Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Whatever Happens To Teachers Of Color Happens To All [The Progressive] | The Jose Vilson

Whatever Happens To Teachers Of Color Happens To All [The Progressive] | The Jose Vilson:

Whatever Happens To Teachers Of Color Happens To All [The Progressive]

In my latest article at the Progressive, I write about my visit to the US Department of Education fortheir first-ever Teacher Diversity Summit:

William A. Smith calls this “racial fatigue”— the mental and physical weariness of having to navigate personal and professional spaces that often favor white people. The educational subset of racial fatigue often posits educators of color as both the problem and solution to improving failing (read: failed) schools. No wonder teachers of color are coming in at higher rates than ever before, but also leaving faster than their white counterparts. As working conditions in places like Detroit, Newark, and Los Angeles continue to depreciate, leaders continue to push educators to do more with less (and even work for nothing).
Since the advent of No Child Left Behind, we’ve seen countless instances of teacher bashing, but the coded language used against educators has particular educational ramifications. For example, the old southern strategy, a technique used by politicians to appeal to disaffected white people, has historical ties to school desegregation.

Yes, I went in. Please read and let me know what you think.

photo c/o

About Jose Vilson

José Luis Vilson is a math educator, blogger, speaker, and activist. For more of my writing, buy my book This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education, on sale now.

Whatever Happens To Teachers Of Color Happens To All [The Progressive] | The Jose Vilson:

New Rules for the New Deal | Roosevelt Institute

New Rules for the New Deal

Rewriting the Racial Rules: Building an Inclusive American Economy

New Rules for the New Deal - Roosevelt Institute - http://go.shr.lc/1tiJGOa

Streamed live 8 hours ago

On June 8, 2016, the Roosevelt Institute will host a discussion with Roosevelt Institute Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Alicia Garza, Melissa Harris-Perry, and more about two new reports that look at how to curb the power of the economic elite and create a more inclusive society.

2016 Summer Meal Service Sites - Food Programs (CA Dept of Education)

2016 Summer Meal Service Sites - Food Programs (CA Dept of Education):

2016 Summer Meal Service Sites

Provides parents and referral agencies with a list of locations where children may receive free nutritious meals during school vacation and off-track periods. Please call site contact to confirm participation.

Entities wishing to serve meals under the Summer Food Service Program should contact the sponsor listed.

Search

Use search to find the nearest Summer Meal Service Site. Search results will be in a map that opens in a new browser tab or window.
Once you have found the nearest site on the map, select the corresponding map pointer to get the site name and address:
Site details will open in a dialog box above the selected site.
To get directions to the site, select/click the site address.
Google Maps will open with the selected site's address pre-filled as the destination. Enter your starting location and select "Get Directions".

Image Map

Select a county to display a list of locations for that county, or choose from the list of counties in alphabetical order.

List of Counties in Alphabetical Order

Complete List

2016 Summer Meal Service Sites (XLS; 1MB)

Program Information

For program information, please visit Summer Food Service.

Questions: Nutrition Services Division | 800-952-5609

State Schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson Announces Statusof Teacher Recruitment and Training Bills at State Capitol

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today that legislation is advancing at the state Capitol to help address a growing shortage of teachers in California.

Several bills moved forward last week as the Legislature faced a bill deadline. Torlakson spoke in favor of the legislation at a Capitol news conference earlier in the year, when legislators introduced new measures to recruit more educators and help them earn teaching credentials.

"I will continue to work with all members of the Legislature who want to help talented and committed people enter this rewarding profession," said Torlakson, who started his career as a science teacher and coach. "I am spreading the message when I speak at the state Capitol and at schools and events all around the state: California needs more teachers. Teaching is a wonderful profession with challenges—but also great rewards. Teachers have the opportunity to have a profound positive impact in a young person's life."

Enrollment in California's teacher preparation programs fell from more than 40,000 students during the 2008–9 school year to less than 20,000 in 2012–13.

In 2014–15, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing issued 15,000 credentials, while the California Department of Education (CDE) projected the need for California schools to hire 22,000 teachers.

