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there's a lot of information around CRIS so i just wanted to take a
moment there to pause for yourselves
to really reflect back uh... to what extent are these dimensions making
sense how do they resonate with my own views
about college readiness
um... now that we talked about the three content dimensions of college readiness
i want to talk about the tri-level
structural concept of CRIS
so we believe that for each of these uh... dimensions of college knowledge
tenacity and academic preparedness
that indicators exist at three levels
at the student level
the individual or student level
at the setting level, the classroom or the school
and at the system level of the district and or beyond
that local government and the state government
uh... again it's really important to stress that the indicators at each
level should be actionable
and focused on the ultimate goal of getting kids ready for college
so um...
for example we're working with a district who
has picked disciplinary referrals
as a proxy for academic tenacity
and at the individual level they're looking at who are the students that are
getting suspended
who are the students that are getting expelled
and at the uh... setting level they're looking at aggregate data
on these disciplinary referrals so they're examining
which teachers
are making these
disciplinary referrals and what kinds of referrals are they making
and once they did this they realized that eighty five percent
uh... the disciplinary referrals
were coming from fifteen percent
of their teachers in the district
so this example sort of provided the district some information that was
actionable
said they'd make it make that prompted leaders at the district level to really
analyze what are we doing
around disciplinary referrals how are we training teachers to make appropriate
referrals
and what are the supports and interventions that we could maybe use
uh... instead of expelling a student or suspending a student
so again as i mentioned earlier there are three dimensions of college
readiness at three levels which yields a three by three matrix
you can't see really the lines here
um... and then within each of these cells
we've identified some indicators and
we have a big menu of indicators but for today's presentation i've only populated
them with one
indicator for each self
um...
we're not
advocating for districts to track every single indicator in the menu
uh... we don't think that's sustainable in any way and we don't
intend for this menu to be a one size fits all menu
so we included a variety of uh... indicators so that districts can again
pick the indicators that make the most sense to them
and also even if two districts picked at the same
indicator the way that they act upon that indicator
could be very different so for example
students in one district may be flagged
uh... for being off-track
for college ready if at the end of their ninth grade year there g_p_a_ wasn't
3.0
but in another district
it could be
they could be flagged if their g_p_a_ wasn't
at least a 2.5 so the cut-off points the thresholds are
also important
to keep in mind so let's look at these indicators
one-by-one so in terms of academic preparedness again you have the usual
suspects grade point average um... s_a_t_ scores g_p_a_ etcetera
technically speaking you can take individual level indicators and then
aggregate that data up
to look at trends out by subgroups within the classroom for the school
so you can look at
student's grade point average
uh... among subgroups maybe you want to understand
trends uh... among males or within particular race or ethnic
uh... groups
um... and then you can aggregate that up from the classroom or school level to then
look at g_p_a_ patterns across all the schools in a particular district
uh... so again
but it's just to give you an example one of the
uh... CRIS sites that we're working with
has chosen uh...
to track
students participation in AP classes
uh... as an individual level indicator
for academic preparedness
and they have sort of committed to making sure that more latino students
are signing up for AP classes
uh... so this has been a priority for this district for some
uh... for quite some time
um... so they're able to track, so, OK
how many Latino students are
signing up for AP classes and is that vary among our schools in the district
it's also important to note
i_d_ show here g_p_a_ and then aggregated up
to the classroom or school and then aggregated up to the district
that some of these indicators
are not just
aggregated up there are some stand alone
indicators so for example at the setting level indicator we have other indicators
in the menu
that are stand alone indicators for setting level
indicators for academic preparedness so that could include
does your uh...
school have a consistent grading policy
you can use the school's measures for teacher effectiveness
or teacher quality
uh... to what extent does your school
make available AP classes to all of your students so that these are some
stand-alone setting level indicators
that a district can choose to track
so that again the point of setting level indicators as to sort of monitor what
are the conditions
that may facilitate
or hinder student's readiness for college
and district
and then at the system level were really sort of
wanting to stress to what extent
is the district or the local government or the state government
allocating enough resources to help
those at the school level in the classroom level
to help kids be more prepared
so again uh...
