REGIONAL CONSORTIA MEETING
January 20-21, 2015
California Comprehensive Center at WestEd
1000 G Street, Suite 500
Sacramento, CA 95814
Capitol Room
AGENDA
Day 1
9:00 AM
Welcome/Agenda/Introductions/Housekeeping/Dinner
Facilitators: Juli Coleman, Region 9, San Diego COE
Cindie Medeiros, Region 10, San Bernardino COE
Note-takers: Maria Elena Diaz, Region 2 & Russ Frank, Region 10
Today’s Meet: todaysmeet.com/RSDSSJanuary2015
9:15
Team Building Activity
We discussed
9:30
Hot Topics Brainstorm
1. Can we talk about the seven recommendations for the
accountability workbook?
2. Will schools stay frozen for another year?
3. NCLB is going to congress for consideration. What is the nature of
it?
9:45
Standards Implementation: Framing Our Messages to Deepen
Understanding
Nancy Brownell, Senior Fellow, Local Control and Accountability, CDE
Anticipated Outcome: Participants will review the current CCSS
communications campaign, consider the importance of ongoing
messaging on standards, and gain additional information and
resources for supporting districts’ communication strategies.
Nancy shared a power point which was emailed to the group in
advance of the meeting.
1. Nancy reviewed the California education history since the 1970s
from competency testing to proficiency and API to college and
career readiness.
2. Slide 3 on common core. Remodeling is a better school that
reform. The fact that states can withdraw reminds us that it is not
a national. This should be about college and career readiness.
Nancy encourages us to call them “the new state standards” rather
than Common Core.
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3. Slide 6 and 7: Characteristics of career and college readiness in
ELA. Some people don’t like the idea that there is gray areas in
making judgments. These kind of people want certainty and right
answers. The common core app. can take you directly to a
standard so you can check what the standards say when they
argue something that’s not in the standards.
4. Slide 11 Key message is “why we are implementing new state
standards” message.
5. ‘Slide 12: New standards have a great impact on curriculum,
instruction, assessment preparation. Outcomes can be local
benchmarks, local performance assessments.
6. Slide 13: This shows the opposition and resistance themes. We
have privacy laws data release.
7. Slide 16: Three lessons for delivering messages. Need for
messages to be repeated and echoed frequently. What is the
common repeated message from every district?
8. Slide 19 Mentions the acronym CORE for district staff to engage
stakeholders.
9. Slide 21 identifies stakeholders and what their stake is within a
district.
10. Slide: 29 www.cde.ca.gov/re/cc is a link to go to for the CDE
communication toolkit. “Educational Remodeling” is the new
metaphor she encourages us to use instead of “implementing
reform” Educational Orchestra is another metaphor for how
people read the same music and contribute to the overall piece.
11. Slide 32: Great City Schools. Get parents and community
members to be communicators to the district not just input. All
staff needs to serve as messengers to external community.
Deputize local leaders to spread the message.
12. Slide 33: IDs elements that should be part of our message.
13. Slide 35: IDs the oppositional arguments
14. Slide 39: Key fears to address
15. We talked about why districts cannot reject new standards. If a
district does not teach the standards supported by LCFF, state
money becomes at risk. If not assessing, Title I money is at risk.
Not assessing ELs, Title III funding is at risk.
16. Tim asked why not ask opponents why they would defend a
broken system where the 11th grade pass rate on Algebra II is
17%. That is nowhere near high enough.
17. Slide 40: Starts the Frameworks Institute and this is the
messaging the Nancy suggests we follow.
18. Slide 45: Identifies a letter from higher education in support of the
CCSS. See cdefoundation.org/ccss-campaign.
19. Slide 49: “Start with a value. Explain the issue. Introduce the
solution. This corresponds to “What’s at stake? What’s this
about? How would policy help?”
20. Nancy distributed 11 cards that can help guide the process of
responding to opposition based on the paradigm in point 19.
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11:00
BREAK
11:10
Steve Ayon - Data Manager RCOE
Data Table/Template
See Maria Elena’s Notes
11:50
Lunch
1:00
SBAC Interim Assessments and Assessment Fellows
Mary Tribbey, Program Associate and Senior Assessment Fellow at
WestEd
Anticipated Outcome: Directors will have guidance on the interim
assessments due out in November/December for LEA use. Mary’s
powerpoint is posted on Mother
1. Mary showed a power point on the interim assessments. The
interims get released on January 28 in the morning. A webinar is
scheduled on this. These are based on the same blueprints so are
well-aligned with the summative assessments to be given starting
this March. Same universal design concept. The items in the
interims will not repeat on the summative assessment.