The Legislature last week had a "house of origin" deadline, which means legislation introduced in the Senate in 2016 had to pass to the Assembly, and Assembly bills needed to pass to the Senate.

The Legislature has until August 31 to pass any bills in the 2015–16 session, and Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. must sign or veto bills by September 30.

Bills that Torlakson supports include SB 915 by Senator Carol Liu, D-La Canada Flintridge. This bill re-establishes the California Center on Teaching Careers (Cal Teach) to recruit qualified individuals into the teaching profession. The program boosted teacher recruitment through outreach campaigns in the 1990s but was discontinued due to state budget cuts. SB 915 passed the Senate 28-8 and is pending in the Assembly.

SB 933 by Senator Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, would create a California Teacher Corps program that provides matching grants to local school districts to create or expand teacher residency programs. SB 933 passed the Senate 37-0 and is also pending in the Assembly.

Torlakson also sponsored SB 62, by Senator Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, to reinstate and improve a phased-out state program to provide student loan forgiveness to new teachers. Under the Assumption Program of Loans for Education (APLE), a new teacher would teach for four years at a school with large numbers of disadvantaged students or at a rural school. This bill was introduced last year and is pending in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Torlakson also supports several other bills to expand and increase funding for teacher training. Information is available at the Legislative Information

Web site. In addition, those seeking more information about how to become a teacher can find it at Teach California

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Teacher Recruitment and Training Bills - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education) - http://go.shr.lc/1rdQkTT

Privatization of public education is a failure

Privatization of public education is a failure:

Privatization of public education is a failure

This election cycle has been heavy on rhetoric and light on policy. Given that nearly 50% of Americans consider themselves angrier than a year ago - with white Republicans being the angriest - it’s no wonder that rather than having substantive discussions, most solutions being offered currently are knee jerk reactions that have little to no factual support. A prime example of this are the changes many conservatives endorse for “fixing” public education.

Consider for example the panacea of conservative school improvement ideas - charter schools. The most recent data show that around 25% outperform their local public school counterpart. This means that around 75% of charter schools are no better or actually worse than the local public school. Essentially, in locations where charter schools exist they are on average no better or worse than the average public school. If the goal is to improve education, getting the same results as local schools, deemed failing by charter school advocates, is a shockingly disappointing outcome.

Of course it should be noted that charter schools never get a foothold in areas where the schools are already high performing. Given that charters can’t even outperform average public schools the fact that some of the country’s best schools aren’t included in this analysis only makes the results for charter schools that much more disconcerting. Perhaps, instead of spending tax dollars to spread charter schools that don’t improve outcomes, we should take the model used by some of the thousands of exceptional public schools and disseminate that to the lower performing schools.

Having said that, the goal of the majority of charter schools and the politicians that support them isn’t to improve student achievement. It is to siphon taxpayer money out of public schools and into the hands of wealthy donors. Because these politicians understand that the only thing that matches the Republican base’s hate of government spending is their unwavering belief in the magical powers of capitalism. This mentality is why military spending accounts for 54 % of the Federal Government’s discretionary spending, (more than that of the next 10 countries combined), and why few industries turned out better profits during the Great Recession than the Defense industry.

Ironically, many of the people who think that the potentially cozy relationship between some school board members and the teachers’ union leads to sweetheart deals seems unfazed by the reality that corporations outspend unions 15 to 1 when it comes to political contributions. If union spending buys special treatment, then spending 15 times as much should certainly result in some ill-gotten gains for corporations.

Based on the amount of money that corporation are pouring into political coffers, it should come as no surprise that other faux-solutions to improve education such as privatization of public schools’ services are on the docket for school boards across the country. While the companies offering these services and the politicians they have bought will argue that this is a way for schools to save money, the data show that in nearly every case it costs taxpayers more when a public service is privatized.

The reason private services typically cost more is that you are inserting a highly paid middle man into the process. Obviously the goal of any for-profit company is to make a profit, which means they will either cost more or they need to find savings elsewhere. These companies will try and sell schools on the idea that there are savings to be had which will come from eliminating inefficiencies; however, the reality is the reduction in cost will likely come from lowering employee wages and Privatization of public education is a failure:

Governor “Charter School” | tultican

Governor “Charter School” | tultican:
Governor “Charter School”

I recently commented on a Diane Ravitch post writing, “I love Governor ‘Moon-beam’; I detest Governor ‘Charter-School;’” referring to Governor of California, Jerry Brown.

