Back to State of Education Address - January 22, 2008
The California Department of Education (CDE) has identified a critical need to identify and disseminate effective and promising practices to support California’s educators as they focus on closing the achievement gap and raise overall performance across our large and diverse state. The CDE is uniquely positioned — and in fact — obligated to fill this void and become a "broker of expertise" for California schools. For this reason we are calling this project, "Brokers of Expertise" (BOE).
What is Brokers of Expertise?
BOE will be a knowledge management system to gather all available educational research that meets high standards, expertly cull the data for meaningful trends, and develop workable strategies specific to implementing that research into California’s extraordinarily diverse schools. BOE will provide the opportunity for thousands of outstanding educators from San Diego to Siskiyou to share their expertise and learn of the latest innovations from their colleagues throughout the state as well as our world-class research community. No longer will we be limited by geography as we build a bridge to our islands of excellence. BOE will provide the opportunity to combine, in a potentially revolutionary way, the expertise and innovations of California’s technology community with our educational community as we prepare California’s next generation of citizens.
Vision and Goals
Our vision is to create a vehicle that will put high-quality, innovative, standards — and research-based materials and resources at the finger tips of our state's educators. This tool will allow teachers, principals, and eventually all education stakeholders to communicate, share, and network with their peers in other buildings and districts across the state, and eventually across the country. To compliment this technology-based tool, BOE also will include a hands-on, off-line component. Some options for this component include facilitated work shops, on-site coaches, or summer institutes. The online and off-line component will be designed with the most innovative and cutting-edge thinkers and engineers.
Our primary goal for BOE is to increase student achievement by improving instruction and support services in California schools. Our goal is to eventually provide resources and guidance to educators, counselors, parents, and students on strategies such as multiple pathways to college and career. It will be built with an emphasis on ensuring access to, and focusing on, educators serving students who are low-income; minorities; immigrants; limited English-language proficient, and at imminent risk of dropping out of school. BOE can do all this by capitalizing on teacher’s expertise in a variety of subject areas. It will encourage educators to collaborate in developing curriculum that applies academic knowledge and skills to concrete, real-world problems. It will stimulate the creation and growth of high quality professional development for educators. It will advance the opportunities for innovative instructional practices that are aligned to a standards-based academic curriculum such as cooperative, interactive, project-based, and work-based learning. It will identify and document promising and best practices that can be replicated throughout California.
To achieve greater use of this tool, the CDE has partnered with the California State University to ensure BOE is included in teacher preparation pre-service training as a critical component of the work. As the major component of project, BOE will include a state-of-the art technology-based system for educators to access high-quality resources on school reform issues that they have identified as the most salient. They will be able to read current research and hear about best practices around the state and the country related to these topics and will be provided with strategies for addressing their most pressing challenges.
Timeline
We envision a 3 to 5 year production schedule. The research and development phase began in October 2006. We are now in the design and pre-construction phase. Our aim is to have a fully articulated prototype that can be tested in the field by the fall of 2008.
Brokers of Expertise video [http://www3.cde.ca.gov/video/comm/brokersofexpertise.asx] (22-Jan-2008; WMV; 4:08 mins.; Closed Captions for Windows Media Player)
