SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee visited a middle school in the Mission District this morning to call attention to the improvements made in the wake of federal funding to the city’s school district.

Duncan, Lee and other top school officials held a roundtable discussion during a visit to Everett Middle School, one of nine schools in San Francisco that was awarded federal School Improvement Grants in 2011 and current California GEAR UP School.

The historically low-performing schools in the city’s Mission and Bayview districts were given $45 million over a three-year period that went toward professional development and coaching for school staff, among other improvements, according to school district officials.

Since 2008, those nine schools have had an 18.4 percent gain in English language arts proficiency and a 26.9 percent gain in math proficiency, district officials said.

Duncan said he was “absolutely inspired” by the improvements made at Everett.

He said during today’s visit, he talked to an eighth-grader there who “said she was terrified to come to this school as a sixth grader, and now this school has a wait list.”

Lee said the federal funding has helped reduce barriers for low-income students and those who speak English as a second language.

“Once we get rid of those barriers, our kids who come from all over the world will compete on an international basis,” he said.

Duncan said he is working to get more federal funding from Congress, but “they look at education as an expense instead of an investment.”

He said in the meantime, San Francisco can come up with creative ways to maintain funding for the schools, noting that the mayor has sought help from the private and nonprofit sectors.

“People want to be part of a winner,” Duncan said. “We’ve gotten something started and he’s got a heck of a story to tell.”

(excerpts reposted with permission from ABC news)

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California GEAR UP schools believe:

• That ALL students deserve an equitable education – one that provides the knowledge and skills to choose and be successful in postsecondary education pursuits;
• That students must master rigorous academic standards to successfully progress along the pipleline from middle school to high school and into and through college;
• That in order for students to plan for college they need to see themselves in college;
• That overcoming the challenges faced by low-income, first-generation college-bound students requires the continued engagement of school leaders, families and communities.

We are pleased to share a recent success of one of our star schools, Sparks Middle School in Industry, CA was identified as “Beating the Odds” by a new report from WestEd.

A growing body of research suggests that school climate may be an important variable in explaining why some schools are more successful than others. This report, written by WestEd’s Adam Voight, Gregory Austin, and Thomas Hanson, contributes to this research by exploring the climate of a handful of secondary schools with extraordinary success compared to that of other schools, including those that consistently underperform.

School success is often defined in absolute terms, such as average standardized test scores. But such criteria are known to be strongly correlated with the socioeconomic characteristics of a school’s student body. And the fact that a largely affluent student body is linked to school success offers little useful direction for those trying to improve achievement in struggling schools with low-income student populations.

To address this limitation, the present study’s design and methodology take student characteristics into account. Specifically, a successful school is defined as one whose test scores are better than would be predicted based on its student characteristics. Using this definition, A Climate for Academic Success investigates how two factors—school climate and school personnel resources—differed among three groups of California secondary schools.

In the report, 40 schools are identified as “Beating the Odds“, derived by using data from over 1,700 California public middle and high schools, these 40 schools were identified that consistently performed better than predicted on standardized tests of math and English language arts achievement. These schools were labeled “beating-the-odds” (BTO) schools.

Of the 40 schools, Sparks Middle School of Hacienda la Puente Unified was the only California GEAR UP school on the list. California GEAR UP schools utilize professional development resources, partner services, and discretionary funds to create a college-going culture over a six year period. Sparks has been a California GEAR UP school since 2011 and has implemented a full compliment of GEAR UP resources to address school climate and culture to ensure ALL students have access to high quality academics and preparation. California GEAR UP schools believe it is never to early to prepare students for their future and it takes a school community of committed adults to achieve great performance.

A previous study using this definition of success found that personnel resources—such as the education, experience, and roles of staff—did not help distinguish successful from unsuccessful schools. The current study looks at the relationship between school climate and success, as measured by the California Healthy Kids Survey. The measure includes such dimensions of the school environment as safety, academic supports, social relationships, and school connectedness. A positive school climate has been associated with higher academic achievement and healthy behavioral outcomes for students.

In addition to the Report Summary, a Full Report is also available on the WestEd Website.

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Funded for its third six-year cycle on October 1, 2011, the program goal of California GEAR UP is to: Develop and sustain the organizational capacity of middle schools to prepare ALL students for high school and higher education through a statewide network of support for adults — counselors, faculty, school leaders and families — who influence middle school students. All program services are geared towards sustainability, such that school change can be successful beyond the life of the grant cycle.

CDE Hosts Showcase to Help Transition Educators to New Standards That Will Give Students a World-Class Education

The California Department of Education (CDE) will hold a one-day showcase Wednesday April 3, 2013 at its headquarters in Sacramento to help transition educators to the new standards.

