Presentation to the California Educational Research Association December 2, 2011

1. Presentation to the California Educational Research Association December 2, 2011

2. CORE’s Essential Questions • How can we accelerate school districtreform so more students are on a meaningful trajectory to college and career? • What new approacheswill lead to individual and collective sense of efficacy for our teachers, a real culture of continuous improvement for our districts, and deeper and more meaningful instruction and learning in our classrooms?

3. Out of Race to the Top Round Two… • CORE was born • A partnership of • Clovis • Fresno • Long Beach • Los Angeles • Sacramento • Sanger • San Francisco Unified School Districts • 15% of the State’s student population • 23% of the State’s English Language Learners

4. CORE Demographics One in six California students attends school in a CORE district.

5. 3rd Grade ELA Scores All Students

6. 3rd Grade ELA ScoresEnglish Learners

7. 8th Grade Algebra IAll Students

8. 8th Grade Algebra IEnglish Learners

9. The Need for CORE • Despite pockets of improvement, urgent need for improved student achievement • State-level quagmire • Districts struggling in isolation • Need for combined expertise and leveraged resources • Need for peer-to-peer learning opportunities to reap benefits of professional collaboration at scale

10. CORE’s Role CORE provides the framework and support for purposeful collaboration between districts to identify, implement, and scale effective strategies so that students are prepared for college, career, and successful futures.

11. CORE’s Theory of Change

12. The Innovation Through its programs, CORE is developing meaningful, new knowledge, practice, and tools for the field, which, if successful, can eventually be scaled throughout the state and beyond.

13. Current Focal Programs Standards, Assessment & Instruction: Common Core Standards at scale Talent Management: Teacher and leader evaluation systems Additional opportunities: Collaboration, College and Career Readiness Framework, budget analysis, secondary reform strategies

14. 2011-2013 Program Goals

15. Research Agenda/Questions for the Field • What does an effective inter-district partnership look like? • What social and structural elements are needed to promote effective partnerships? • How do districts learn from each other? • How do cross-district partnerships support innovation? • Which innovations work, how, and under what conditions? • What policies will build effective district-to-district partnerships that improve student achievement?

16. CORE Standards, Assessment and Instruction The purpose of the SAI initiative is to help increase college and careerreadiness by: Supporting the effective district implementation of the Common Core Standards Building teacher capacity to engage in formative assessment, analysis and instructional improvement Developing and piloting Common Core-aligned assessments, instructional tools and resources

17. SAI Leadership Team Established • Senior instructional leaders from each CORE District (32 total: 3-8 per district) • Leverages wide array of expertise • Represents a unique, job-alike professional network • Informed by nationally renowned Common Core experts • Meets monthly, with interim conference calls as needed

18. SAI Leadership Team: Key Program Objectives

19. SAI Objective 3: Collaborative Action • Cross-District Design Team will be established in 2012 and charged with identifying and/or developing innovative, Common Core-aligned • formative assessments • instructional tools and resources • analytic PLC processes • School-based pilot teams will field test these tools and resources and provide Design Team feedback • Based on that feedback, design teams will refine tools and resources and upload them onto online digital platform for widespread distribution

20. Impact on Curriculum • Less lock-step reliance on textbooks • Text-books be helpful guides, but they can’t tell a teacher how to react to a spontaneous classroom situation or learning need • Open Educational Resources (OER) • There are not likely to be Common Core textbooks per se—schools will need to identify, refine and/or develop highly effective teaching resources

21. Impact on Assessment • Increased use of FormativeAssessment • The Common Core requires teachers to continually collect and analyze performance data to determine • Where students are along a “learning progression” • What it will take to help get them to the next level • Supporting inquiry-based formative assessment and analysis should be the primary purpose of grade-level professional Communities of Practice (aka PLCs) • It will require significant assessment tool and resource development and PLC capacity building

22. Impact on Instruction • Deeper Learning • By narrowing the scope, the Common Core enables teachers to engage students in a deeper exploration of key concepts • This allows opportunities for the sorts “project-based learning” that students tend to find more meaningful • The Common Core emphasizes higher order thinking, skill application and problem solving • In Math this includes not only getting the right answer, but understanding why an answer is correct (or incorrect) • In ELA this includes a greater emphasis on informational reading and expository writing

23. CORE Talent Management The purpose of the TM initiative is to help increase college and careerreadiness by working collaboratively to improve: Pipeline Recruitment and selection Early career mentoring and tenure Professional learning and evaluation Distributed leadership and succession planning Issues around placement, compensation and retention

24. Talent Management 2011-2012 Goals Shared understating/information around robust assessments of principals and teachers Develop multiple measures for assessment resource bank Implement data management systems for teacher and principal assessment Communicate effectively with stakeholders about teacher and principal assessment Establish and advocate a policy framework

25. Multiple Measures for Assessment Resource Bank • Identify goals for the evaluation system and a related theory of action • Identify and develop the measures that could be included (the information to be collected) for both the development and evaluation of educators, such as: • Value-added (i.e., academic growth over time) metrics to incorporate student growth • Standards-based assessment protocols • Determine how much weight might be assigned to each measure • Determine a process for equity across grades/subjects • Determine how and when the educator assessment information could be collected and presented • Develop a plan for managing the change process, including attention to: • Infrastructure for policies and procedures (what needs to change and who has the authority to do so?) • Infrastructure for data management (what needs to change to provide the information desired?) • Infrastructure for time and job responsibilities (including observer training to support meaningful implementation of observation protocols) (what are the biggest challenges and who has the authority to address them?) • Determine responsibility for educator growth and development

26. Policy and Lessons Learned • Federal Opportunities • Waiver • State Opportunities • 2012 Election/Ballot • Partnership

27. CORE’s College and Career Framework

28. Questions? Rick Miller Executive Director California Office to Reform Education (CORE) 1130 K Street, Suite 250 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 441-2917 rick@capimpactllc.com