Critical Questions for Student Services: Research and Implications for Practice in California Community Colleges : A Series of Eight Memos Addressed to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office
How can student services in California’s community colleges better contribute to student success? Former Senior Research Associate at WestEd Andrea Venezia and the RP Group, an education research agency, explore this issue in a series of eight memos to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
The following communications present a picture of how student services are evolving in community colleges, the pressures created by budget cuts, and the complexity of helping students successfully prepare for and navigate college environments:
- Cover Memo: An Introduction
- Memo 1: Mandatory Orientation, Assessment, and Counseling
- Memo 2: Using Paraprofessionals and Instructional Faculty for Advising
- Memo 3: Student Success Courses
- Memo 4: Standard Cut Scores
- Memo 5: Automated Degree Audits and Online Education Plans
- Memo 6: Integrating Academic and Student Affairs
- Memo 7: Targeting Student Support Services
- Memo 8: Technology and Support Services
Some key insights:
- When seeking to improve students’ outcomes, issues such as assessment and cut scores for placement in developmental education cannot be isolated from curricula
- Student services, particularly those that combine multiple interventions and integrate academic and student affairs, help increase success rates, especially for more vulnerable populations
- The California state budget shortfall, institutional cultures, and policy structures make it difficult for student services to be expanded, mandated, or integrated into other elements of community college structures
- While each memo can be read as a stand-alone document, many of the topics are interrelated. Reading all eight memos together helps to provide a clear picture of how student services can contribute to student success
How Are Teacher Evaluation Data Used in Five Arizona Districts?
This REL West study describes how five Arizona school districts are using teacher evaluation data to inform their decisions concerning teacher professional development, compensation, school and classroom assignment, remediation, and retention.
During the 2014/15 school year the study districts administered their own new teacher evaluation systems, which were developed to align with state evaluation regulations passed in 2011.
WestEd researchers developed a case study for each of the five districts and then summarized common practices and perceptions across districts related to the use of evaluation data.
Findings were drawn from interviews with district officials and instructional coaches, and online surveys of school principals and teachers.
Key Findings
- Evaluation data shape the work of instructional coaches and the support opportunities (books, webinars, and online videos) suggested for teachers
- Observation data are perceived by school and district leaders as more useful for professional development decisions than student test results because they are collected over repeated occasions and made available during the school year
- Online systems facilitate timely observation-based feedback
- Teachers view themselves as responsible for their own professional growth and are somewhat skeptical of school- and districtwide professional development
- Evaluation data are not systematically used to identify teacher leaders or to assign teachers to schools or classrooms, but such data serve as the basis for decisions on remediation and allocation of state performance pay funds
- Teachers were more skeptical than administrators about the benefits of the new evaluations
These findings suggest positive benefits from the organizational structures that support the review of data during the school year — standards-based observation frameworks, benchmark assessments, professional learning communities, and instructional coaching and feedback.
Data-Driven School Improvement with WestEd's Four Domains CALL System
This archived webinar is the second in a four-part series designed to help school, district, and state administrators implement the Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement, a framework developed by WestEd’s Center on School Turnaround.
Learn about WestEd’s new Four Domains CALL System, an online tool that identifies a school or district’s unique leadership opportunities and challenges.
CALL utilizes a multi-source comprehensive survey to assess core leadership practices distributed across an organization and the results are used to create a targeted action plan that supports professional growth and school effectiveness.
The Four Domains CALL System delivers:
- Domain-specific feedback on your schools’ strengths and opportunities for improvement that will inform planning and monitoring
- A shared understanding of excellence and the required leadership skills and knowledge necessary to achieve improvements
- Data comparisons against national norms and previous school-level CALL administrations
- Tools to measure ongoing progress
Who Will BenefitÂ
- School & District Administrators
- State School Improvement Directors
Presenters
- Kyle Konold, Executive Director, The Delta Academy
- Lenay Dunn, Senior Research Associate, Center on School Turnaround at WestEd
- Mark Blitz, Project Director for Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning, WCEPS
- Joseph Sassone, former Director of Development for School and District Services, Comprehensive School Assistance Program at WestEd
- Bob Rosenfeld, Senior Engagement Manager, Comprehensive School Assistance Program at WestEd
Watch a video about the WestEd Four Domains CALL System.
