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Monday December 16, 2024 3:44 pm

Gov. Newsom previews the master plan for career education

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday the framework for what he is calling the master plan for career education.

The framework recommends creating a new statewide planning body for career education, promoting a “career passport,” developing career pathways for high school and college, strengthening workforce training and making both higher education and workforce training affordable.

Many of these efforts are already in the works, but the idea for a master plan for career education is to knit all these efforts together in a coherent way, Newsom said. There are $100 million in state funds supporting this effort that spans from K-12 to higher education to workforce development.

Newsom said local communities’ input and regional agencies are key to realizing this state vision. He made his announcement flanked by local leaders who discussed the importance of their regional collaborative North State Together — one of 13 in the state receiving state funding that improve the pathways between education and career.

Newsom emphasized that this plan is for everyone, including Californians without a college degree or even a high school diploma.

“We need to create a framework for a life well lived that doesn’t include some fancy degree,” said Newsom, during a news conference in Shasta County.

An eight-page master plan framework released Tuesday outlines specific groups that could greatly benefit from improved career education: disabled adults, young people who are neither in school nor employed and people involved with the justice system, English learners and first-generation students. The goal is to create a career education system without a “wrong door” but many entry points, such as libraries, jails and prisons, community colleges, adult schools and community organizations.

Scaling up credit for prior learning — the practice of awarding college credit for learning conducted outside the classroom —  for veterans and non-veterans alike is a key part of the master plan, Newsom said.

He also revisited the concept of a “career passport,” which means that more than grades would appear on a student’s transcript. It would include marketable work skills and experience developed through classes as well as apprenticeships, internships or other outside-the-classroom experiences.

Newsom also trumpeted the work that the state government has done to rewrite certain job descriptions that would open them up to candidates who don’t have a college degree.

Improved databases, such as the cradle-to-career system, are key to this effort as well, Newsom said.

Testing and Accountability

State Board criticized for soft-pedaling reporting on low student test scores

Critics say State Board's proposed labels for Smarter Balanced test results would mislead parents

John Fensterwald

Published

December 2, 2024

10 Comments

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Clarity matters when explaining to parents how their children did on standardized tests. An imprecise characterization of a complicated score can mislead parents into assuming their kids performed better than they did.

That issue is at the heart of the opposition to draft revisions to descriptions of students’ scores on the Smarter Balanced assessments that are sent home to parents. While the degree of difficulty of the tests and their scoring wouldn’t change, the characterization of the results would, like replacing the term “standard not met” with “inconsistent” for the lowest scores.

Parent focus groups this week

The California Department of Education is scheduling three online focus groups to gather thoughts, questions and concerns on proposed changes to how scores on the Smarter Balanced statewide assessments will be reported publicly. The meetings are for parents, teachers and students. 

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 6 to 7 p,m.: Session 1, in English 

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 7 to 8 p.m. Session 2, in English for students only

Thursday, Dec. 5, 6 to 7 p.m. Session 3, in Spanish

Go here to register and complete this interest form to participate.

The State Board of Education delayed its adoption at its November meeting because of criticism that the revised wording may compound, not solve, current unclear language.

Board members listened to children’s advocacy groups who chided state officials for not first consulting with teachers and parents before taking any action — which state officials acknowledged they hadn’t done.

In a letter to the state board about the proposed changes, particularly the labeling of low test scores, nine student advocacy groups — the Alliance for Students — argued that the revised language “will only serve to obfuscate the data and make it even more challenging for families and advocates to lift the needs of our most underserved students.” Signers of the letter include Teach Plus, Children Now, and Innovate Public Schools.

Getting the terms right is important for the assessment scores to be useful to parents and teachers, Sarah Lillis, executive director of Teach Plus California, told EdSource. “We want to make sure the signals sent by the descriptors foster dialogue” and encourage parents to ask the right questions. 

“We echo the concerns of our colleagues,” testified Lindsay Tornatore, representing the California County Superintendents at the board’s Nov. 13 meeting. “Outreach to parents, families and the community should have been prioritized to engage in multiple opportunities prior to the changes being made.”

In response, the California Department of Education hastily scheduled online presentations this week for parents and teachers, with the expectation that they will consider any recommendations at their next meeting in January.

How scores are reported

A student’s scores on the Smarter Balanced tests in English language arts and math and on the California Science Test fall within one of four achievement levels that provide context on how the student performed. Level 4, with the highest attainable scores, is also labeled “Standard Exceeded.” Level 3 is labeled Standard Met; Level 2 is Standard Nearly Met, and Level 1 is Standard Not Met. Many of the dozen states and territories that give Smarter Balanced use the same definitions. 

The target is to score at least Level 3, which indicates a student is working at grade level. In the 2023-24 results, fewer than half of students achieved Levels 3 or 4: 53% scored at levels 1 or 2 in English language arts, and 64.5% scored at Levels 1 or 2 in math.  The tests are given to students in grades three through eight and grade 11.

Statewide scores were worse in science, which is given to students in grades five, eight, and once in high school, 69.3% failed to meet Level 3 — the grade-level standard — in 2023-24.

In response to criticism that the existing labels are vague, imprecise and confusing, Smarter Balanced representatives decided to create a new set of labels and brief descriptions, which states have the option to use. This is particularly so for Level 2 — the “Standard Nearly Met” label. Many parents don’t understand what nearly meeting grade-level standards in particular means. 

Under the Smarter Balanced draft for the scoring bands, Level 4 would become “Advanced,” Level 3 would be “Proficient,” Level 2 would be “Foundational,” and Level 1 would be “Inconsistent.”