Ed Source recently reported:

“Brown started two charter schools in Oakland when he was mayor of the city, and has fought, through vetoes, attempts to encroach on their independence or dilute protections in the state’s charter school enabling law. This year, he vetoed AB 787, which would have banned for-profit charters, which operate primarily online charter schools. Brown said proponents failed to make a case for the bill, and the bill’s ambiguous wording could have been interpreted to restrict the ability of nonprofit charter schools to continue using for-profit vendors.”

Two consistent features of modern education governance are that politicians and business men who have power enforce their own particular biases even though lacking both educational experience and knowledge. The second feature is education policy is NOT based on research. As Anthony Cody describes, “Sadly, Lubienski, Debray, and Scott discovered that ‘research played virtually no part in decision making for policymakers, despite their frequent rhetorical embrace of the value of research.’”

Governor Brown (in the face of mounting evidence) is more concerned about the future of the charter industry than he is about fraud and the diminution of public schools. He obviously believes that public schools are failing and that privatized schools are the path to better education. Neo-liberal philosophy increasingly embraced by the Democratic party postulates that “private business will always outperform government institutions.”

Is it Cyber-Charter or Cyber-Fraud?

The private businesses being protected by Brown, cyber-schools, are increasingly seen as extremely poor quality and more fraud than education alternative. In February Steven Rosenfeld reported, “For the second time in three months, the Walton Family Foundation—which has spent more than $1 billion to create a quarter of the nation’s 6,700 public charter schools—has announced that all online public school instruction, via cyber charter schools, is a colossal disaster for most K-12 students.”

Steven Singer an education commentator and activist from Pennsylvania stated it succinctly, “If you’re a parent, you’d literally be better off having your child skip school altogether than sending her to a cyber charter. LITERALLY! But if you’re an investor, online charters are like a free money machine. Just press the button and print however much cash you want!”

The nation’s largest cyber-charter chain is Michael Milken’s K-12 Inc. (remember his junk bond fraud conviction) The state legislation, AB 787, that Brown vetoed Governor “Charter School” | tultican:

Jersey Jazzman: Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students

Jersey Jazzman: Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students:

Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students

The opt-out scolds -- those who spend their days tut-tutting at parents who've decided to take their children out of high-stakes standardized tests -- having been warning over and over that there will be serious financial consequences for schools that do not have high test participation rates.

Could they actually be right?

BROOKLYN — The state has penalized 16 high-performing city schools — potentially costing them each up to $75,000 in grant money — because of their exam opt-out rates, DNAinfo New York has learned.
These schools were on track to win recognition from the state as “Reward Schools" — an annual honor that makes schools eligible to apply for grants — but were not included in the list because they failed to meet a 95 percent participation rate on the exams, state education officials confirmed.
“While U.S. Department of Education [USDE] guidelines allow states to impose sanctions on districts specifically for failure to meet participation requirements [of the tests], including the withholding of state funds, New York State has not taken such action against any district or school,” State Education Department spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie said.
“However, under New York’s flexibility waiver approved by USDE in 2010, a
Jersey Jazzman: Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students:

New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient? | Shanker Institute

New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient? | Shanker Institute:

New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient?

At one point or another we’ve all heard some version of the following talking points: 1) “Spending on U.S. education has doubled or triped over the past few decades, but performance has remained basically flat; or 2) “The U.S. spends more on education than virtually any other nation and yet still gets worse results.” If you pay attention, you will hear one or both of these statements frequently, coming from everyone from corporate CEOs to presidential candidates.

The purpose of both of these statements is to argue that U.S. education is inefficient - that is, gets very little bang for the buck – and that spending more money will not help.

