, high school students, middle and high school teachers and parents of English and Russian language learners.
Godwin said the conversation for district-level administrators focused on the fact that they have terrific teachers, administrators and support staff working very diligently and creatively to close the achievement gap. In addition, they accept the premise expressed by SPI Jack O’Connell that closing the gap is both a moral and economic imperative.
“We have been thoughtful in our approach and utilized the best available practices, including aligning with state standards, and we adopted pacing guides, changed how we use time for both regular instruction and interventions, implemented formative assessments and benchmarks, and embraced effective instructional practices as defined by (McREL scholar and school reform expert) Robert Marzano and others,” Godwin said.
That said, one of the next steps for the Folsom-Cordova district would be securing additional resources to allow for even more staff development and collaboration time for teachers.
“We have maximized our available resources to provide coaches and training, but our teachers and staff need and want more,” Godwin said. “Deep implementation of the curriculum and effective instructional practices are necessary to deliver on the promise to leave no child behind. That deep implementation requires more time for teachers (and others) to work together.”
Godwin said the principals’ focus group also discussed the need for more time for teacher collaboration and training.
“The principals also talked about how the day-to-day logistical, safety and management issues have become so overwhelming that they have little time to serve as true instructional leaders,” he said.
Godwin said many district administrators also indicated support for more timely, complete and useful assessment data.
“We need a system that allows us to track the progress of individual students, supports formative assessments, and is more useful for the classroom teacher,” he said. “Many districts have created or purchased some augmentations to the API/STAR assessments/data out of necessity, but they need to be more robust.”
Godwin said the Folsom-Cordova administrators share the sentiments of national assessment expert Douglas Reeves, founder of the Center for Performance Assessment.
“We know what is needed, but we must have more resources and authority to get the job done,” Godwin said. “We are all becoming frustrated with those who want to count, label and identify our shortcomings, but who lack the political will to take on the funding and governance issues to give us a chance to succeed.”
The next steps of O’Connell’s effort include hosting in-depth, online conversations using WestEd’s WebDialogue process and an online survey of participants of the Achievement Gap Summit, held in November. Data gathered will be used to develop a report, which will be used as the groundwork for the actualization and implementation phases of P-16’s CTAG project.