this district that is following students um... participation in AP classes
when they started looking at it across the schools they realize that a lot of
latino students were not set signing up for the AP exams
because they didn't have the money
and so this information helped prompt the district attorney to understand how
can we better support
students to go ahead and take the exam
and give them the um... the funding and um... scholarships to do so
so looking at college knowledge which
again is the knowledge skills and behaviors needed to navigate college
um... in general uh...
you can again aggregate these data uh... so
here at half past the completion is an individual level indicator
and then you can aggregate up from the to the classroom and school
and then across schools within a particular district
and again um...
there are other
stand-alone setting level indicators for college knowledge
so one of the stand-alone setting level indicator for college knowledge is
to what extent does your school have a high school uh... have a college going
culture
what are the norms and expectations do the teachers in the school communicate
that college is a possibility for all of their students are there college posters
are there banners are there college field trips
to what extent these students have access and information about local
colleges and universities
do they understand what's a two-year degree a four year degree how do you apply
for fafsa those can be
stand-alone sort of setting level indicators that
uh... districts contract
and again at the system level we're really looking at to what extent
are there resources being provided to the schools in classrooms
to get these kids college ready and then finally
for tenacity again which is the most slippery
um... the most difficult to measure we're using proxies for academic tenacity such
as attendance
and disciplinary referrals
um...
so
another stand-alone setting level indicator for academic tenacity is
to what extent does your school have a consistent
disciplinary policies
are there some students like special ed students or african-american males who are
being disproportionately
suspended
or expelled from the district
so understanding those data are very very important
um... there others setting level stand-alone indicators such as
uh... perceived school safety
and um to what extent are your teachers
practicing classroom practices that promote
autonomy
or uh...
are they scaffolding instruction within the classroom
these are some other indicators that are stand alone and not just aggregate
aggregates of individual level indicators
so again context matters and we'd like to reiterate the fact that we
identified these indicators for college readiness
because they're actionable
and we want to have a menu so that districts can customize
the the indicators that they want to follow so we encourage districts
that we work with to reflect upon
what is it
in the context of our
local district or local government or state government
that may be facilitating or hindering
students preparedness for college
within these three dimensions
with that
i have a couple more discussion questions here and then I'd like to take a break
uh...
and hear from folks are you surprised this certain dimensions are indicators
were not included in this CRIS framework again we're just
one of many who are working on this issue college readiness
and or what type of opportunities and challenges do you foresee
potentially implementing a system of indicators and support
such as CRIS
so we can open it up, right Terry
open it up for discussion
I head there's not a shy
violet in the room so
maybe we can go back I mean to what extent do you think these dimensions
resonate with your own
I have a question about measuring which is this, you were talking about the middle level and the school level
the things that teachers are doing
that may or may not be supporting students
I know we've done
we did a little survey with my college students
on their sense of how well they were prepared for their college-level English classes when they got there
and one of the pieces they talked about was that they um
that their teachers didn't talk to them about what was going to be required in college
if they weren't in
honors or AP courses
but how do you measure that systematically
and and just in general the attitudes of
uh... educators about
sometimes I'm surprised at what people will say
but I think in a lot of cases the teachers are very sophisticated
when they're talking with researchers
and they're not going to say what they truly believe about the capacity of their children
the whole issue of data use measurement and the data use process is a big
one and while talk a lot about some of the initial lessons learned
um... this ideas
of CRIS being a systematic thing
is that i think is a very important point
in san francisco for example has really they have a school accountability report
card that is available to parents and uh... and kids you can log on to a
particular school website
and they're thinking about trying to come up with some of these indicators of
college readiness actually including that
and it could be around the sort of
uh... types of practices about information about college and things of
that sort so i think there are some
some districts that are thinking more systematically about how can we get that
information out but measuring it definitely is
is a big challenge
I agree
I was happy to see tenacity
identified
but I guess I'm concerned or have a question about the measure
it just seems that
particularly the discipline referral piece
so tell me how that's not like
uh... measuring academic preparation by measuring the Ds and Fs
we wouldn't do that
it just seems to me to measure by the negative is problematic
that there's other pieces that are actionable so how would you measure it?