The new Common Core State Standards in mathematics, English-language arts and literacy in history/social science, science, and technical subjects (California CCSS) will serve as a foundation to remodel the state’s education system. The new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) will reflect the major advances in science over the past 15 years.

The showcase, presented by the CDE’s Improving Teacher Quality State Agency for Higher Education Program, is free and open to the public. It will feature a number of successful exemplary projects that received federal Title II, Part A grants designed to strengthen educators’ content knowledge and abilities as it relates to California CCSS and the NGSS. Attendees will hear from the showcase presenters about their projects, and then a question-and-answer period will follow each session.

Seating is limited and those who confirmed their attendance in advance will be seated first. The showcase will be recorded for a future podcast. The detailed showcase agenda and descriptions of the Title II, Part A grant recipients’ programs are attached.

California’s Common Core State Standards provide a practical way to prepare students for the challenges of a constantly changing world by helping them learn step-by-step, real-world problem solving skills they need for college and careers. The new standards keep the best of what the state has, but replaces outdated ways of learning with a clear focus on the key knowledge and skills that students need, and also provides teachers the time to teach them well.

The Next Generation Science Standards will be rich in content and practice, are arranged across disciplines and grades, and clearly articulate the educational content and practices students will need to learn from kindergarten through grade twelve.

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The California Department of Education (CDE) is a state agency led by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. For more information, please visit http://www.cde.ca.gov or by mobile device at http://m.cde.ca.gov/. You may also follow Superintendent Torlakson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/TorlaksonSSPI and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CAEducation.

California Department of Education, Communications Division

1430 N Street, Suite 5602, Sacramento, CA 95814

Main: 916-319-0818; Fax: 916-319-0100

E-Mail: communications@cde.ca.gov; URL: www.cde.ca.gov/nr/

From 2003-10, the number of eighth graders who took Algebra I nearly doubled in California, and the percentage that rated proficient on the state Algebra test actually increased from 39 to 46 percent overall. Source: 2011 EdSource study “Improving Middle Grades Mathematics Performance.” (Click to enlarge)

The State Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to remove state incentives encouraging schools to offer Algebra I in 8th grade.

The move was both a vote of confidence in the new Common Core standards for 8th grade, which districts are now beginning to implement, and a retreat from a decade-old policy of pushing universal algebra in 8th grade. Proponents of the state’s current policy are predicting that enrollment in Algebra by 8th grade, which has doubled over the past decade to nearly two-thirds of students, will plummet in coming years.

Under the current policy, students who take General Math in 8th grade, the less rigorous alternative to Algebra, are penalized on the results of their state standardized math test. If they test at the advanced level in General Math, their scores are knocked down one level to proficient, while those who test proficient are rated with only having basic knowledge. This, in turn, affects the school’s Academic Performance Index or API score, the  state’s chief and most recognizable measure of accountability. The penalties were a big reason districts pushed students to take Algebra.

The State Board’s new goal is to create guidelines that lay out two paths for math in 8th grade, one leading to a course based on Common Core 8th grade standards, which is basically pre-Algebra, and an accelerated route leading to a new, as yet, undesigned Common Core Algebra I course. Local districts will decide which students are ready for Algebra; the State Board’s position is to be neutral. Board members have expressed confidence that students who take Common Core 8th grade math will be well-prepared to take Algebra I or a new alternative, an Integrated Common Core high school course, as freshmen in high school. Then they can proceed to higher math, including Algebra II and pre-Calculus, qualifying them for admission to the California State University or University of California by their senior year.

“The decision by a former state board to create penalties and incentives for students to take algebra was probably wrong-headed. The decision about where students are placed for purposes of mathematics should be made at the local level not state level,” said Sue Burr, the former executive director of the State Board and now its newest board member.

Board members noted that Common Core 8th grade math is more rigorous than the current General Math, which does not include pre-Algebra. Removing the penalties on the API will enable districts to ease the transition to Common Core; districts won’t feel pressure to skip from seventh grade Common Core to Algebra.

However, Doug McRae, a retired test publisher from Monterey who has written frequently on the issue in EdSource Today, said that districts will no longer feel any urgency to offer Algebra I, and, as a result, fewer students will be on a path to take Calculus in high school and major in science, engineering and math in college.

“You are lowering standards for those kids who are capable of taking a full algebra course,” McRae said during the public comment period.

Board member Trish Williams expressed the ambivalence shared by others on the issue. In her former role as executive director of EdSource, she directed a study of middle school math that documented impressive numbers of 8th graders, particularly minority students, who took Algebra in eighth grade and did well on the state Algebra test. But the study also concluded that substantial numbers of students were misassigned and were taking it twice and even three times without success. Only 40 percent of African American and Hispanic students are scoring proficient on the Algebra exam – an improvement over a decade ago, but troubling nonetheless.

