Superintendent's Introduction (summarized)
- Think big, we have tens of thousands of high school students. The Commission needs to make bold recommendations to the district to improve how we're preparing students to be career ready graduates.
- This work in Equity and Access is critical to the work in preparing students to be career ready graduates. Preparing students for college and preparing students for careers is the same work. We need to ensure that students have equal access to all opportunities in elementary, middle, and high school so they have the ability to make choices for their future.
- We need to improve our system so all students get a better shot. Our system is getting better as we focus on huge bodies of work, like this one.
- When we have students successfully completing the basics, learning English and math and passing the high school exit exam, they have more opportunities to participate in rigorous college prep and rigorous CTE classes.
Jorge Aguilar, UC Merced Center for Educational Partnerships (summarized)
- Students need to know early on that to have choices for life after high school, they need to complete a series of courses, called a-g.
- This necessarily means that course placements are critical. If students aren't given the proper sequence of courses in 8th and 9th grade for example, they may not even be eligible to complete their a-g courses upon high school graduation.
- A study of student placement into high school math classes (not FUSD schools) has revealed many inconsistencies which may be present in other high schools throughout the Valley.
- Out of 160 students recommended for geometry by their 8th grade teacher, only 44 were enrolled in geometry. 27 were enrolled in Algebra 2, and 85 were enrolled in Algebra again.
- Of the 85 re-enrolled in Algebra, some students had already scored at the proficent level on their standardized tests
- Some of those 85 outperformed 50% of the students who were placed in Geometry
- Of the 44 students enrolled in Geometry, some of them had not scored proficient on their Algebra standardized tests
- Its not enough to simply give students access. If you give students access to a class which they fail (or score a D), they will have to repeat that course. Placing English Learners in Spanish I, for example, takes up a semester of coursework or a year of coursework that keeps a student from taking another required course that she may need to complete to complete her a-g requirements
- Equity and Access means that we not only give students access to rigorous courses but we also ensure that we provide the support they need to be successful.
- This means we need to look at course-taking and course-enrollment patterns. We also need to compare students grades to standardized test performance.
- When we analyze enrollment patterns at some schools we've found that English Learners are sometimes enrolled in non-academic non-a-g courses at higher rates than their peers.
- There are many students who have high grades and low test scores. There are also many students with low grades and high test scores. These are both problems which need to be looked at.