2. Interim Comprehensive Assessment (ICA) are designed like
sample summative tests. It gives students the chance to take an
entire summative-type test. The Interim Assessment Blocks (IAB)
are smaller set of targets addressing specific content areas. IABs
are intended to use in the classroom to give feedback on
instruction. The ICAs will take the same amount of time as the
summative assessment. You could use this to assess an out of
state student with the previous year’s ICA. You could give them at
mid-year to judge progress on the summative. IABs are smaller.
3. Slide 10 starts to show which IAB blocks are available for ELA and
math at each grade. Accessibility supports for the summative are
also in place for the interims and blocks. All performance tasks are
locally scored and training for the locally scored assessment is
coming. Slide 18 shows how you could use the IBA. Items are
not secure.
4. TOMS is the system for teachers to log into the assessment
system. Teachers in grade k, 1, 2, 9, 10 and 12 will need TOMS
access from their district assessment administrators because
grades k,1,2,9 and 12 do not administer the summative
assessment. Mary reports that anchor papers will be available
(they show performance at the bottom of a performance band) but
we’re not sure we’ll get exemplars (those that show performance at
the top of a performance band.
5. Reported results: We’ll get a scaled score starting at 2,000 (the
slide is wrong) and a level from the cut points. The individual
student report for the interim comprehensive will give a scaled
score and a rating 1-4 when will results come back. Once an
individual student finishes, you should get the results pretty
quickly. Aggregated results will take between 2-4 weeks to be
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reported. Students can take interims as long as you want to
unless there is a danger of the bandwidth being used up in your
district. To get a report on the interims you need to use the same
logon credentials for the digital library login, not Smarter Balanced.
6. Use the interims to test out the accessibility support with students
and actual test items. All interim assessments in California are
free, having been paid for by the state.
Quality Schooling Framework
Alejandro requested that people sign up for the list serve at
www.cde.ca.gov/qs/ and ask three others to sign up.
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1:45
`
Keith Coppage (CDE)
Anticipated Outcome: Updates on accountability, legislative and
SBE updates; RSDSS RGA/base and sub-grant allocations; Plan
Alignment Committee Update; Hot Topics.
Keith and both CISC representatives listed below were not able
to attend.
We discussed the nature of the SBE item 2 on the workbook
submission to USDE. This item is discussed in Day 2 with Keric
Ashley.
During this time, the grouped discussed a theme of disconnection
from partners in the statewide system of school support.
1. We discussed the need to have a consistent person act as a
liaison with CDE so there was an ongoing contact person to keep
RSDSS up to date with ongoing policy.
2. The group spent time sharing a sense of disconnection from key
people who update us on critical information, not just the SBE
meetings but other developments. There was sense that themes
are developing about future RSDSS work that are not being
communicated across the entities that make up the statewide
system of support.
3. We talked about the purpose of this meeting:
a. Get information to disseminate to our districts.
b. Make sure we are consistent with our messaging about
accountability.
c. Build shared resources.
d. Build capacity of all group members
e. Information gathering and agree on implications. Negotiate the
meaning.
f. Ed code 52059 establishes the regional system.
4. Advantages of using the rotating chairing
a. Shared leadership model
b. Allows directors to control the agenda
c. Build capacity and personal skills.
The group discussed advantages of having a liaison or chairperson for the group that
would stay connected to new themes as they are developing:
1. Advantages of a having a liaison:
a. Go to person
b. Consistent
c. Does not have to do entire agenda
d. Efficiency
e. Knows what we need to know
2. Advantages of a Chairperson
a. Go to person
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b.
c.
d.
e.