A draft description for Level 2 in language arts for third to fifth grade would read, “The student demonstrates foundational grade-level skills and shows a basic understanding of and ability to apply the knowledge and skills in English language arts/literacy needed for likely success in future coursework.”

In letters and in remarks at the board meeting, critics indicated they’re fine with “Advanced” and “Proficient” but are unhappy with the labels Foundational and Inconsistent for Levels 1 and 2.

“The language is confusing and not engaging for families with the first two levels,” said Joanna French, director of research and policy strategies for Innovate Public Schools. “If a student is not at grade level, be direct about that. You cannot address a problem you cannot see.”

Tonya Craft-Perry, a 15-year teacher who is active in the Black Parent Network of Innovate Public Schools, said that “’Foundational’ could lead parents to believe their children are doing better than they are. It makes the district and teachers look better, but if a low score requires intervention, a parent needs to know that,” she said.

Several board members indicated that one easy remedy would be to include language in the revision’s current descriptions. The wording makes clear that a student scoring in Level 2 “may require further development” to demonstrate the knowledge and skills to succeed in future grades or, for older students, in college courses after high school. Students scoring in Level 1 “needs substantial improvement” to succeed.

News media oversimplifies

In a two-page explanation, Smarter Balanced blamed the news media for much of the misunderstanding over the current wording of the labels.

“The media often incorrectly reports that students who aren’t proficient ‘can’t do math’ or ‘can’t read.’ This is not true. The Smarter Balanced assessments are aligned to grade-level content, and students who achieve Levels 2, 3, and 4 do, in fact, demonstrate a continuum of grade-level knowledge and skills,” it said.

Students at all three of those levels are showing that they “understand core content,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the California State Board of Education, at the board meeting.

But as scores progress from one level to the next, students convey increasing accuracy and complexity in their knowledge and skills. Smarter Balanced said students demonstrate this in how they respond to more complex reading passages, concepts and advanced vocabulary, or in math, the number of elements in equations and difficult word problems.

Rob Manwaring, a senior adviser to the advocacy group Children Now, said that the new labels would feed the “reality gap in the perceptions of parents that their kids are doing better than they are” in school. In an often-cited 2023 parent survey in communities nationwide, survey firm Gallup and the nonprofit parent advocacy organization Learning Heroes found that, based on their kids’ report cards, parents’ perceptions were out of whack with how their children did on assessments. In Sacramento County, where 28% of students were proficient in math tests, 85% of parents believed their children were proficient.

“Now we are suggesting that students scoring below standard are foundational. Many parents will conclude, ‘My kid is doing fine,’” Manwaring said.

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Bilingual Education

California must put money, mandates behind promises of bilingual education, researchers say

Zaidee Stavely

Published

December 5, 2024

California needs to mandate bilingual education in districts with significant numbers of English learners and invest much more to support districts to offer it, according to a new report released Thursday.

The report, “Meeting its Potential: A Call and Guide for Universal Access to Bilingual Education in California” was published as part of a package of research and policy proposals on civil rights in education by the UCLA Civil Rights Project.

The authors said California is far behind other states in enrolling students in bilingual programs, despite having published documents like the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030, that lay out a vision for significantly expanding bilingual education in the state.

“It’s particularly significant because of the loud promises the state has made on behalf of bilingual education,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes down to actual resources devoted, they’ve come so far short.”

The authors of the report recommend three main actions for California state leaders to take: Expand bilingual education programs with more funding and requirements for districts to offer them; prioritize enrollment of English learners in bilingual programs; and invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs.

In order to expand bilingual education programs, the authors said California should follow the lead of Texas and pass legislation that requires districts to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in any grade level that speak the same home language. In addition, they recommend the state provide districts more funding for every student enrolled in a bilingual program.

The authors said this “carrot and stick” approach in Texas has helped the state enroll a much higher percentage (36.7%) of English learners in bilingual programs. In contrast, California has enrolled only 16.4 % of English learners in bilingual programs.

The report cites research that shows bilingual education improves academic achievement, progress in learning English, retention of home language, high school graduation and college attendance, in addition to other benefits.

“Bilingual education should not be a partisan issue, because of the vast and wide-reaching benefits of it,” said Ilana Umansky, associate professor of education at the University of Oregon and one of the authors of the report. “It’s very telling that a state like Texas mandates bilingual education in a lot of circumstances and incentivizes bilingual education and has twice the enrollment of English learners in bilingual education as California.”

In addition to expanding the number of bilingual programs, the authors also called on state and district leaders to make sure there are spaces set aside in bilingual programs for English learners, that they are located in neighborhoods where English learners live or that they can easily reach by transportation.

“It’s critical to prioritize English learners, because it’s English-learner-classified students that most need and benefit from bilingual programs,” Umansky said.

Umansky said many dual-language immersion programs are often located in neighborhoods where most families speak English, because English-speaking parents are often the loudest advocates pushing for them. And she said some districts outright bar recent immigrant students from enrolling in bilingual programs, incorrectly assuming they are not beneficial for them.

Finally, the report’s authors are recommending the state also invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs and in making such programs more affordable for students. They pointed out that after voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting bilingual education in California, many bilingual teacher preparation programs were closed.

“Prop 227 had such a devastating effect on traditional bilingual teacher programs, we have got to invest in them. They have to be bigger, they have to be stronger, and we have to have support for the programs and support for the students,” Umansky said.

Proposition 227 was overturned in 2016, when voters passed a separate measure, Proposition 58.

“California has put its foot down about saying, ‘We believe in multilingualism, we’re going to get students to be multilingual,’” Umansky said. “Now is the moment to really start putting money and efforts behind those intentions.”