this is the first time we've heard about it so understand this is right off the top but it
seems to me that either counselor visits that are related to colleges that is easily
measurable
if it's a small school you don't have
counselors per se
visits to colleges that are held as events by teachers
uh... presentations that are
provided and attended
by students would be another actionable piece
those are more directly related
to the measure--of college--and would be his
this
has all sorts of
problems to my mind
yeah and like I said
tenacity is one of those very slippery dimensions
included in the CRIS
but we're trying to i guess argue the fact that tenacity is
important not just for succeeding in college but beyond
I just have to say that as an indicator i think it's problematic and indicators are
critical for us because the other part that I was going to raise is that
uh... the worry that i have
is that we start listing out indicators as a measure
people start to focus on the indicator as an end in itself
rather than what it is which is simply a proxy exactly
so you have teaching to the test and now there's measuring to the proxy
that could become problematic
yeah and that's why i said that we use the sort of policy measures like
attendance as a proxy because we
we sort of are working under the assumption that if a student is motivated
to do well in school that they're more likely to attend school on a
regular basis
and follow school rules and stay out of trouble
and i just think
what Ed was saying
which was sparking, you know, sitting with all of the people in this row who've worked on NCATE
so we think about knowledge, skills, and dispositions, right
and tenacity to me is only one piece of actually the dispositions
a student's gonna need to be successful because you've gotta be persistent
but you've also gotta actually--and you've got the college knowledge piece--but the
the soft skills
that we hear that are really critical in the
workplace as well as in college
that the, just, understanding how to get yourself and be self-motivated
and go to class and be appropriate in class
there's a lot of, well,
it's the hidden curriculum
especially for our students
who, we have many first-generation students, we have many students coming from remote communities
into a place that's just
truly a bizarre world
and a system
when they're coming into our UA system
that's not necessarily friendly
even for those of us who are, knowledge, kids who are coming from parents
who've actually had the experience
it's still a fairly clunky system
yeah
so again
tenacity sort of helps to capture those soft skills right
that motivation that
again it's really hard to measure it's really hard to teach someone to
be internally motivated right
so uh... but i think the point of it to is just to really think about
again the previous work a lot on college readiness has really just focused on
do these students get
good grades and do they pass the test scores what we're trying to argue is
trying to be much more holistic
in how we seek students
being ready for post-secondary rigorous college-level work because again a lot
of the work seems to focus on
making sure kids don't drop out or making sure the kids actually graduate
but not getting them ready for a whole entirely different system
you would have to ask them you know i mean i think that you know these these
things came from Gates uh... and they
have adopted Conley's definition and he's done a lot of thinking about
college readiness and
it's really widely used um
and so
and that we don't necessarily disagree with Gates we we do feel that these
the these dimensions are all very important to track
I don't know if tenacity is the perfect term but
you know I'm thinking about, for for years we talked about what we know there's this
link between kids who participate in extracurricular activities
and those are successful in life and college and other things because it does kind
of
teach them some things that they don't get from sitting in classroom but um
you know I'm a
a school board person and so when you look at this kinda from a policy level
the question kind of comes down to, in my mind
how do you, you know we're trying to craft
dashboards and
scorecards and all that jazz
and the really hard thing is figuring out exactly what are the right
pieces of data
what are the right things that get at what
you want
so that's why
it has to be
a system of indicators
but you really have to
i guess i'm struggling a little bit with having to it would be nice to have
someone
show
that there's evidence that these are the right indicators to be looking at for
things like tenacity
or even
some of the other categories
yeah unfortunately for
because we worked with such very very different districts you know what's
right for one district may not necessarily be right for another
and again that's the whole point of that having a menu of indicators because the
district may already be tracking attendance or
may already be tracking disciplinary referrals
but i have to say um... again
because the Gardner Center is sort of charged with trying to understand the
implementation process
we've been talking to a lot of folks at the district level and in dallas for
example when you talk to a teacher at a school
um... and maybe this is the case here in alaska and not really sure
is they have to log onto one system in open it up
get these kinds of data
