- Welcome to our board meeting!
- I’d like to recognize and celebrate the following staff and students:
- Since the last board meeting VAPA district-wide performances continue to “wow” audiences – there was the
- District Dance Concert at ELH on March 14; District Baile Folklorico Concert at SYH on March 15/16. You can check the district website calendar for other VAPA events.
- Cheyanne Thompson – SUHI for winning 1st Place at the Association of African American Educators Speech Contest. She wrote a speech about Wilma Rudolph, Olympic Gold Medal winner.
- Granger Jr. High for being re-designated by State Superintendent Tony Thurmond as a “Middle School to Watch.”
- Congratulations to 11th grader
- Kudos to
- Hilltop MS was featured in a Huffington Post story/video on the Tariq Khamisa Foundation video.
- On March 16, the 26th Annual Adelante Mujer Conference was held at UCSD. This year’s Latina of the Year is National City Mayor
- Alejandro Sotelo-Solis, SUHI Alum. Much appreciation to Co-Chairs Aimee Cuellar-Martinez – SUHI, Isabel Velazquez – CPM and the organizing committee members Aida Barraza Jarrett – HM, Anahi Cuellar – ELM, Bettzi Jimenez-Barrios – SOH, Brenda Murguia – SYH, Courtney Quinn – ELM, Estephany Conlon – ORH, Mabelle Hernandez Glithero – C&I, Maggie Cazares Padilla – CVH, Martha Juarez – SUHI Foundation, Monica Del Rosario – SoH, Monica Lehpamer – SoH, Monica Sigarroa-Sanchez – CVM. The tradition continues because of dedicated staff such as the names I just mentioned.
- Tonight, I want to finish my message with some great news about student learning and student achievement in Sweetwater. We have been part of the CORE Districts Data Collaborative work for the past three years. This collaborative unites 80+ school districts, 3000+ schools, and 2M students across California to ensure innovations and insights can impact students throughout the state. We work together to create opportunities for educators across urban, suburban, and rural districts, in person and online, to compare data and research across districts and get a clearer picture of strengths and challenges. Some of the collaborative districts include Long Beach, Fresno, Garden Grove, San Francisco, Corona Norco, Palm Springs, San Bernardino, Santa Ana, Sacramento City, and Whittier to name a few. The CORE Data Collaborative focuses on school and student improvement through highly productive, meaningful partnerships between member school districts.
- Educators in the collaborative can access a complete picture of school performance, including information that is NOT collected by or available through the state. School and district profiles include locally-driven measures of growth in student academic performance, a middle school indicator noting students’ high school readiness, chronic absenteeism rates, students’ social-emotional skills, school climate measures and English Learner reclassification rates, as well as state-driven measures of student test scores and graduation rates.
- By being able to compare schools’ performance on multiple measures to the performance of similar schools throughout the state, educators get a clearer picture of strengths and challenges in each area. The CORE Data Collaborative is supported by a research partnership with the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) to provide real-time, research-based feedback that improves student learning; informs policy; and provides breakthrough findings about school improvement.
- In addition to virtual meetings, the Data Collaborative brings together its members in person twice a year to share learnings and to better analyze performance and outcome data. A Sweetwater team just attended that in person collaboration meeting in the past two weeks.
- The data system represents a fundamental shift in school accountability, away from blame, to a better understanding of the needs of students and schools. In fact, the approach is more like a flashlight than a hammer. Key principles include:
- information as “flashlight” to help school communities identify strengths to build upon and challenges to address; from a narrow focus to a holistic approach that includes academic, social-emotional and culture-climate indicators; from just achievement to achievement and individual student growth over time on state assessments in English Language Arts and Mathematics.
- CORE and Ed Trust West are recognizing schools across California with
- High Student Academic Growth and High Impact Awards. COREs 2019 Academic Growth Awards honor schools having the greatest impact on student achievement. At schools with high academic growth, students consistently make academic gains faster than similar students at similar schools. These awards are unique because they recognize acceleration of student achievement by accounting for how much each individual student learns over time, rather than just comparing test scores from year to year.
- High academic growth is a reflection of school effectiveness. Growth considers improvement in scores for
- each student – even if an individual student has not yet reached academic standards set by the state.
- Growth is calculated by measuring the progress of the same set of students from one year to the next. A mathematical model is used to calculate academic growth that compares student test scores, while taking into account unique circumstances. Demographic factors are also accounted for to calculate a more accurate reading of each school’s impact on student progress.
- Growth models compare schools by considering whether
- each student’s progress is less or greater than could be expected for other students who are similar and who started off at the same score the previous year.
- We are proud to announce that two of our high schools earned the
- Three Years of High Impact award: Castle Park HS (ELA), Eastlake HS (ELA). We also had several of our high schools recognized for the One Year of High Impact award: BVH (Math), CVH (Math), HH (ELA & Math), MoH (ELA & Math), OLH (ELA & Math), ORH (ELA & Math), SYH (Math). Congratulations to the staff at these schools! Thank you for ensuring EACH student is learning!