Now, granted, these sorts of pseudo-empirical talking points almost always omit important nuances yet, in some cases, they can still provide important information. But, putting aside the actual relative efficiency of U.S. schools, these particular statements about U.S. education spending and performance are so rife with oversimplification that they fail to provide much if any useful insight into U.S. educational efficiency or policy that affects it. Our new report, written by Rutgers University Professor Bruce D. Baker and Rutgers Ph.D. student Mark Weber, explains why and how this is the case. Baker and Weber’s approach is first to discuss why the typical presentations of spending and outcome data, particularly those comparing nations, are wholly unsuitable for the purpose of evaluating U.S. educational efficiency vis-à-vis that of other nations. They then go on to present a more refined analysis of the data by adjusting for student characteristics, inputs such as class size, and other factors. Their conclusions will most likely be unsatisfying for all “sides” of the education debate.

Baker and Weber show, first of all, that assessing educational efficiency of nations in a manner that is sufficiently rigorous and comparable is an extraordinarily difficult endeavor.

For example, simple comparisons of U.S. per pupil spending with that of other OECD nations do not account for the breadth of services provided through the education system, such as teacher health and retirement benefits, which many other nations provide outside of their education systems. Similarly, U.S. schools serve a higher poverty student population than do their counterparts elsewhere. For these and other reasons, the unadjusted comparisons that dominate the discourse about international education comparisons are of little value, and are more likely than not to be misleading.

The good news, however, is that cautious, appropriate use of the data can provide important, policy relevant insight. For instance, Baker and Weber show that the gap between U.S. teachers’ wages and other U.S. workers of comparable age and education is large compared to this discrepancy in other nations’, and that this cannot be explained by smaller classes (classes in the U.S. are average or large compared to other nations’). These low U.S. teacher wages (relative to other professions) makes it more New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient? | Shanker Institute:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Left and Right of Ed Reform

CURMUDGUCATION: The Left and Right of Ed Reform:

The Left and Right of Ed Reform

Robert Pondiscio triggered a reformy tempest almost two weeks ago when he wrote that the Left was in danger of pushing conservatives out of the ed reform movement. The reformy blogoverse and twitterverse have not shut up about it since, with responses ranging from the sympathetic to... well, less so (Best title: "Audacity of Nope"). A large portion of the education post stable has taken a shot at the issue, and so have many of standard-bearers on the right-leaning side of the ed reform tracks. I had a response of my own (written before I realized this was going to be A Thing), but I am not going to try to digest the whole sprawling conversation here. You can read your way around the internet if you've missed this.

But I'm writing about it today, because reading all of these responses has revived one of the questions that has puzzled me about ed reform for quite a while.

When we look at the ed reform coalition of the Left and the Right, how are we supposed to tell the two sides apart?

Exactly what policies or principles are different when one compares lefty reformsters to righty reformsters?

There was never any real difference on Common Core support, other than folks on the right abandoned it a little faster than folks on the left, and both have been stalwart in supporting the Big Standardized Test. Even the differences one might have expected to find are not there. One might expect that conservatives might be more inclined to defend the traditional institutions of public education or to stick up for local control instead of state-level or mayoral take-overs, that didn't happen. It's happening now (here's Rick Hess just today), but it sure wasn't happening when reformsters were railing about defenders of the status quo. One might expect that lefties would hew close to traditional lefty allies like teacher unions, but we find nominal Democrats like Whitney Tilson (DFER) and Andy Cuomo ranting about how the evil unions must be crushed.

If we look at reformy politicians, are there real policy differences between the education policies of Rahm Emmanuel and Chris Christie, between Marty Walsh and Nathan Deal? Certainly, when it comes to education policy, there were no substantial difference between the goals of the Bush and Obama administrations.

Pondiscio's original piece distinguished between the practicality of righties and the social justice concerns of lefties, but I'm not sure that really holds up-- at least not in terms of how both groupCURMUDGUCATION: The Left and Right of Ed Reform:

CURMUDGUCATION: Icahn: A Better Charter? - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/06/icahn-better-charter.html

How white teachers can become culturally competent.

How white teachers can become culturally competent.:

How to Change White Teachers’ Lenses

America’s students are now majority-minority, but its teachers are not. That’s why they need to be “culturally competent.”