Consistent
Efficient
Networking developing relationship with partners
Knows what we need to know
3. We brainstormed other needs for RSDSS
a. It would be important to have the discussion to see how RSDSS fits into the new
accountability paradigm with state and federal accountability. How CCEE fits into
this
b. Roles and responsibilities
c. Anticipate the needs of the group
d. Political issues.
e. Identify critical PD
f. Build agenda
g. Building relationship with CDE , CISC,
h. Do we need to reschedule ourselves to follow CISC?
i. Managing the shared resource system.
j. Someone in charge of technology
k. Someone who does team building
l. We need advocacy for RSDSS
m. Sara said, distributed leadership is effective when roles are clearly defined. Who
does what etc. The accountability context and our work context and may demand
new roles. As the need for new roles arises there may be a need for more
consolidated leadership.
The discussion took most of the afternoon.
2:15
Curriculum & Instruction Steering Committee (CISC)
Cyndy Dolph, Renee Regacho-Anaclerio
Anticipated Outcome(s): Determine (additional) topics that CISC,
CACC, CDE, or colleagues can address during meeting.
The plan was to have one representative join us today. That person
fell ill at the last minute.
3:00
Break
3:15
LEAP/LCAP/Foundational Services Alignment - Sharing
Anticipated Outcome: Continue the alignment work with documents
for RSDSS directors.
We did not address this.
4:00
Updates on the following Hot Topics from November meeting:
Due dates for Title II year 2 and 4 plans
PI letters send in June – Do we send again after SBAC?
We did not discuss this
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4:30
Adjourn
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REGIONAL CONSORTIA MEETING
January 20-21, 2015
Day 2 – California Comprehensive Center at WestEd
1000 G Street, Suite 500
Sacramento CA 95814
Capitol Room
AGENDA
Day 2
8:30 AM
Housekeeping and Hot Topics Revisited/Proposals
Juli/Cindie
We reorganized the agenda. The first thing we did was to talk in small
groups about our concerns from yesterday. We were asked to
discuss our feelings about having a chairperson or a liaison. Each
person was asked to respond:
1. I won’t be here for long. This group needs to decide what’s important for it and
he will support them.
2. Likes the taking turns in facilitating and planning. The representation from
3.
4.
5.
6.
WestEd, CDE, and CISC was larger in the past. I’d like to see that regrow.
RSDSS focus is fading.
Future work will likely be informed by the LCAP evaluation rubric, using the
interim assessments and the digital library along with new accountability rules. I
support a chairperson to keep the group in touch with themes.
Our concerns are very much like the Comprehensive Centers network. They too
are not seeing federal representatives at their meetings and they are less clear
on the direction of the work. We need the clarity of purpose and goals. The
Centers have not had that clear purpose recently to influence decision makers.
Times of change you need clarity of purpose to survive or be told what needs to
be done by someone else.
When purpose is clear you can have a looser organizational structure. When
it’s not, the organization needs to be tighter. We don’t wait until July. I suggest
a committee to act as a steering mechanism. A mix of experienced directors and
directors who will be in the position of leadership for a few year.
This group needs to do the work. We’re already doing it. We just call it
something else. Let’s use the state of flux to have a common voice. We need a
committee or chair that gets connected to the work. The time frame doesn’t
matter. Let’s start.
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7. It would be good to talk about the intake of new members. They need as much
support as possible. We need a chairperson and co-chair and divvy up the
agenda.
8. What’s new for the group now is how we deal with the SBE items. We used to
be able to answer hot topic questions ourselves because our mission was
clearer. More and more we are not able to do that. Let’s schedule future
meetings around and after SBE meetings and facilitate experts who can inform
us.
9. Definitely a time of transition CDE in CA’s accountability and LCAP. It’s easy to
feel like sense of purpose and direction is missing. All the entities as part of this
network are in transition. In the old days, the feds dictated everything. That’s now
changed. Torlakson has Identified state priorities. He wants to be a part of how
we collaborate in the future. How do we make sure experts who know SBE are
briefing us? CDE needs to let senior management know more about the TA that
RSDSS does and marketing it at least within CDE. We support looking at your
purpose to establish clarity in this murkiness.
10. Institutional knowledge. We need to acknowledge that and embrace the
ambiguity. How do we shift our roles and who decides that? It’s not a March or
July issue, it’s an ongoing process.
11. I feel some relief and a weight was lifted from me, because I’m grappling with my
role. I’m the first of the new wave of people coming in. Still confused. Still
grappling with our region. This activity was very timely and necessary. This is a
huge start.
12. The sooner the better. Having a chair with a subcommittee will be great so we
know what is going on.
