The education community had much to be thankful for this November. Voters once again showed strong support for investing in public schools, passing both Proposition 1D, providing $7.3 billion statewide for new and modernized K-12 school facilities, and 54 local bond measures, making available more than 6.6 billion local dollars in school construction funds. Proposition 1D will provide funding to build career technical education facilities, relieve overcrowding, and modernize obsolete classrooms.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also stepped up again to support K-12 education in California by providing a $15.5 million grant for the California Department of Education (CDE) and county offices of education to strengthen support for local school districts struggling to improve student achievement. The grant will expand to 15 districts CDE's pilot program for district support and intervention. The goal is to develop a regional infrastructure, or "backbone," in 58 county offices of education to train and equip each region with the skills and tools needed to provide struggling districts with academic, fiscal, and human resource management expertise.
We know that the next important step in improving student achievement at the school site level lies in giving local education agencies the tools and support they need to ensure that schools are able to implement essential elements of reform.
Also this month, the seventh annual independent evaluation of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) was released for the 2005-06 school year, the first such evaluation since the exam became a graduation requirement. I was pleased that evaluators found the Exit Exam is working as intended. Students are focused on meeting the challenge of higher expectations by working harder in school, taking more courses, and getting the help they need to master the essential math and English skills measured by the Exam. Evaluators also found that, contrary to the fears and dire predictions, fewer students in tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades are dropping out of high school. I believe this is a direct result of the Exit Exam bringing attention and resources to those students struggling the most.
However, the evaluation also highlighted disturbing aspects of the achievement gap. Passage by English learners is among the lowest of all demographic subgroups, and the evaluation found that many students are still classified as English learners after as many as 10 years in our public education system. We need to redouble our efforts and develop new strategies to help these students, because the results indicate that we are bringing our students to English proficiency quickly enough. We must improve our approach to assisting these students so they will be ready to succeed in the challenging global economy of the 21st century.
Also released in November were results of physical fitness tests given in 2006 to fifth, seventh, and ninth graders enrolled in California public schools...
The goal of the California physical fitness test is for students to achieve the minimum fitness levels for six fitness areas. In 2006, 25.6 percent of the students in grade five, 29.6 percent in grade seven, and 27.4 percent in grade nine achieved the fitness standards for all six areas of the test.
The test scores showed a modest 1 percent gain in overall performance compared to last year's results, indicating that too many of our students are leading sedentary lives exacerbated by poor eating habits. This is a destructive trend that must be reversed.
Early budget forecasts for the 2007-08 fiscal year indicate that Proposition 98 revenues will support COLA and growth, however, one-time monies available in the current year will be gone, and not much is expected to be available to fund new programs. Education will also be competing with health care and other critical areas of the budget at a time when the governor promises to reduce or eliminate the structural budget deficit. I want to assure you I will do everything in my power to protect Proposition 98 from any potential encroachment. Future year fiscal predictions by the Legislative Analyst indicate that while this year we can expect only modest growth, by the end of the next five years we can expect substantial increases in Proposition 98 funds. We should begin planning now to carefully invest those funds in ways that will most efficiently and effectively improve student achievement.
Interactive Charter School Map Now Online
A new Web tool is available to help the public more easily locate and obtain vital information on charter schools in their communities.
The new interactive charter schools map can be viewed through the CDE Web site, key words, "charter school locator."
On the new interactive map, people can click on their county of residence. This will produce a report on all the charter schools in that county, along with information on schools' academic performance, addresses, grade levels served, types of programs offered, and if available, links to each charter school Web site. Existing charter school information that was located throughout the CDE Web site is now all linked conveniently through this one Web map that is accessible online 24 hours a day, seven days a week from any location.
Central California Training Opportunities in Special Needs
In response to needs assessment surveys, the Diagnostic Center, Central California (located in Fresno) is offering more than 50 topics that school districts or Regional Coordinating Councils may select for staff in-service training. The topics are divided into nine strands including:
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Behavior
- Literacy
- Preschool
- Strategies and Interventions
- Severe Disabilities
- Specialized Topics
- Paraprofessionals
- Parents
In addition, the center has developed a series of three discipline-specific seminars that are scheduled throughout the current school year. Those presented during the first semester have been very well received by our community.
- Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrician, Dr. Desiree Rodgers, has developed three workshops entitled "Ask the Doctor: Hot Topics in Medicine." Individual topics will be Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism, and Tic Disorders and Tourette's Syndrome.
- Speech-Language Pathologist, Dr. Rita Humphreys will present a series of seminars on research-based speech-language issues impacting education. "Ask the Speech-Language Pathologist: Hot Topics in Speech and Language" include Auditory Processing Difficulties - Assessment and Treatment, Childhood Apraxia of Speech, and Language-Learning Disabilities.
- To address parental concerns, Jody Dittmar has developed the "Ask the Education Specialist: Hot Topics for Families" series. Topics include Literacy, Homework, Learning Strategies, Study Skills, Understanding Behavior Support, and Demystification.
The "Ask the Specialist" seminar series are all held at the Fresno Diagnostic Center in the evening and all interested persons are encouraged to attend. Participants to date have been teachers, psychologists, administrators, speech therapists, psychologists, social workers, parents, counselors, nurses, adapted physical education specialist, and numerous others from school districts and community agencies. A complete listing of professional development opportunities, as well as those trainings already scheduled throughout central California, is available for review at our Diagnostic Center Web site. For additional information, please contact Carole Bence, Diagnostic Center Director, at 559-243-4047.
Honoring Teachers
Superintendent O'Connell this month named five remarkable educators as California Teachers of the Year for 2007. This month Highlights honors Teacher of the Year Alan Sitomer, who teaches English, AVID, and Creative Writing at Lynwood High School in the Lynwood Unified School District. Mr. Sitomer was also nominated to compete for the National Teacher of the Year honor because of his unique approach to teaching reading and writing in high school.
In his class hangs a poster class that reads, "Attitude equals altitude." He says, "I refuse to believe that the literacy levels of inner-city teens can't be raised. We must never forget how teachers can make a world of difference in the lives of other human beings.'"
He is a gifted, creative teacher, an impassioned orator, and an author of five books. As an inexperienced English teacher who naively and mistakenly thought students would wholeheartedly embrace the "classics," Mr. Sitomer found a way to reach his unwilling readers on the simple but powerful belief that he could, and he did with amazing results.
In his California Teachers of the Year application, Mr. Sitomer wrote of how he reached these unmotivated students, who covered their faces with sweatshirt hoods like Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, by turning to the positive power of hip-hop. He used Tupac Shakur to connect to Dylan Thomas and Ice Cube to connect to Lord Alfred Tennyson. "From the very first moment I announced what we'd be doing, I had 100 percent engagement from 100 percent of the students. They offered insight, they offered passion, they offered themselves, even as I assigned oral presentations, persuasive essays, and classroom debates."
Mr. Sitomer believes that equity in education is one of the biggest issues facing public schools. "Morally, ethically, and pragmatically we must recognize that when some students are offered technology in the classroom, field trips, and a rich academic curriculum.and other students in the same city but a few miles away are forced to negotiate impacted classrooms, textbooks riddled with graffiti, and chronic violence on campus, pupils from both sides of the education fence - and society at large - will ultimately lose. And lose big."