close that window
then open this system up get those kinds of data
close that window
and then get these data on like
their perceptions of the school climate
and none of those data are linked
right those systems don't talk to one another
and it just becomes really inefficient right so
um... i think the idea of
okay yeah you have to track indicators in
whether or not uh... necessarily the right ones may change over time
depending on the priorities of the district but we would like to also
emphasize that
tracking indicators is just one part of it
you have to link them with supports interventions and you have to
systematically think about how well your interventions actually working because
sometimes folks say
assign them to tutoring
and that's it
but what happens if tutoring doesn't really work what do you do what kind of data do
you use
to then change course
and then do you come back to it
I mean it really is how
do you have good dashboards things that are gonna and and
just little things like the use of color for example
so that when a kid slips into the danger zone
the number turns red you know so that teachers don't you know cuz there's just a
tidal wave of data and how to sift through it
teachers are very busy people and they don't have time to look at pages and
pages of excel sheets
so in some places in some districts they've assigned data coaches
to the school
to be that one person
to help make sense of all the data to work with those teachers
so uh... having creating a system of indicators
that has these great reports
that are accessible is one
part of it
but then developing the human capacity to be able to interpret those data
and to make meaningful decision to then link those data with supports
i think it's it's the whole thing about CRIS is that has to be systematic
As a practitioner, I'm a high school principal, I think to have tenacity or something in there front and center is critical
watching so many new to the country, new to the state, new to the city kids come into our large school they are tenacious, where they're coming from and it's just a matter of plugging into that grid
if you say grid to a youth they understand that to be able to when they bump up against the rigid school structure
no doubt about it
it's being acculturated they need to when they come into our student services office part of the whole domain there is to help them reengage with their grid
and get beyond this and know that they are successful and they have the power to be successful and that is what, I'm a first-generation college kid
that and I worked with Dr. Conley down at UO, and
it is what all of us know within our souls, that is our self-efficacy mode, that is what keeps us going no matter what so I love seeing it up there and I agree that however each school or district wants to identify its indicators it's gonna be full of conundrums of you know
noise that it's very hard to parse out and get a true indicator that's gonna show growth but I
applaud the idea of having that up there
yes
but we also stressed that
just because it is you choose a particular indicator doesn't mean they
have to just
be married to that indicator forever if it doesn't necessarily work
within their particular system they can then choose to follow another indicator
so there's this flexibility within that
I was just looking, if you Google college readiness and you don't go into the scholarly papers, you get
GPA and ACT scores that's what you get and so I'm interested in how
these messages are communicated to students because they're not reading
these scholarly papers
and the feedback that the kids get is that
it's about their GPA and their ACT score and there isn't
something that looks at some of these more
qualitative esoteric tenacity type
indicators
we need to use them to develop programming
and students need to know them to understand their success and to understand that relationship to success and college
and I think that that's
in the service delivery but I'm thinking
in my organization how many myers-briggs tests I've taken and how many times I've
been assessed for my
leadership qualities and all of those things
and that those types of assessments within this
monstrous suite of tests that we give to students really only focus on those academic indicators and why we don't incorporate more of those
into our own school accountability systems
yeah i agree and
there are a lot of schools though that are
trying to custom make their own type of surveys to understand students
perceptions of the school climate
and oftentimes it gets at those that there was this
there is at least one teacher or adult in my school who cares about me who feels
that i will be success
who notices when i'm not there
and then a lot of principles are using those kinds of data to then
change or have conversations with their teachers about the kinds of classroom
practices that help promote
those kinds of
caring and connectedness kinds of important
important things uh... beyond that as the SAT ACT and grades stuff
i think there are some efforts and i think that's again
these menu of indicators are really just to to
to keep in mind the importance of those kinds of things and then to maybe
if the school already has a particular indicator that they're using at their
setting level then maybe just go ahead and use that
because that's important to their local context
so i'd like to continue
we have um...