The increase in minority students taking Algebra “is not insignificant. It was a big advantage for those kids,” she said. “Social justice advocates worry that if pressure is not on then schools will revert and not prepare low-income kids. I hear that and I respect it, and I honor it.”

“It is important that the Board send a signal to schools that we want them to continue to keep open opportunities for low-income kids,” she said.

The Board’s policy to encourage more students to take Algebra was done, she said, with “good intentions.” But the “collateral damage” – too many unprepared students required to take Algebra – is why she said she would vote to change the policy.

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Saving for college is more important than ever. With the cost of college tuition on the rise, ScholarShare  and California GEAR UP are working together closely to provide families, parents, and young adults with resources and tools to help them prepare for higher education.

ScholarShare, California’s 529 college savings plan, has long been a partner of the California GEAR UP Education Trust Awards. GEAR UP has awarded 5,370 middle school students with Education Trust Awards, opened in individual ScholarShare accounts established in the student’s name in the amount of $2,000 each, for a total of $10,740,000. The awards are available to students within one year of high school graduation and upon college enrollment.

ScholarShare is a way for parents to share in their child’s road to a higher education.  There are a number of benefits offered by ScholarShare.

• Any adult or U.S. legal resident with a social security number or federal taxpayer identification number can open an account.
• Grandparents, friends, aunts, and uncles can open an account or contribute to an existing one.
• Earnings are tax free when withdrawals are used for qualified higher education expenses.
• Accounts can be opened with as little as $25.
• Funds can be used at eligible schools nationwide and many international schools.
• Funds can be used for a variety of qualified higher education expenses.
• A variety of low cost investment options are offered.

College remains important to California parents.  According to the California College Saving Survey in September 2012, 84 percent of parents strongly believe in the importance of a higher education as an objective in its own right, and as a way to open doors to other dreams and aspirations.  Even during challenging economic times, parents are still putting a priority on saving for a higher education while making sacrifices in other areas. Many California parents are willing to cut back on family vacations or eating out, even more striking delaying their retirement.

While California parents consider a college education crucial, most are worried about being able to afford it.  Here are some helpful tips on how families can save for college.

• Be supportive:  Children will aspire and be prepared for college if they are surrounded by adults who foster a positive educational environment not only in school but at home.
• Set realistic goals:  You may not be able to save enough for all four years of tuition, room and board, and other expenses, but you could save enough to help put your child’s education within reach.
• Reach out to friends and family:  Instead of birthday and holiday gifts for your child, let your friends and family make contributions. Of those that know about 529 plans, few know that people other than the child’s parents can contribute, such as grandparent’s aunts, uncles, and even the students themselves.
• Let your child know you’re saving for their higher education:  You may be surprised at how much pride and appreciation they demonstrate, knowing that college is in their future.
• Start saving as earlier as you can:  The key to saving for college is to start early and save regularly. By saving a set amount regularly, your money can grow as your child does. And before you know it, you’ll be just as ready for college as they are.

ScholarShare offers a way for families to save for college and to help make college become affordable. When it comes to college savings, it is never too late for families to share in their child’s future.

For more information about ScholarShare, visit www.ScholarShare.com, call toll-free 1-800-544-5248, or visit the ScholarShare Facebook [link to www.facebook.com/scholarshare529] and Twitter [link to www.twitter.com/scholarshare529] pages.

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Consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses before investing in the ScholarShare College Savings Plan. Visit ScholarShare.com, or call the Plan, for a Disclosure Booklet containing this and other information.  Read it carefully. Before investing in a 529 plan, consider whether the state where you or your Beneficiary resides has a 529 plan that offers favorable state tax benefits that are available if you invest in that state’s 529 plan. The tax information contained herein is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties. Taxpayers should seek advice, based on their own particular circumstances, from an independent tax advisor. Investments in the Plan are neither insured nor guaranteed except for TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Company’s guarantee to the ScholarShare College Savings Plan under the Funding Agreement for the Principal Plus Interest Portfolio, and there is a risk of investment loss. Account values will fluctuate based on a number of factors, including general market conditions. TIAA-CREF Tuition Financing, Inc., Program Manager

For Immediate Release

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March 6, 2013 (Sacramento, CA) – As of Friday, March 1, 2013, sequestration went into effect.  On a national level, GEAR UP will be forced to take a 5.3 percent reduction.  On a state level, California GEAR UP is prepared to manage the implications of a mandated reduction with the least amount of impact on the schools and large communities served by the program.  For further information on the impact to the GEAR UP program nationally, please visit www.ed.gov and http:///www.edpartnerships.org.

Education Trust Awards:

The 5,370 Education Trust Award recipients should be relieved to learn that no reduction will occur in your award level. All Education Trust Awards to date have been fully funded.  Education Trust Awards provide $2,000 in resources to defray the costs of college attendance. The awards are available to students within one year of high school graduation and upon college enrollment.

