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Sofia Aburto, Assistant Director of Field Services
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Sofia Aburto is the Assistant Director of Field Services for the Comprehensive School Assistance Program. At the local level, Aburto facilitates district and schoolwide improvement planning through data and service needs assessments, sharing of research-based school improvement strategies, and comprehensive schoolwide planning in rural and urban schools serving significant numbers of English learners and students from low-income families. She also offers technical support to Arizona district/site administrators and literacy coaches in developing their classroom observation skills and teacher feedback techniques.
As a California state approved School Assistance and Intervention Team lead, Aburto develops, supports, and monitors the implementation of school improvement plans in state-sanctioned elementary, middle, and high schools identified in need of improvement.
Aburto has participated in numerous national and state research and evaluation studies examining the impact of federal funding on services and the academic achievement of low-income and language minority students. In addition, she has helped numerous districts and schools raise overall achievement, narrow the achievement gap between subgroups of students, and exit state-sanction status.
Prior to joining WestEd, Aburto worked closely with federal, state, district, and school staff in implementing school improvement provisions contained in several recent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. She has supported state departments in designing and training regional staff working with state sanctioned schools; gathering survey information on federally funded services; and collecting, preparing, and disseminating information to districts and schools on comprehensive planning inclusive of Title I and English learner students through presentations and written reports.
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Noelle Caskey, Senior Research Associate
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Noelle Caskey joined WestEd in 2001 as a Senior Research Associate, working primarily as an External Evaluator with the California External Evaluator Project (now the Comprehensive School Reform Facilitator Initiative) and also with the Strategic Literacy Initiative. Since then, she has worked with low-performing schools and districts in California, Hawaii, and Nevada. Over the years her work has become increasingly focused on coaching principals whose schools are under state or federal sanctions.
Prior to joining WestEd, Caskey conducted her own consulting business for 10 years. As a consultant, she evaluated California school reform and teacher professional development initiatives, served as an evaluator and consultant for members of the Regional Professional Development Consortia, acted as state evaluator for California's Even Start Family Literacy Program, and founded and facilitated a regional coalition to address diversity issues in San Francisco Bay Area schools. She continues to work in the area of diversity with the Bridging Cultures workshops, which she provides to interested clients on request.
Caskey is also a trained facilitator with considerable experience helping troubled organizations find common working ground. She has worked with a variety of public and nonprofit agencies, served as an equity coach for the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, and provided consulting services to the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Caskey has also taught English at the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California. Her poetry has been published in anthologies internationally.
She received a BA in history and literature from Harvard University and a PhD in literature, psychology, and linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Huck Fitterer, Director of Field Services
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As Field Services Director at WestEd, Charles (Huck) Fitterer oversees work with schools and districts in Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, and California to improve the quality of instruction and increase the academic performance of students. Since starting at WestEd in 1999, Fitterer has developed leadership and teaching skills of staff at numerous schools and districts throughout the western United States, leading to improved academic achievement for thousands of students.
One of Fitterer’s responsibilities included facilitating the Five-Year Strategic Plan for Casa Grande (AZ) Elementary School District. During this time, the district marked a 42% increase from 2002 to 2007 in students who perform at grade level in mathematics and a 16% in reading.
As Director of Field Services for WestEd, Fitterer oversees technical assistance services to schools participating in the School Assistance Intervention Teams and High Priority School Grants programs in California; the Reading First program and Yuma Professional Learning and Networking project in Arizona; External Facilitator program in Nevada; and school improvement services to schools in Hawaii.
In addition, Fitterer directs the Teach for Success project and supports activities of the Southwest Comprehensive Center to address the requirements of No Child Left Behind in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
From 2001 to 2003, Fitterer served as the Project Director for the school improvement services that WestEd provided to Calexico (CA) Unified School District. During that time, the average Academic Performance Index for all of the district's 10 schools increased 124 points.
Prior to joining WestEd, Fitterer served as an international consultant, elementary school principal, staff development teacher trainer, and classroom teacher.
He received a BS in elementary education from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, and an MA in educational administration and supervision from Arizona State University.
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Lori Van Houten, Senior Program Associate
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As Senior Program Associate in WestEd’s Comprehensive School Assistance Program (CSAP), Lori Van Houten helps low-performing schools create sustainable and systemic change that results in improved student achievement.
Over the last five years, Van Houten has worked with over 30 low-performing schools nationwide. As a result, more than 90% of these schools vastly improved their test scores for all student groups and many of these schools are no longer considered low-performing.
Specifically, Van Houten helps schools and districts complete needs assessments; develop research-based comprehensive action plans; allocate resources to support continuous academic improvement; and develop the capacity to monitor the implementation of their student improvement plan. This work has led to requests for additional services from schools and districts.
Van Houten also provides technical assistance to schools and groups of educators in data-driven decision-making. Such expertise led to her coauthoring the recent WestEd publication, Developing an Effective School Plan: An Activity-Based Guide to Understanding Your School and Improving Student Outcomes. Via online events, conference presentations, and summer institutes, Van Houten and her colleagues have helped hundreds of school and district staff on how to use Developing an Effective School Plan to create, implement, and monitor their own plans.
Previously, Van Houten worked for over 25 years as a consultant, teacher, district employee, and researcher with schools and organizations serving students at risk of academic failure.
She received a BA in deaf education and elementary education from Michigan State University and an MA and PhD in linguistics from Brown University.
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