few more minutes
uh... i want to look talk a little bit about the cycle of inquiry tool
um... we know
someone in dallas when i interviewed them said
we are rich in data but we're information poor
this is true of a lot of districts across the country their
teachers and administrators are swimming
in in data
um... but are they
monitoring and keeping track of these data in a systematic way so we devised
the cycle of inquiry tool
which is really kind of simple on paper but it's
a whole other beast
to actually implement in a systematic way
so to some of the things that the cycle of inquiry does... is to slow
everything down like this that and it's a systematic process
to walk through
uh... to think about data so for example data collection
who's in charge with collecting the data
monitoring it how often is it collected
what is it available where can we access it do we have to open this window and
that window in this window and that window
who helps um... analyze these data how do we interpret these data again
teachers don't necessarily have the time
uh... every single day to look at excel sheets and reports
so what kind of reports are most useful is it supposed to be color coded
is it, should it come in this form or that form
um... decisionmaking so how do we know when to uh... flag students who are
off-track
is it a 2.0 GPA
is it a week of absences per term
what thresholds and cut points make sense for our students
and then action
so based on the data
who is in charge of making sure that this student is linked with the support
and when are we gonna follow up with that and how do we know that that support
is actually working
how are we gonna get how we then going to
reassess
whether or not that intervention we employed is actually making an effect
so again simple on paper
but very very difficult we've discovered through our work with these districts
to implement and to actually sustain
and we've got several proper challenges so
some challenges include
um... the data use process again having multiple systems not talking to one
another the infrastructure um... and not actually understanding
in terms of supports and interventions a lot of teachers don't even know within
their own school
x kinds of supports exits
so there are oftentimes um...
duplicate supports existing within one school and there might be tutoring
service
already
working with this population and then another one and they don't actually even
work together because one teacher
um... has convinced the principle to sign an MOU you with community-based
organization to support
uh... students to have this kind of tutoring while another has you know talked to the AP
and there hasn't really been a systematic way so the cycle of inquiry
tool really is just meant to be a more intentional and systematic process
to get
uh... the relevant actors involved
to think about this more uh...
uh... systematically so
understanding the support structure is really important and i mentioned a lot
of these up before so that you you sort of avoid
having duplicative supports and inefficiencies within the system
and then also there you run the risk of if you don't know what types of
supports interventions are actually existing within your district
it could be that some of them
that most of the supports are only for these set of schools
while these set of schools don't have access to those levels of support
oftentimes is because the leadership in the schools really advocated to try to
get
all types of supports and services on their campus
but some some school leaders may not be as
as savvy or may not have the same
type of community relations as other uh... administrators so there becomes a
sort of inequities
in terms of the distribution of supports
having said this though i i don't want to make it sound that these districts
that we're working with
were lacking supports
it's actually the opposite they they had so many supports they had
tutoring and they have college access providers they had folks working with
african-american males they had
folks working with girls um...
boys and young men of color et cetera and so
i think that around what we're trying to say is we haven't found in our CRIS
work
in the last couple years
any sort of systematic efforts from the districts part
to really analyze what is it that they're offering to their students and
how do they know it's actually working
and so i think
this is a really key part of
the CRIS project and it's really only this year that we've begun even
having this conversation around supports because in the first two years it's a
three-year granted
three-year grant um...
in the first two years it was really around spending a lot of time out
time on
which indicators makes the most sense with us
who's gonna participate in the cycle of inquiry
how are we gonna pilot some intervention
it's only now that we've only sort of begin to have this conversation around
supports and interventions and their efficacy
so um
some initial lessons
on CRIS uh
reflecting back on the the last couple years like i said uh...
these districts were selected for a few reasons right they had
some solid
technological infrastructure to house the data and to call up data
but it doesn't necessarily mean they've solved all their data use
problems like i said
they might have a great data warehouse but then you have to open that window and
this window into at these data
systems don't talk to each other
the districts also
had some
infrastructure already in place to communicate and to uh... to act
so there were a lot of
to some extent some
across departmental buy-in so in some districts and uh...
