Back to State of Education Address, January 22, 2008
The Fresno – Long Beach Partnership
for Improved Student Success
Description of Partnership Purposes and Strategies
The purpose of the Fresno-Long Beach Partnership is to share knowledge and resources to accomplish our common goals of increasing graduation rates and preparing all our students to be successful in higher education and/or a career with significant growth potential. As the third and fourth largest districts in California, our districts serve upwards of 150,000 students, most of whom are low income students, students of color, and/or English language learners. We intend to capitalize on the knowledge both districts have gained from their systemic continuous improvement efforts as well as from Long Beach’s participation in the Broad program, Fresno’s work with the Center for Reform of School Systems, and the best practices knowledge of our external partners (including Springboard Schools and the American Institutes of Research). The commonalities and differences between our two districts create a unique opportunity for a two-way learning relationship in which we each commit to the achievement of common goals and strategies.
The Partnership has three major goals: (1) achieving a 100% graduation rate, (2) preparing all graduates ready for success in higher education or a career with significant simultaneously economic growth potential, and (3) helping all students meet California’s academic standards at the proficient level or better, with a special focus on raising achievement of our large numbers of English language learners. We are in the process of developing appropriate indicators (to be shared by both districts) and interim targets (specific to each district) to measure progress toward our common goals. See below for an initial list.)
Central to the Partnership is our joint agreement to implement four key strategies to achieve these goals: (1) increase the rigor of the various curriculum pathways that engage students in learning activities that will give them the knowledge, skills, and values they need to have meaningful choices about their future; (2) build the capacity of our staffs to make high quality instructional practice the focus of everyone’s work; (3) align all systems including Human Resources and Business Services to achievement of the goals; and (4) secure the support and counsel of external partners to serve as critical friends, share knowledge of best practices, and document our work.
Categorical Constraints and Waiver Request (Specific request forthcoming)
Our ability to achieve these goals on the level we intend depends directly on our ability to gain additional flexibility in working with categorical programs and various funding sources so that we can focus our resources on the key strategies we believe will be successful. Our goals, targets, and benchmarks are being established with the understanding that the flexibility we seek is not to be achieved by diminishing the overall level of resources but in fact working together to increase the overall funding needed to support student success.
In this regard we intend to work with Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell to identify and remove regulatory and/or statutory barriers to the use of categorical funds to support the work of the partnership. We see this effort as a “flexibility pilot” that can inform the design and implementation of similar partnerships among other districts in the state as well as more effective state support and accountability structures to foster the achievement of state standards and goals across California districts.
Current and Impending Partnership Action Steps
Curriculum and Instruction
- Identify actions that will help all students become proficient in Algebra by the end of ninth grade.
- Develop strategies that will increase student access to advanced mathematics courses in high school.
- Identify key benchmarks at K-12 grade levels to measure progress toward increasing access to higher level math courses.
- Identify and implement the instructional practices that will enable all English Language Learners to become proficient in English.
- Implement curriculum and instructional changes necessary to increase access of ELL students to a rigorous core curriculum that prepares them for success in college or a career with significant economic growth potential.
- Identify key benchmarks at K-12 grade levels to measure progress toward achieving English language proficiency by graduation.
Capacity Building
- Develop a cadre of teacher leaders who will work collaboratively with their colleagues to implement the instructional practices most likely to help all students meet high academic standards with a focus on strategies for engaging students in rigorous learning experiences.
- Build the capacity of certificated and classified staff to design and implement the continuous improvement processes necessary to support the curriculum and instructional changes undertaken by both districts.
- Modify as needed existing teacher and administrator development programs at Fresno State to incorporate the training in the knowledge of the systems, structures and processes most likely to produce the high quality instructional practices that will help all students.
- Develop and implement a seamless education initiative with higher education institutions including the State Center Community College District in Fresno, California State University at Fresno, and U.C. Merced.
Alignment of Systems to Achievement of Goals with Support of External Partners
- Identify and document promising practices in both districts and build a web-based database that will provide both partners with access to the work of the other.
- Create a regular schedule and structure for cross-district sharing and facilitate this process.
- Assess current district status relative to the major goals of graduation, rigor, and alignment.
- Establish clear and comprehensive goals and milestones for each strategy as well as supporting indicators.
- Create a district dashboard that will track progress toward project goals and benchmarks and that will provide periodic reports to stakeholders on the district progress toward the goals and milestones.
- Establish a process for evaluating the effectiveness of the partnership against an agreed upon set of indicators, including those required by CDE to hold partners accountable in exchange for categorical program flexibility.
Initial List of Accountability Indicators
The partnership is in the process of identifying appropriate indicators to track our progress. Below, we list those we expect to propose for accountability purposes as part of our waiver request to CDE. Final accountability indicators and specific targets will be worked out in collaboration with CDE over the next two months. Final targets will include both overall and sub-group targets.
- Percentages of students scoring proficient or higher in ELA and Mathematics – Grade 5.
- Percentages of students scoring proficient or higher in ELA and Mathematics – Grade 8.
- Graduation rates.
- Percentages of students completing the A-G requirements.
- Percentages of students taking AP classes.
- Percentages of students passing AP exams with a score of 3 or higher.
- Percentages of students taking SAT and/or ACT.
