The Cal-PASS Initiative:
Curriculum Alignment Efforts in California
California Partnership for Achieving Student Success
www.calpass.org
“Success at Every Level”
Overview of Today’s Presentation
1. What is Cal-PASS?
2. Examples of faculty-driven work
– English Curriculum Alignment Project
(ECAP)
– Aligning Curricula and Career Education for
Student Success (ACCESS)
3. Demonstration of SMART Tool
“Success at Every Level”
Defining the Issue
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This issue is a lack of alignment across educational segments
- High school faculty are charged with ensuring that students
graduate with the skills and knowledge identified in the
State’s standards
- Yet students enter postsecondary education unprepared to
do college-level work
- Cal-PASS uses data to drive discussions among faculty across
segments to align high school exit expectations with college
entrance expectations and create innovations to ensure
students are prepared for postsecondary work
“Success at Every Level”
The California Partnership for Achieving
Student Success (Cal-PASS)
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Began in 1998 in response to the need to know how
students do as they transition from K-12 to community
colleges and/or four-year segments
- Includes K-12 schools, colleges and universities
- 29 universities (includes some private universities)
- 110 community colleges
- Over 7,600 K-12 schools
- Over 360 million student records
- Over 60 regionally-based Professional Learning
Communities (PLCs)
“Success at Every Level”
Student Data:
What Kinds of Data are Collected?
Student Demographics
Demographic and status
info, County, District, School
Course File
Enrollment information
Course grades
Test File
CST
CAHSEE
“Success at Every Level”
Award File
Diplomas, degrees,
certificates
Custom File
Anything (e.g., flag
separate SLCs within a
school)
Cal-PASS FERPA Compliance
FERPA compliant
Data are anonymous: personal
identifier information is removed or
encrypted
Data are encrypted: locally run program encrypts and
validates data prior to transmission
Controlled access: access is defined by the users’ login
Servers in secure, Level IV data center with
firewall and controlled access
Security document available at www.calpass.org
“Success at Every Level”
Cal-PASS System at a Glance
Making Cal-PASS Work: Professional
Learning Councils
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English
Mathematics
Science
Career Tech Ed
Counseling
ELL/ESL
“Success at Every Level”
Making Cal-PASS Work: Professional
Learning Councils
Data
Faculty
Wisdom
“Success at Every Level”
Problem
Identification
Develop &
Implement
Innovation
Abandon
Revise
Scale-up
Evaluate
Innovation
English Curriculum
Alignment Project (ECAP)
Project Goal:
Align K12 to college English curriculum by
including expository reading and writing
skills in 9th to 12th grade
ECAP Introduction
• English faculty from a Cal-PASS
Professional Learning Council (PLC)
• Started in 2005-06
• Includes faculty professional development
to create expository text lessons, and
implementation of those lessons in the
classroom
Aspects of ECAP
K12 teachers:
Attend formal summer training (e.g.,
RIAP)
Work in faculty grade-level teams to
develop understanding of and ability to
create expository text lessons
Consult with K-12 and college mentor
teachers throughout the school year
Implement lessons in their classrooms
ECAP Outcomes
• Faculty from 5 high schools are
implementing ECAP
• 70% of teachers said they increased their
use of expository text because of ECAP
• Jump in college-level English enrollment
and success levels
• Anecdotal student reports
ECAP Student Reports
Thank you so much for teaching us how to analyze and chunk
nonfiction pieces. Our 1st essay is based on two articles and we
were assigned to ‘mark them up’ . . . If it wasn’t for your class I
would be completely lost . . . My instructor talked about using
ethos, logos, and pathos in our papers and I was one of the few
who knew what they were. I can’t thank you enough for
integrating these important college concepts into you class!
My first college paper is due this Friday. Let me just say that you
were right about structuring an essay…what I learned my senior
year has greatly contributed to my success so far. Charting the
text exercises were a huge help! Your senior classes will thank you
when they get here!
The ACCESS Initiative
Aligning Curricula and Career
Education for Student
Success
A statewide curricula alignment and
contextualized learning initiative
“Success at Every Level”
ACCESS – Literature Support
“…the coursework between high school and college is not
connected; students graduate from high school under one set
of standards and, three months later, are required to meet a
whole new set of standards in college.”
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Kirst & Venezia, Stanford Bridge Project
“…teachers and students must be immersed in contextual
teaching and learning…Tech Prep is one of the most
successful frameworks for contextual teaching and learning,
and can help educators bridge the gap between what is often
static classrooms with bored, ‘tuned out’ students—and what
should be—classrooms alive with dynamic students actively
engaged in learning.”
- Center for Occupational Research and Dev., 2009
“Success at Every Level”
The ACCESS Initiative
• Secondary and post-secondary faculty from
thirteen regions collaborating in Cal-PASS
PLCs to:
• align 11th grade through transfer-level
math and English curricula
• embed Career and Technical Education
(CTE) assessment examples into curricula
to contextualize learning for students
“Success at Every Level”
The ACCESS Initiative
• The newly aligned, contextually relevant,
and collaboratively developed curricula will
be published in Curricula Guides that will:
• serve as a resource to inform teacher
practice and improve student outcomes
• serve as a resource to inform policy and
administrate decision-making
• Funded through partnerships between CalPASS, the Hewlett Foundation, the Irvine
Foundation, the Girard Foundation, and the
Haas Jr. Fund
“Success at Every Level”
ACCESS Initiative Outcomes
• Develop entrance and exit competencies for
ACCESS courses of interest
• Create model assessment examples; include
embedded contextualized CTE examples
• Demystify application of CTE subject
matter in math and English classes
• Show how sequential courses within a
discipline are currently aligned or
misaligned; recommended how to align the
curriculum
“Success at Every Level”
ACCESS Initiative Outcomes, cont.
• Create a curriculum map from 11th grade
through community college transfer-level
coursework
• Draft curriculum guides, which include all of
the components above, as faculty resources
to inform their daily practice of teaching
• Apply what we learn to make systematic
improvements to California’s fragmented
educational systems
“Success at Every Level”
The ACCESS Initiative
• Statewide & Systematic
• Utilizes Existing Resources
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K12 Content Standards
CC’s SLOs
College Literacy Project – 2002
EAP Student Preparedness Work
Common Core Standards Initiative
• Utilizes Cal-PASS Professional Learning
Council (PLC) intersegmental Infrastructure
• 26 of 64 PLCs
“Success at Every Level”
The ACCESS Initiative – Faculty Voice
• “I was very surprised to see how the
standards are interpreted differently not
just between segments but also within
segments.”
• “This [ACCESS PLC work] opens up your
eyes to what is going to happen upstream to
students.”
• “ACCESS has impacted the way I think about
teaching;…it has made me a better teacher”
“Success at Every Level”
SMART Tool
• New Data Access Tool
• Found on my.calpass.org
• Use to look at student transitions, reflect on
success trends, inform conversations about
proficiency, etc.
Questions & Answers
How to Contact Us
Michelle Kalina
Senior Director of Operations
mkalina@calpass.org, (916) 759-2486
Lauren Sosenko
Associate Director for Special Projects
lsosenko@calpass.org, (562) 743-9304
www.calpass.org