accountability evaluation
department doesn't talk
to student support services
because they think they're just doing assessment
those evaluators are also very important in terms of
trying to understand the efficacy of different programs
so that some of these districts are trying we're trying to make efforts to
have less silos within their districts and to get people within the
central office
to share data and to participate collaborative
collaboratively in meetings so they
were all engaged uh...
there was some
uh... level of engagement among the stakeholders so in pittsburgh for example
they had the pittsburgh promise which is a
scholarship fund for their students who meet certain criteria
and it's being funded by local philanthropy organizations
and businesses
so that that students if they meet these criteria of attendance and g_p_a_
um... that they are then ready for
uh... they can get a scholarship to go to one of the state schools
and so there were a lot of the stakeholder engagement
uh... and these districts were also given
given that in this
regime of accountability and focus on test scores and grades
they were also really more open to looking at things like college knowledge
they were really open to looking at things like academic tenacity
so these are some of the lessons uh...
that we learned
about these districts when we started
that CRIS uh... project and then
implementing it
in implementing this CRIS system
I've touched a lot on the sort of opportunities
and challenges that could
maybe also be an issue here in alaska here it just some of them
uh... that you have to have buy in uh...
and think it's important to note that the districts that we're working with
have had some pretty severe staff
and leadership turnover
um... they've changed superintendents the whole district had was realigned
um... there was no money in the budget and people had to reapply for their
jobs and teachers had to
uh... be laid off and so i think with all of that
uh... tumult and turmoil always blunt momentum in trying to implement um...
a CRIS indicator system
uh... it's also
uh...
it's also again important to talk to really about flexible data systems i
think this issue comes across
in a lot of our districts that
data need to be linked
uh... and they need to exist in the centralized system and
be teachers need to be able to access reports in meaningful ways in the easy
ways
for them to actually make
uh... real time change
and to make realtime uh... action
as we close this is the year three of this project and we don't know what's up
uh... with that in the future
we are trying to develop the list of products uh... under the guidance of the
the gates foundation
different products that might be relevant to the field so things that we're trying
to
uh... collaborate and create with the edinburgh institute and with the
university of chicago
is an implementation guide so how would one uh...
district in another part of the country help implement this
uh... we talked a lot of of uh...
district superintendents and
associate superintendents and we're going through the data we're analyzing the
interview transcripts we're coding for themes um... and these are some of the
big themes that jump out at us
and so I think as we move along and we talk to our partners and talk
to the gates foundation we're trying to develop uh...
some useful products not only just for for researchers but also for teachers
and other practitioners at the school site
given that we've only really just begun thinking about CRIS at the state level
and the way that we
been thinking about it at the Gardner center is that
the state can help provide a vision
for college readiness some
concrete guidance um... and stress the importance of tracking college readiness
so for example
the state could help create a vision and advocate for college readiness efforts
in districts across the state
they can talk about how what is the state's goal
for college readiness and when are we supposed to get there
uh... how do these goals then translate
to the district level
uh... what mechanisms should districts use
to report their level of college readiness
to the state
and what are the current statistics
on college completion
among students in that state what are the contributing factors that the state
can help
sort of guide a vision that we're going to get x_ number of kids ready for college
by
2020 or something like that
and they can provide concrete guidance
they can help define college readiness as a multidimensional concept
um... they could help create and support indicator systems that track these data
not only the individual level but at the setting and at the system level
they could
uh... districts could help engage in collaborative partnerships with
postsecondary institutions
so at the Gardner center we're working on another project and i have handouts
actually there should've been on the table
uh... on our project with san francisco unified school district
that school district has never shared data with the community college
of san francisco
uh... ever
for for a variety of political reasons
um... and it a project that took a long time to actually get those folks to
actually share data to talk about oftentimes it's like you're not getting
your kids ready to go to college and
finger-pointing all the time
so when they actually were able to then share data we were able to link of the
kids that we're going to the san francisco unified school district
who then went to city college how well did they do did they get remediated
were certain kids more likely to be remediated etcetera
so i think that the state to help sort of encourage
more data sharing among different systems the K-12 system
postsecondary institutions and maybe even community-based organizations
uh... to help because we're all on the same team right we're all working to
to get kids uh...