Amy Davis teaches a second-grade class about parachutes at Manchester Avenue Elementary School.

LOS ANGELES—When she began teaching a class of second-graders in South Los Angeles in 2002, Amy Davis expected she’d occasionally hit snags with issues like lesson planning. But she figured she’d have little trouble relating to her mostly low-income black and Latino students. After all, she was raised nearby, in a household headed by a single mother who for years survived on welfare and food stamps. Like her students, Davis knew what it was like to grow up poor.

But Davis, who is white, struggled to connect with several of the children—particularly a 7-year-old black student named Patrick.

If Patrick came to school in good spirits, Davis’ day generally went smoothly. But if he showed up in a sullen or angry mood, Davis knew there was a good chance he would derail her plans for the class. She couldn’t control his meltdowns, which could be triggered by both his classmates and his schoolwork. On those days, she’d often end up crying throughout the car ride home.

It took months of worrying, and the advice of a veteran colleague in the classroom next door, for Davis to have an epiphany: Despite her own experiences as a child, she was now, unlike her students, a firmly established member of the middle class. The leap from economic insecurity to stability had created an inevitable chasm.

Davis, now 48, marks that moment as the beginning of her efforts to become a more “culturally competent” teacher, someone who strives to understand where her students are coming from—literally and metaphorically.

In the most basic terms, Davis represents the quintessential American teacher: white, middle-class, female. But where Davis approaches teaching as a social-justice mission, and has painstakingly worked to build influential relationships with her students, countless other well-intentioned educators never succeed in forging similar bonds. Yet they are charged with changing lives and boosting test scores in some of the nation’s poorest and most struggling schools.

It’s a disconnect that’s raising alarms for educators and parents alike at a time when minority children now account for more than half of all students in public schools and the teacher workforce remains more than 80 percent white. And so teacher-training programs are increasingly trying to figure out how to bridge this divide. The goal is to help make teachers more aware of their own biases and enable them to understandHow white teachers can become culturally competent.:

New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! | School Finance 101

New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! | School Finance 101:

New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS!

New Report: http://www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/deconstructing-myth-american-public-schooling-inefficiency

Here’s the summary:

In this paper, we begin by classifying the arguments that assert American schools are relatively inefficient into two categories: the long-term trend argument and the international comparison argument. Our focus herein is on the latter of these two. We then describe two frameworks for approaching either of these arguments: cost efficiency and production efficiency. We explain that the typical spending/outcome model used to make the case that the United States is a relatively inefficient nation is wholly unsuitable for drawing these or any conclusions. Accounting for differences in student populations is helpful, but still inadequate for building a model that can be used to assess a country’s relative efficiency. Evaluating education inputs such as teacher wages and class sizes can further refine comparisons between nations; however, it is unlikely that even these refinements are enough to conduct analyses that can credibly back claims about the relative efficiency of America’s education system. That said, an appropriately limited analysis can still inform our understanding of how the U.S public education system compares with systems in other countries.

What does this all mean?

First and foremost, we can say with some confidence that existing expositions of U.S. inefficiency (based on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] national spending data and Program for International Student Assessment [PISA] scores) are so lacking in methodological rigor that they are of little if any value in public discourse or for informing national education policies.
Second, it is unlikely that we could ever obtain data of sufficient precision, accuracy and comparability to meet the demands of more legitimate efficiency modeling for cross-national, intercontinental analyses.

Any and all comparisons using OECD and related data should be conducted with consideration of the limitations discussed herein. But some insights might be drawn from our analyses:

Among other things, the OECD per-pupil spending measure, as incomparable as it is, shows that the U.S. may have higher per-pupil spending than many nations, but falls right in line with expectations for nations of similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
The U.S. is both a high-spending and high-GDP country, but some of that high education spending may be a function of the scope of services and expenses included under the education umbrella in the U.S.
We also know that despite seemingly high spending levels in the United States, teachers’ wages lag with respect to other professions, and the wage lag is not a result of providing relatively smaller class sizes.
In fact, our primary class sizes (roughly equivalent to schooling provided from about age 5 through 11 or 12 years of age) are average and lower secondary (roughly equivalent to schooling provided from about 12 to 16 years of age)[1] class sizes large. Our wage lag is, to an extent, a function of high non-teaching wages (related to our high GDP per capita), necessarily making it more expensive to recruit and retain a high-quality teacher workforce.