Media Literacy Across the Standards, Part One: KQED Learn
DOWNLOAD WEBINAR MATERIALS.
Cosponsored by the Secondary Literacy Partnership and KQED.
WestEd and the Secondary Literacy Partnership partnered with KQED to present a two-part webinar series that showcases resources and strategies for including a media literacy lens in secondary classrooms, including teacher and student use of KQED’s free digital curriculum, as well as their online courses and resources.
Who Will Benefit
- Secondary school educators
What You Will Learn
This first archive webinar explores how media literacy is incorporated through a variety of content standards — including the Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the Model School Library Standards — by focusing of the development of critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills using evidence-based inquires.
The session showcases KQED Learn, an online hub that serves secondary educators 6-12 with free and open digital content and tools focused on amplifying youth voice, making media, civic engagement, and real-world media literacy. KQED Learn is a resource for professional learning, cutting edge media-making and creativity tools and standards-aligned activities and content that encourage critical media consumption, thoughtful responses and inquiry and project-based learning across the curriculum.
Additionally, secondary classroom teacher reflects on how utilizing the “Discussions” and “Investigations” activities on KQED Learn supports secondary students with learning media literacy across disciplines.
Presenters
- Jennifer Howerter, Education Programs Consultant, California Department of Education
- Rachel Roberson, News Education Manager, KQED
- Almetria Vaba, Associate Director, Partnerships and Distribution at KQED
- Brad Lakritz, 8th grade Social Science and Denman Television (DTV) Teacher, James Denman Middle School, San Francisco Unified School District
Who is in Charge of English Learner Services? Lessons Learned from a National Co-Teaching and Collaboration Study
To learn about current co-teaching and collaboration practices in secondary school settings, a study team from the National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners conducted an online survey administered to district leaders in charge of English Learner programs and services throughout the country.
In this research brief, researchers explain unexpected yet practical insights from district leaders’ responses to this online survey. It also provides general advice to school districts so that they can clearly communicate with families of English Learners and various other school community members regarding the essential programs and services they provide.
Leading Voices: The Role of Formative Assessment—Enhancing Educational Opportunities for Multilingual Learners
In this online conversation, Nancy Gerzon, Project Director for the Formative Insights Team at WestEd, led an insightful discussion with Dr. Lorena Llosa, Professor of Education in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University, on supporting Multilingual Learners through formative assessment.
Discussion Topics
- The role of teaching, learning, and assessing English learners’ content and language proficiency
- The shifts required in instructional strategies with English Learners in the content areas
- Eliciting, interpreting, and using evidence to provide feedback Â
Additional Resources
- Fostering a Culture of Learning that Promotes Student Agency
- Leading Voices Podcast Episode 2: Amplifying Student Agency with Formative Assessment
- Perspectives on Formative Assessment, Student Agency, and Equity Online Conversation Series (Recordings Available)
About Formative Insights Team
Amplifying student agency and identity is at the center of Formative Insights, our unique model of formative assessment. We help educators cultivate inclusive learning environments where students develop positive learner identities and feel equipped and empowered to direct their learning. In this model, teachers share responsibility for learning with students and effectively shift towards a lasting culture of internal accountability in which students learn from one another and their teacher. To learn more about our work, visit https://csaa.wested.org/formative-insights.
Video in the Middle: Flexible and Accessible Mathematics Professional Development
More than ever, math teachers need accessible, high-quality opportunities to enhance their professional knowledge. Video in the Middle (VIM) offers free, flexible, standards-aligned, online Professional development experiences based on the latest research in mathematics education.