to be successful and to develop in healthy ways and so
i think that's one way that the state could help
uh... provide uh guidance
and then
to stress again to the various districts across the state that
tracking college readiness is really important we could use these data to
maybe track systemic inequities within the system so are there particular
race ethnic populations or socioeconomic groups that are not
having the same level of access to information about college or are not
going to college in in the same sort of rates um... and then the state can also
help guide districts in terms of standards
and rigor
but again we're not pushing necessarily for accountability but i think we're
uh... we're just trying to get the state to really think about why would it be
important to track college readiness um... and not just focus on tests and
grades but um... but also on all these other dimensions
so again we're only now to starting to think about it at the state level and i
know that's a big part of the conversation today
so i think this is one way that we're thinking about it
our last set of questions uh...
are what relations exist between K-12 systems and other institutions
um... that would help facilitate
uh... college readiness and in what ways and to what extent are local uh... actors
getting and helping students
be better prepared again this idea that
data sharing among the different youth serving organizations
in one system can help sort of
um... motivate our work and try to guide the work in more sort of directed and
meaningful ways
i will close with those discussion questions
uh... and would love to hear from you guys
my voice is going
we have a good bit of time for discussion to please ask whatever questions you might have
I'm thinking, I'm
making a connection to what's going on
policy-wise
um
in districts and i think it's an opportunity
to take a look at the new teacher evaluation tools
and in our state
over time fifty percent
of the evaluation tools will include
student learning data
and two pieces of data are required
one will be the summative assessment
and the other's a district decision
if we believe that tenacity or
academic behavior is the key to readiness
how can we measure it
in terms of making it part of a teacher's evaluation
so that um... she's explicitly teaching the behaviors needed for
being in the classroom and readiness for college
because if our teachers can connect to what that looks like
like
excuse me then I think they would
find it meaningful on their
own evaluation
we totally agree
uh... teachers are our biggest investment
and without
high quality
instruction
college readiness doesn't
really mean anything right so i think that
dallas for example is really looking to the extent
to which we can use sort of teacher measures
to help get at some of these dimensions and i think that the work of CRIS
we don't want CRIS to be yet another
district reform
you know uh...
reform du jour
uh... we really sort of want it to be embedded into the system
and so it doesn't matter if the district adopted this and participated in this
and called it a CRIS
but really has embedded this idea of college
readiness is being multi dimensional at three levels
and that this um...
is setting up systems of measurement in indicators and data systems
to help track these things and one of which could be through these measures of
teacher efficacy or teacher quality
that is a really important [talking off camera—unable to hear comment]
I was curious, you've got
three tiers of indicators you've got
the individual the setting and the system but when you
talk about supports and actions
they only dealt with that first tier
and it seems like you've got these indicators around
setting and system
what about actions and supports for
issues with those indicators
yeah i think that's a really important issue because
um... we've sort of
because of our focus upon districts and schools
we focus really those supports and interventions at this time on the student
uh... but you're right
i mean i think that
districts need
a lot of supports in order to be able to implement these kinds of systematic processes
um
uh... so
i don't have much to say actually about that i think that's a really important point
given this sort of
dire straits of a lot of urban districts with
funding cuts et cetera
um... districts have had a lot
to um
have had to do a lot with very little
and so i think because of that
we've sort of really focused more on trying to get
to the student
rather than a more systematic way of supporting because this
resources really weren't there
but you're right i think those kinds of supports
are really important to think about maybe even at the state level right
I'm thinking back to work we did with Ed
using a data-wise cycle
which is really close, very similar
and there was a place in that cycle where it was, and teachers examine their own
practice and look for what might work better and what we saw on the
ground there's very strong
tendencies to skip right over that and go right to the student
how can i fix the student so they can cope with
what i'm doing as opposed to how can i change
what i'm doing
and teachers need a lot of support to make that
kind of change
i think her point was well made when she spoke to
the fact that we look at the data and assume it points just to the students
we really need to be looking at that and owning that
data as indicators on the system
i think your latino example was exactly right
if you stop short and say this only points to the students that means
in this example latino students are not really college prepared
when in actuality if we look at the system we say
wait a minute, we've got a financial issue if they aren't able to take those AP courses
and so i look at that first question and
in the K-12 system if we
define our role as getting kids to graduate from high school
we've probably stopped short of where we should be and if the goal of the university has been
our goal in the university
you know where you just
define their successes as graduation too
we're falling short
and so largely with the work of ASPRA and these types of things we are really over
the last couple years starting to expand
what our goals are for the sake of our kids
that's the next step
our goal is not to get kids out the door it's to have them it's to have them be prepared and successful
and to hand them into the next level
i'm encouraged by what i've seen in the last couple years
with president gamel from the university system here as well the key players
that we're really starting to to do this between those the systems yet but i
think is really really key just for ur
um... example with the work with san francisco unified and the city college of san
francisco
they hadn't shared data and for many many years for a for a variety of reasons and
a lot of finger pointing was happening uh...
