Collaboration emphasized in CORE waiver application
By Tom Chorneau
Thursday, August 08, 2013
A key element of the trailblazing district-level waiver approved this week by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan can be traced to a five-year-old partnership between two of California’s largest and most innovative school districts.
It was in January, 2008 that Long Beach Unified entered into an academic marriage of sorts with Fresno Unified – the California State Board of Education serving as the facilitator through its authority to grant education code flexibility to districts.
The SBE waiver process initially gave Long Beach and Fresno new ability to use otherwise restricted categorical money in creative ways. Soon teachers in both districts were sharing classroom strategies as administrators jointly collected data points that helped inform instruction and before long, the state’s third and fourth largest districts were in lock step.
Duncan recognized the commitment to teamwork in approving the No Child Left Behind waiver for the eight school districts organized under the California Office to Reform Education or CORE. And in looking closer at the application documents, participating superintendents will be asked to take on a lot of new interaction and peer review as part of the new pogram.
As organized, schools within the consortium would be separated into three groups based on student achievement. The highest performing Title I schools would be called ‘Reward Schools,’ which would be obligated to partner with the lowest-achieving Title I schools, called ‘Priority Schools,’ and with Title I schools with the largest achievement gap.
By partnering, teachers and administrators at the higher-performing schools would serve as coaches and facilitators of