13. I favor a chair. I’m also the CISC rep for my county. In that group there’s a welldefined way of doing business. I know that if I have a question about something,
I know who to go to in CISC. If my COE has a question I go to the CISC chair to
get the information to the department. We may need something like that. I’m
concerned that the message is that the RSDSS directors don’t know what they’re
doing. I don’t think that is the case. We still are doing Foundational Services in
support of schools and districts with the support of our partners. We are clear
about our purpose this year. It’s about the future that we need to reconnect with
partners to redefine.
14. I like more specific information to help me feel comfortable. I like having a
specific person as a contact.
15. We have a tremendous opportunity to engage the institutional memory with the
new opportunity.
16. I think we need to do some chartering: an agreement on the internal ways of
working. It is often about a sense of purpose, roles and responsibilities, working
norms, procedures, consistent chair or not, it’s about organization work about
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revisiting your processes. It implies that we have the authority about establishing
a charter. There was concern expressed to get CISC support.
17. We’ll call this move “remodeling” as per the advice on how to do state standards.
18. Do we need to answer these questions before we think about who to invite to the
table? It was suggested that the above questions could take six hours.
19. It was suggested that we need to have the tacit agreement from CISC to
proceed with this. Tim will share our message with CISC this week to get their
agreement. We could use the model from CISC in our remodeling.
20. The first day of the March meeting, March 18, will be dedicated to doing this for
the first day.
9:30
Engaging Stakeholders
Sara McClellan and Ginni Davis – CA CC
Anticipated Outcome: Participants will engage in activities relative to
articulating purpose and benefits of stakeholder engagement,
increasing participation, and designing opportunities for meaningful
interactions. Power point and resources are posted on Mother
1. Everything we do is about helping clients stay focused and use the right tools in the
change or implementation process.
2. Sara passed out a handout on the “New Initiative Implementation Cheat Sheet” and
a power point on engaging stakeholders in school and district planning.
3. It’s important to identify the most important practices to use with districts so they are
not overwhelmed. Sara and Ginny researched the most important factors.
4. Revisit the commitment to your vision is one of those factors. Why is it that
engaging stakeholders looks so good on paper and don’t end up showing up after
the input. It’s frustrating for stakeholders. There’s a balance to be struck between
purpose, people and process. Are we asking the questions that really matter? Are
you clear about why you’re inviting stakeholders into the process? Everything is
about persuasion, about what matters for kids, and evidence based research. The
three most important questions that need to be answered effectively are: 1) What
difference will stakeholder make? How will you know you’ve made this difference?
How will you know that stakeholder engagement mattered?
5. What skill sets do you want in some audiences? See slide 4.
6. Slide 5 is about the process
7. How do you scaffold the process so you don’t get too much feedback? You can
narrow the area of focus
8. The last slide gets into what educators and TA providers need to do for their clients.
9. Ginny provided us with 3 scenarios. We worked on one of three scenarios using
the questions on the scenario worksheet.
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We debriefed in small groups about what we learned from the process of working on the
scenarios:
1. You have a plan. We want to make sure the feedback doesn’t get lost. How do
you treat their input respectfully?
2. Three purposes for a group. Use student or alumni stories of success in life after
high school of success in college or career readiness. Tell these stories to your
audiences. Make sure stakeholders are creating a legacy. What legacy do they
want to create? When students succeed, it enriches the community socially,
politically, economically. Invite students to talk about how the district helped craft
their life journey. Have an existing group try out the questions you might pose to
another or larger group.
3. Don’t assume the audience knows what the LCAP is. What do you provide ahead
of time? Let them know how it’s going to be organized.
4. Clarity of purpose. It is important to know what is going to be done with the
information. Important to consolidate the information and put it together.
5. Districts can do Y’all comes but provide the scaffolding: What topics, when, how it
will be facilitated and recorded.
Keric Ashley on The State Board of Education Item 2: Updates to the Accountability
Workbook. This was rescheduled from Day 1.
1. School Services of California has said that no decisions were made about Item 2.
That was not correct. A decision was made late in the day.
2. Decisions related to AYP at the federal level affect some 10 states which don’t have
a flexibility waiver. We’re bound to the old accountability system. If anything like
the new ESEA proposal is passed, it gives more accountability to the states.