The goal of California GEAR UP is to provide a network of support for schools towards implementing long-term, sustainable strategies to create a college-going culture.  We look forward to their continued growth and success as we collaborate to achieve this common purpose, regardless of the adversity presented by the current federal budget crisis.

Since 1999, California GEAR UP has impacted:

• 256 California Middle Schools
• 440,000 California Middle School Students
• 51,000 Families
• 2,100 Middle School Teachers
• 5,370 Education Trust Awards

“GEAR UP is an efficient program in local communities designed to increase the number of low-income and first-generation students prepared to enroll and succeed in college. Our economic prosperity and global competiveness is at stake when we put programs like GEAR UP at risk. We urge our leaders to consider the impact on low-income middle and high school students to enter and succeed academically when funding for effective programs, such as GEAR UP, is decreased.”   –Penny Edgert, Executive Director California Education Round Table Intersegmental Coordinating Committee.

If you have questions regarding California GEAR UP and the effects of sequestration, please contact Sean Brennan, Communications Manager: sean.brennan@ucop.edu, 415-948-9262.

Sincerely,

Penny Edgert,  Principal Investigator, California GEAR UP 

The Equity and Education Commission, which held hearings in major U.S. cities over the past three years, released its final report, “For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence.” The report examines disparities in educational opportunities that give rise to achievement gaps and recommends ways to address those inequalities.

The Commission is the brainchild of Congressmen Fattah (D-PA) and Mike Honda (D-CA) who through their work on the House Appropriations Committee secured funding for the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights to establish the Commission.

“The Commission’s final report represents a significant milestone in the historic effort to close the achievement gap between rich and poor school districts – as well as among schools within a given district, that has plagued our nation’s public education system,” Fattah said.

The commision made recommendations in these areas:

Equitable school finance: States should publicly report what is needed in the way of teaching staff, programs, services, and funding to provide a meaningful education to all students. States should also ensure that sufficient money is available, develop models for using technology in classrooms, and promote high-quality programs for special-needs students. The federal government should provide incentives to states to reduce the number of schools with high concentrations of poverty and seek to expand their authority to intervene in school-equity issues.

Improved teachers, leaders, and curricula: States should better compensate teachers, and increase selectivity and effectiveness of teacher training. The federal government should create a major new grant program to help states address improvements the teacher pipeline. (California GEAR UP is a proud statewide asset to teacher training and capacity building.)

Expanding high-quality early education: States should expand early education so that, within 10 years, every low-income student has access to high-quality preschool. And the federal government should provide some funds for this.

Mitigating poverty’s effects: States, in partnership with the federal government, should adopt dropout-prevention programs and other alternative-education opportunities for at-risk students. (GEAR UP is a innovative and locally based federal program working in areas where poverty affects students the most.)

Tackling accountability and governance: States should develop mechanisms to intervene when districts and schools are in fiscal crisis.

Dropout Nation commented the report was had some missing areas in their blog today:

Meanwhile there is plenty that the commission has left out. While it touches on old-school parent involvement approaches, it fails to acknowledge the importance of Parent Trigger laws in seven states that, along with other measures, are allowing families to lead the turnaround of schools in their own neighborhoods. The commission also fails to consider the development of online and blended learning, which is increasingly allowing families and communities to take control of the teaching and curricula their kids are provided. Even the commission’s dismissal of mayoral control as not being a “panacea” (as if anything created by man ever is) ignores the myriad failings of the traditional district model, and ignores its own point that the school boards that operate it (which end up being servile to NEA and AFT locals), do a poor job of allowing taxpayers and families to play real decision-making roles in education.

The report concludes the commission’s work, which begs the question that Education Week asked on their K-12 Politics Blog: What happens now to these recommendations?

The report hangs its hat on many ideas, however, that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives oppose—such as new programs and protected funding streams for at-risk populations. So it’s unclear just how much traction these ideas would have. What’s more, in some states, adopting more-equitable school finance would probably mean spending more money—at a time when additional cash is still scarce as states climb out of the hole from the recent recession. Equity battles have been raging in state courts for years. Indicative of the challenge of revamping school finance system, the report says, “There is disagreement about exactly how to change the system…”

Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University professor on the commission, said he was glad the report wasn’t just about money. “Twenty years ago, you could well have seen a commission saying ‘Oh, if we just put more money and invest more in our schools, we’re going to be okay,’” he said. “We have to make sure resources are effectively used, and up until now there have been various people arguing various parts of that statement in isolation.”

The next steps are unclear. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stressed that this commission is independent from official department business. “This is not an easy labor of love,” he said. “We asked them … to tell us the truth.”

The report didn’t have recommendations on funding or next steps.

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Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100