and so i think
once they were both at the table and then we were able to show OK well
here are the kids are growing and being able to have a conversation around those
things that it sort of really
a P-16 pipeline but you know or even beyond that right post
post education because again like what I said in the beginning this that this is a
conversation about
college career and life readiness and so I think this is just one
one part of it
that's exactly what I was gonna pick up on
because as a system, as school systems work
we are trying to do college career and life
this as you all know and just repeated
this is the
college slice
but one would presume
if we're gonna have indicators for career readiness
there's some overlap
anyways and as a system
we need to not just do
one we've gotta do all three
so as an academic you really have luxury of being able to hone in on this one
but as systems
we need to prepare ourselves for all three
and
one would presume i presume
that tenacity
will overlap in all three
but exactly how
you know in terms of career
life and college readiness
so
I think
as the system where this ends up
we need some help
looking at
the three
not just the sort of pure
slice of one
though it's an important one
i don't know if everybody here's familiar with
the arise initiative in anchorage school district
which is a really compelling
cradle to career--no community
it's non-career
and the idea is that
it's a partnership between all the players of a community
is really driving it along with the
school district
so we've been looking at the indicators
and we've really been
looking at
these questions about how you get at
measure of wellbeing that are culturally appropriate
but also that really get at
those other factors, some of the ones that you were saying
are not in the system but we're saying are which have to do
with family connectedness with the school
and the students' sense of connectedness
and support both within the school and again within the community
so that we
start breaking down some of the
some of the separation
and also some of the tough, intractable things
that we keep talking about
and you know we have the blame game around parents
and so we can set up all these indicators in our schools but
there are some
educators who will always say it doesn't matter because the parents are not engaged, the parents are not
so now we're both trying to measure that because
my experience doing research in the state is parents a lot of them are very engaged but find the schools
such a hostile place to be
they don't engage directly in the school even though at home
and in other circumstances they're
really keying in on how important education is
and so now at least in Anchorage there is this very holistic approach with a very broad-based group of actors
doing this kind of system
that's really encouraging because
again like i said at the beginning a lot of our work has really focused on the
central office
you know and the Annenberg Institute their focus is sort of like from the district up or out
and ours has been from the district down to the schools but parents are very
very important in our own work at the Gardner center about family engagement
we did some uh... research on full-service community schools in the
bay area
a lot of the
way that teachers and administrators and principals were defining family engagement
was family engagement on campus
as opposed to actually
my mom sits with me and helps me do my homework, or reads to me at
home and that because those teachers and administrators don't necessarily see
those parents who
don't have a car, have three jobs, etc.
as not being engaged
it was really interesting when you talk to teachers and school actors that they
define family engagement in one way and then when you talk to parents and
students
they define school and family engagement in another way
so I think your point about parents is really, really critical
so with that i mean i know that we have a lot of
other working groups at the end and there is a coffee and
pastries really make you very much for uh... having us come and share with you
a little bit of our work and
if you'd like to contact me and then there's some handouts on the table I'd be more
than happy to check with you so thank you very much