VIM provides forty, two-hour video-based professional development modules that can be combined in a variety of ways by school district mathematics PD leaders, teacher educators, or individual teachers.
VIM module design places a video clip at the center, or “in the middle,” of a professional learning experience as teachers take part in online mathematical problem solving, video analysis of classroom practice, and pedagogical reflection. Before and after teachers watch each clip, there are activities designed to ensure that the teachers engage deeply with the mathematics content and the focal instructional components. Each VIM module contains approximately two hours of learning time plus classroom application. Each VIM Module follows a common pattern of trying out the task, considering different solution methods, understanding the lesson context, conducting a detailed analysis of the video clip, and applying it to practice and self-reflection.
Learn more, visit videointhemiddle.org.
Digital Professional Learning for K–12 Teachers: Literature Review and Analysis
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world of education has had to abruptly pivot to relying heavily on digital methods of delivery. For teachers, much of their professional learning has gone digital as well. To help those in charge of developing and delivering teacher professional learning online, this knowledge brief produced by the Region 15 Comprehensive Center summarizes themes from an informational scan of research on digital professional learning.
The information here is meant to assist professional learning developers and facilitators as they draw on existing materials and transition them to digital modes of delivery, building new learning experiences for an online environment. Though much has been written and researched about best practices for traditional (i.e., face-to-face) teacher professional learning, less has been studied about digital professional learning for teachers. Many sources reviewed for this brief were written by authors outside the United States, and much of the information looks specifically at rural areas, which have had to deal with issues of isolation prior to the current pandemic.
The literature reviewed for this brief suggests that attention to the following themes can be leveraged to build and deliver effective, timely, and meaningful professional learning for educators:
- Community-building
- Customization
- Extension of learning
- Effective facilitation
- Learning modalities
- Motivation
“Doing What Works” Bridges Research and Practice
Education research should reach educators in a form that is informative and readily usable. Translating research into practice is not a new challenge, but the explosion of online environments and access to multimedia technologies have opened new possibilities for addressing this longstanding challenge.
Enter Doing What Work (DWW), an online library of resources launched five years ago by WestEd.
DWW is “building a bridge between research and practice,” according to Nikola Filby.
Its strength, says Filby, lies in its “wealth of high-quality, practical tools that school leaders, service providers, and university faculty can use, particularly for planning and conducting their own professional learning.”
The DWW website provides access to resources in six broad areas: data-driven improvement, quality teaching, literacy, math and science, comprehensive support, and early childhood education.
The material is organized into 16 topics, and a three-part framework that invites educators to “Learn What Works,” “See How It Works,” and “Do What Works.”
Practice section helps educators “Do What Works” by providing downloadable PDF documents that describe practical ways to put the recommended practices into place and provide the actual tools to facilitate that process.
Leading Voices: Fostering a Culture of Learning that Promotes Student Agency
In this online conversation, Nancy Gerzon, Project Director for the Formative Insights Team at WestEd, and Dr. Menucha Birenbaum, Professor Emerita of Educational Assessment at Tel Aviv University, examine how building a positive culture of learning in the classroom can promote student agency and improve outcomes.
Discussion Topics
- The relationship between learning culture, classroom learning culture, and formative assessment implementation
- The role of teaching, learning, and assessing learners’ content
- The role of culture in fostering student agency
Additional Resources
- The Role of Formative Assessment—Enhancing Educational Opportunities for Multilingual Learners
- Leading Voices Podcast Episode 2: Amplifying Student Agency with Formative Assessment
- Perspectives on Formative Assessment, Student Agency, and Equity Online Conversation Series (Recordings Available)
About Formative Insights Team
Amplifying student agency and identity is at the center of Formative Insights, our unique model of formative assessment. We help educators cultivate inclusive learning environments where students develop positive learner identities and feel equipped and empowered to direct their learning. In this model, teachers share responsibility for learning with students and effectively shift towards a lasting culture of internal accountability in which students learn from one another and their teacher. To learn more about our work, visit https://csaa.wested.org/formative-insights.