3. One problem of federal system of cut point of proficiency. Some students could
start at the bottom of a performance band, progress to the top of that performance
band and not get credit for the progress.
4. The workbook discusses how we identify progress regarding AYP. USDE: identify
proficiency rates and another indicators. CST and API at ES MS and CAHSEE and
grad rate.
a. K-2 schools won’t get an AYP without having a “pair share” with the scores third
graders of the 3-5 feeder school counting as the proficiency score for the K-2
school.
b. Ways of helping identify all SED students.
c. CA wants to change from CAHSEE to SBAC for high schools and move from
CST to SBAC at middle and elementary eventually. For 2014-15 assessment
CDE propose using 95% participation rate as one indicator for all schools. The
second indicator for ES and MS would be attendance at a level that has not
been determine. The proposed second indicator for high schools is the cohort
graduation rate.
d. CDE called USDE ask asked them to help yourself by helping us. The pushback
on CCSS is spotty in California, so we’re not having to have political discussion
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about it at the governor or legislative level. If you keep them at 100% everyone
will fail. What message will that send about CCSS and SBAC? It only provides
evidence to CCSS opposition that CCSS doesn’t work. So please help us.
We’ll report scores etc. but not use them for accountability. If USDE does not
approve, SBE will have to do another proposal. They may not respond which
would be in CA’s favor . CDE will take “no response” as a yes.
e. Attendance rate cut point has not yet been identified yet.
f. Cohort graduation rate is already set for all schools.
5. Schools that are frozen in PI (One year of AYP made) could exit
6. In March a board item #3 about API would come back for a decision after PSAA
makes a recommendation on a 1) Single number API or 2) multiple measures as
long as it’s not a multiple measure federal system. We need to make it more
subtle than a single number. The second item for PSAA is a recommendation for
changing the point scale from 200-1000 with a goal of 800.
7. Timing – when is the best time to come out with a base score? API was set up to
rank schools to provide awards and sanctions, so we want to move away from this.
8. When to create a new base for API? ACSA has lobbied for not using API this year.
Keric believes that it’s too early to create a base API this year. Keric says good
reason not to approve the API because they want to align API with LCAP with a
state accountability system. It’s in its infancy and using local measures. We also
want to go to a growth model, but haven’t seen any scores for it yet. It’s not about
us not being ready for the test or that the test is not ready, it’s about creating
aligned systems.
9. CAHSEE is still required for high school graduation. That has not changed. But
CAHSEE is not aligned to CCSS. 25% is aligned to CCSS. So if we’re going to
give CAHSEE that we need to consider alignment. CAHSEE could provide a floor
for performance. Keric does not see CAHSEE being replaced by SBAC. He thinks
CDE will go out for RFP and a passing score will have to determined. It could be a
local requirement. It could be suspended. In March 2016, a plan is due for
assessments outside of SBAC. SBE wants CAHSEE to be addressed in that report.
10. Is there funding for CCEE for county office to provide services? First meeting is
Feb. 25. They’re not in a hurry until there’s an evaluation rubric is established.
There needs to be a level of trust set up that districts really are getting assistance
that is not punitive. They hope that LEAs volunteer. Reauthorization could have an
impact on this. Funding for districts to ask for assistance from CCEE would
incentive them to contract with COEs. Keric said if there was a blend of federal and
state money to do that, the technical assistance providers (RSDSS) would need to
be multi-funded. Michael Watkins, the Santa Cruz County Superintendent of
Schools, a CCEE board member, would support such a measure.
11:00
Break
11:15
Alejandro Hernández – Presentation
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Alejandro told his story as a bicultural citizen who teaches English. He disseminated a
resource: “Strategies to Develop English Language and academic Proficiency” from
Achieve! Academic Success (his own company). He worked with kids who were learning
English in a year and academic English in two years. Alejandro’s experience contradicts
researchers who say it takes longer. He started as an instructional coach with Action
Learning Associates and then developed the materials that he shared with us. His work
aligns with Kate Kinsella’s work.
11:45
Hot Topics Revisited/ Agenda topics for March
Juli/Cindie
We did not have time to do this
12:00 PM
Adjourn
NEXT MEETING:
March 18 and 19, 2015 – WestEd
Facilitators: Maria Elena Diaz, Region 2 & Russ Frank, Region 10
New Director Presentation: Cindie Medeiros
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