To summarize: The U.S. is faced with a combination of seemingly high education expense, but noncompetitive compensation for its teachers, average to large class sizes, and a high rate of child poverty. Again, it’s hard to conceive how such a combination would render the U.S. comparable in raw test scores New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! | School Finance 101:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: "Dude, Seriously?"

Seattle Schools Community Forum: "Dude, Seriously?":

"Dude, Seriously?"

In more McCleary news, the plaintiffs in the McCleary case gave their reply to the State's explanation of what is being done to fulfill the constitutional mandate to amply fund public education in Washington State.

As you can see by the title of this thread, the plaintiffs are both hard-hitting and entertaining. But it's true - if you or your child's teacher told your child a firm deadline for a project with clear expectations about the quality of the work, that might be the reply when your child didn't get it done.

From the filing (red mine):

Plaintiffs do not expect this Court to use the same words. But as the following pages explain, this Court should come to the same conclusion: Despite the 2014 Contempt Order and 2015 Sanctions Order in this case, the State is still not complying with this Court’s rulings.

Court orders and constitutional rights either matter or they don’t. If they do, this Court must effectively compel the State’s full compliance with Article IX, section 1 by the firm 2017-2018 school year deadline.
On the "plan" from the Legislature:

Another problem with continually kicking the can down the road is you eventually run out of road. Which is where the State now is. 2016 was the last legislative session that could produce a complete plan for phasing in the revenue and funding increases needed to reach full Seattle Schools Community Forum: "Dude, Seriously?":

Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans ‘an enormous adjustment’ | EdSource

Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans ‘an enormous adjustment’ | EdSource:

Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans 'an enormous adjustment'

David Gordon is Sacramento County's Superintendent of Schools.

California’s 58 county offices of education generally receive far less attention than the school districts within their geographic boundaries. But they have been given an important role in implementing the financial reforms championed by Gov. Jerry Brown. In particular, they are responsible for approving the Local Control and Accountability Plans that every district is required to draw up. Here, Sacramento County schools superintendent David Gordon gives his views on how the LCAPs are working.

What lessons have you learned from the first two years of LCAPs in your county?

Districts benefit from customized technical assistance. They have different needs depending on their size and resources. The process for developing an LCAP cannot be concentrated into a few months. Key events and activities, such as reporting on metrics as they become available, must be scheduled throughout the year. Change takes time, and this is an enormous adjustment for everyone.

Are you inspired, frustrated, overwhelmed or any combination of those?

We must be careful that completing a template not become a compliance exercise. We need to keep the districts focused on continuous improvement, which can be extremely challenging. We are all waiting for more information on the rubrics and eager to learn how they will be structured and used. There is a good deal of anticipation about how support for districts will be provided and customized to the needs at the local level.

What goals did you start with two years ago, and where are you now?

Many districts that began the process with numerous goals have consolidated them into fewer goals, with the actions and services aligned accordingly. The consolidation comes from realizing that fewer goals help to see the plan in a more holistic manner. In our own county LCAP we have maintained the same five goals because they are aligned to our accountability model. Districts were able to report progress in many areas after the first year of implementation, but some targets will take more time to achieve.

What examples of significant changes have you seen in your county?

The fiscal and program staff have collaborated to develop and monitor the LCAP, whereas this may not have been the way other plans were implemented in the past. There also has been an increase in the stakeholder engagement process: broader representation, groups working in a more advisory capacity, and more opportunities for involvement. The transparency of the planning process has been at the forefront.

The document may be longer with the addition of the annual update. Can parents, students and community groups understand it?

The LCAPs should be about the same length in year three as they were in year two as a result of the Annual Update that was added a year ago. Many districts break the components into smaller sections or present the information in a simplified format so they can share it with the various stakeholder Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans ‘an enormous adjustment’ | EdSource: