The intent of this Community of Practice (CoP) is to leverage the expertise of others, to gain knowledge and deepen understanding of learning acceleration in foundational literacy skills and reading comprehension utilizing evidence-based practices and elements of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP).
2023-2024 CCLA Literacy CoP Dates; Tuesdays from 3:30 – 5:00 PM Session 1: September 19, 2023 Session 2: November 14, 2023 Session 3: January 23, 2024 Session 4: March 12, 2024 Session 5: May 14, 2024
INTENDED AUDIENCE: K-12 educators (breakout sessions will consist of grade-alike groupings)
The California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration (CCLA) in partnership with the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) and six County Offices of Education (COE) will be creating an inclusive space for collaboration and learning for educators across the state through this Community of Practice (CoP).
The Mathematics Community of Practice (CoP) is a space for learning and collaboration. Together, we will leverage the expertise of each other to gain knowledge and deepen understanding of learning acceleration in mathematics utilizing evidence-based practices and the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP).
2023-2024 CCLA Mathematics CoP Dates Choose your 2023 Sessions: Session 1: Tuesday, August 29 or Thursday, August 31 @ 3:30-5:00 p.m. Session 2: Tuesday, October 17 or Thursday, October 19 @ 3:30-5:00 p.m. Session 3: Tuesday, December 12 or Thursday, December 14 @ 3:30-5:00 p.m. Choose your 2024 Sessions: Session 4: Tuesday, February 27 or Thursday, February 29 @ 3:30-5:00 p.m. Session 5: Tuesday, April 16 or Thursday, April 18 @ 3:30-5:00 p.m.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: K-12 educators (breakout sessions will consist of grade-alike groupings)
The California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration (CCLA) in partnership with the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) and six County Offices of Education (COE) will be creating an inclusive space for collaboration and learning for educators across the state through this Community of Practice (CoP).
The Innovation, Instruction, and Impact (I3) Center at CCEE is looking for a detail-oriented, self-directed, and proactive individual to join our dynamic and collaborative team in the position of Administrative Assistant II. This position is responsible for providing accounts payable, scheduling, travel, and project tracking support for individuals and projects across the State. An ideal candidate would be one who has experience providing high-level administrative support in a virtual/hybrid environment.
Please see the EDJOIN posting for additional information.
Superintendents & admins drive student success. Embrace the whole-child approach to tackle absenteeism, and boost engagement! Dive into insights from Turnaround for Children, Butte County Office, Palermo USD. Apply transformative findings to your context. Let’s build a holistic learning journey! Together, we empower learners & educators. Click to revolutionize education! 💡📚 #EducationRevolution #WholeChildApproach #TransformLearning#ChronicAbsenteeism
Project CLEAR (California Literacy Elevation by Accelerating Reading)
Project CLEAR builds capacity in implementing and accelerating literacy development in districts across the state. Educators can participate in one of two levels of professional learning offered through Project CLEAR – Teacher Leaders and Teachers. Participation is fully funded through Project CLEAR! For more information, see Project CLEAR’s webpage on our Learning Acceleration System Grant Website.
California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration – Math and Literacy Communities of Practice (CoPs)
The California Collaborative for Learning Acceleration (CCLA) in partnership with the CCEE and six County Offices of Education (COE) will be creating an inclusive space for collaboration and learning for educators across the state through a Community of Practice (CoP).
You can find more information using the flyers below:
The California State Board of Education approved the 2023 Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools at their July 12th meeting. You can read more about the new Framework by visiting the California Department of Education’s Mathematics Framework web page.
CCEE, in collaboration with LEAs and partner organizations, is hosting “open door” sessions to share best practices, tools/resources, and strategies to support student learning. These sessions will provide opportunities for county office and/or district staff to listen and learn from other LEAs across the state, and connect further, if interested. Those who express interest in connecting further will be invited to join a smaller, more intimate “Special Interest Group” session, in which the presenting LEA will be available to listen, share, and help participants with more specific questions.
Register for upcoming Open Door sessions by clicking on the links below:
To view archived materials from past Open Door sessions, please visit our Open Door Sessions Google Site. You can also check our Events Calendar or follow CCEE on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on upcoming Open Door sessions.
About the Teaching, Learning, and Leading Center (TLLC)
Our team works in alliance with educators to improve teaching, learning, and leadership so every student is inspired and prepared to thrive as their best self.
About the CCEE
The California Collaborative for Educational Excellence is a statewide leader delivering on California’s promise of a quality, equitable education for every student.
Why is coaching in education so important? Coaching provides opportunities for educational organizations and professionals to focus on the right work. Too often educational professionals are focused on the wrong indicators. For example, when schools and leaders focus only on test scores, we risk failing to comprehend the actual causes of those results. Coaching helps to uncover what we can control and/or influence that may be causing or have caused a potential result. Doug Reeves and Michael Fullan say it this way, “The number of priorities is inversely proportional to gains in student achievement” (Reeves, 2013). They go on to say, “while leaders and policymakers are often seduced by the promises of vendors that programs will solve educational challenges, the evidence is clear that it is practices, not programs that have the greatest impact” (Reeves 2023).
Only through coaching can we focus on the practices that achieve better outcomes.
Effective Coaching Benefits Everyone
By Stephanie Gregson, Ed.D., Deputy Executive Director, CCEE
Being an educator today, and even before today, is extremely hard. We are in the midst of the highest rate of educator burnout and fatigue causing many veteran and new educators to leave the profession. For this reason and many others, it is important we engage in practices that create spaces of community, belonging, vulnerability, and learning allowing educators to fill their buckets, rejuvenate, and reinvigorate their passion for education.
Effective coaching is one of those practices we should all be engaging in as individuals, as teams, and as an education community. Effective coaching isn’t just about achieving organizational goals, student achievement, and collaborative learning cultures, it is also about higher levels of emotional and physical well-being. We are in an era of initiative fatigue that can cause burnout and increased turnover in staff. Effective coaching can help peel back layers of initiatives as individuals and teams ask themselves, why?
There are more than 40,000 books on coaching showing the profound amount of research on effective coaching. Yet has it become common practice in our education community? When individuals and teams participate in effective coaching practices, they see an increase in psychological well-being, self-regulation, and self-insight. The teams benefit from gains in goal attainment and solution-focused thinking (Grant & Atad, 2021).
This month’s newsletter highlights some of the coaching embedded in the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence work with districts and county offices of education. We invite you to learn more and to consider how you can engage in effective coaching practices to find rejuvenation in your work.
Internal Coaching Cycles for Quality Improvement
By Rocio Gonzalez-Frausto, Assistant Director, CCEE
Our Direct Technical Assistance (DTA) focuses on utilizing quality improvement practices to improve instructional practices, cultivate coherent systems, and improve student outcomes. As the TLLC team supports its partners in their continuous improvement journey, we must reflect on our practices and implementations to ensure we are working to create sustaining change in collaboration with partners. These small but mighty teams are composed of two members, each with three districts receiving DTA. We meet weekly to biweekly and engage in our own improvement cycles, utilizing the identified LEA goal or aim statement to anchor our work together. The work is heavy and deep, so I create space at the start of each session with a personal check-in, many times including some laughs, before launching into reviewing the aims of our partners and providing progress updates since our last check-in. When the team shares challenges or areas of need, I begin utilizing the five whys protocol to shine the light as the team engages in thought; in other instances, we return to our Coherence framework to identify which of the four domains is the pain point and what steps we can take to get out. It boils down to: What are we trying to accomplish? Where are we now? What is our goal? What do we need to do to make it happen? These weekly meetings end with identified next steps in our support to partners and the students they serve.
The Role of Coaching in Accelerating Learning
By Stacey Wedin, Assistant Director, CCEE
Learning acceleration doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Supporting the rapid progress of students toward mastery of content requires a comprehensive, systemic approach to rethink the way we teach and learn. The CCEE’s Playbook for Accelerating Learning underscores this point by outlining the necessary conditions to accelerate learning, which includes having a system aligned to the tenets of learning acceleration in both mindset and practice. Professional learning and coaching for educators to deepen understanding of learning acceleration and embed evidence-based strategies into practice is paramount to a sustainable system.
With this knowledge, Learning Acceleration System Grant partners have designed their professional learning offerings centered on systems of coaching and mentoring. This affords educators valuable opportunities to collaborate, share, learn, and provide feedback while incorporating new strategies into their practice. Coaching is one of four prongs of support offered by the Rural Math Collaborative (RMC) where participating counties receive targeted assistance around using TOSAs and instructional coaches to improve math instruction. Working with the California Math Project and drawing from the work of Jim Knight, the RMC is working to build sustainable networks of effective coaching teams throughout the region. As another example, Project CLEAR offers job-embedded individualized coaching while participating educators complete the training offered through the program. Once certified, Teacher Leaders coach educators in their respective school/district on early literacy intervention strategies to accelerate reading.
Coaching is integral to a robust system of professional learning and plays a critical role in accelerating learning. As the Learning Acceleration System grant grows in future years, the use of effective coaching to support teachers will continue to grow with it.
21st Century California School Leadership Academy
Are you a current or aspiring California school or district leader looking for
A space for leaders in similar roles to come together and work on equity-centered problems of practice using continuous improvement while championing transformational leadership.
Localized Professional Learning
Leaders participate in a process of practitioner inquiry that advances educational equity for a specific context around leadership, equity, and continuous improvement. Problems of practice are situated in and arise from the regional communities and are determined through an extensive needs-assessment process.
Leadership Coaching
Coaches provide job-embedded coaching built on relational trust and focused on equity-centered problems of practice using continuous improvement. They also support leaders with system transformation to ensure all children fulfill their potential to thrive socially, emotionally, and academically.
21CSLA UTK
The 21CSLA Alameda Regional Academy, in partnership with 21CSLA UTK and the Solano County Office of Education, is launching Envisioning Equitable TK Classrooms on August 24–25.
New UTK Leadership Certificate and Courses
Starting this fall, 21CSLA is offering UTK Leadership Certificate courses to any current Preliminary or Clear Administrative Services Credential candidate. These are free, online, synchronous courses offered through UC Berkeley Extension. Receive 4 units credit along with a certificate upon completion of the two-course series. To learn more, download the UTK Certificate flyer or visit 21CSLA’s website.
Proposals Accepted Through: October 30, 2023 at 4:00pm PST
Open Door Sessions
CCEE, in collaboration with LEAs and partner organizations, is hosting “open door” sessions to share best practices, tools/resources, and strategies to support student learning. These sessions will provide opportunities for county office and/or district staff to listen and learn from other LEAs across the state, and connect further, if interested. Those who express interest in connecting further will be invited to join a smaller, more intimate “Special Interest Group” session, in which the presenting LEA will be available to listen, share, and help participants with more specific questions.
Register for upcoming Open Door sessions by clicking on the links below:
To view archived materials from past Open Door sessions, please visit our Open Door Sessions Google Site. You can also check our Events Calendar or follow CCEE on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on upcoming Open Door sessions.
LEA Spotlights
The Spotlights Project aims to celebrate some of the innovative, inclusive, and shareable practices that LEA teams have implemented to improve outcomes for students across our state. Each Spotlight organizes the successes, challenges, and lessons learned in a way that calls attention to emerging practices, reproducible strategies, and applicable resources, in hopes of introducing accessible points of conversation for other LEAs looking to resolve similar issues.
Below are three recently published Spotlights. Click on the links below to learn more about the innovative practices taking place in these LEAs.
Cajon Valley USD embraced its multicultural and multiethnic district composition, leveraging its diversity to serve all community members and improve its community outreach and engagement with “families in need.”
Salinas City ESD uses data to drive collaboration, critical reflection, and action to improve attendance practices at all of their school sites.
Da Vinci Schools cultivates an inclusive learning environment that promotes real-world learning to prepare students for college, career, and life. However, it is their ability to gather and effectively use data that maximizes their impact on teaching and learning — ensuring students thrive as lifelong learners.
Project clear
Project CLEAR (California Literacy Elevation by Accelerating Reading) builds capacity in implementing and accelerating literacy development in districts across the state. Educators can participate in one of two levels of professional learning offered through Project CLEAR – Teacher Leaders and Teachers. Participation is fully funded through Project CLEAR! For more information, please visit Project CLEAR’s webpage on the Learning Acceleration System Grant website.
Microlearning Modules – CCEE has partnered with content experts and experienced educators to develop short videos sharing and explaining concepts, tools, and resources for a wide range of topics to support substitute teachers, paraeducators, and other instructional staff in the classroom. All microlearning modules are accompanied by easy-to-follow instructions, downloadable handouts, and additional resources to support immediate implementation. New videos are added periodically, covering various topics, tips, and strategies.
About the I3 Center
The Innovation, Instruction, and Impact (I3) Center implements a statewide approach to improving LEA capacity by collaboratively developing, delivering, sharing, and spotlighting practices that have demonstrated the power to improve outcomes for students.
About the CCEE
The California Collaborative for Educational Excellence is a statewide leader delivering on California’s promise of a quality, equitable education for every student.
“Every road will get you there if you don’t know where you are going” is a quote I heard from a school leader talking about the absence of data in their instructional teams. So often, school teams avoid the use of data to avoid the harsh realities around student, school, or district performance.
We (educators) sometimes find it easier to play “poker” with data. Meaning, I show you my two aces, hoping you think I have a three- or four-of-a-kind when in reality I have nothing more. Playing poker with data is a sure-fire way to avoid the tough conversations and reality of our efforts. IF we (educators) are going to move our networking, collaboration, convenings, and gatherings of expertise to the next level, we have to show all our cards—no poker, just raw data.
This newsletter by the Innovation, Instruction, and Impact (I3) Center describes examples of networks using data to improve student outcomes and address ineffective practices.
What Do We Learn When We Learn Together?
By Sujie Shin, Deputy Executive Director
For any of you who have had the privilege of attending workshops with Peter Senge, you know that a core tenet of his philosophy of learning is that “[S]haring knowledge is not about giving people something or getting something from them…Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.”
We know that to be a learning organization, it’s not enough just to acquire knowledge, but to share in that space with others, and find the opportunities to learn from each others’ successes and challenges. This is the philosophy behind our learning networks—creating safe spaces for local educational agency (LEA) teams to come together around similar problems of practice and share lessons learned as they try approaches to improving school and district systems to support student achievement.
One of our networks has been focused on academic outcomes for African American students, a group that has been disproportionately negatively affected by the pandemic and related challenges. Black students have experienced higher increases in chronic absenteeism and other measures of disengagement, and greater drops in English Language Arts (ELA) and math scores. Over the past year, this network of five LEA teams have each identified a key area of improvement to focus on for improving student outcomes. One team is testing the impact of regular check-ins with a school counselor on student attendance and course completion. Another is focusing on improving their implementation of their multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to reduce the overidentification of Black students in special education in particular categories. Still another looked at the impact of personal learning plans to reduce the overrepresentation of African American male students receiving non-passing grades in core classes. The problems of practice are as diverse as the student bodies these LEAs support.
What is not varied is our approach in collecting data to examine change over time and progress towards our goals on a regular basis. This gets to another key principle of our work, which is, to again quote Dr. Senge, that “Learning cannot be disassociated from action.” And how we learn is to measure the progress from our action, through interim metrics such as attendance, test results, check-in data as well as direct input and feedback from the students and families we serve.
This framework of action research means that we can investigate problems of practice that LEAs are facing while supporting them in immediately addressing the issues they are facing.
Learn more about the work of our partner LEAs by clicking on the buttons below.
Lessons Learned from the Planning Phase of the Data Research Learning Network
By Ingrid Roberson, Assistant Director of Research Learning and Dorcas Kong, Senior Specialist of Executive Projects
In January 2023, the I3 Center launched the Data Research Learning Network (DRLN) as a three-phase initiative to support local educational agencies (LEAs) in transforming their data and assessment practices to accelerate student learning. As we close out the Planning Phase, CCEE is pleased to share the first DRLN Research Brief summarizing the lessons learned that came out of this learning community. The DRLN recently concluded the Planning Phase with the DRLN Showcase highlighting each LEA’s Action Plan for the 2023-24 school year. Over the past six months, DRLN participants conducted data dives to better define their problems of practice and develop their action plans, identifying goals and strategies that would move the needle on aligned progress measures. But what truly elevated their innovation ideas was the way they tapped into the wealth of collective knowledge and expertise within this learning network. LEAs were able to harness the power of collaboration in this shared learning space to exchange innovative ideas, explore different avenues of addressing their problems of practice, and ultimately, build their data capacity to support student outcomes.
In preparation for the Implementation Phase, CCEE will be hosting two summer workshops to guide DRLN participants in the progress monitoring and evaluating the impact of their Innovation Projects. The DRLN team decided to tailor these workshops to LEAs’ Action Plans, with a focus on designing effective surveys, collecting feedback/attendance data for trainings and professional development sessions, and measuring user statistics (e.g. website/dashboard analytics). By building the capacity of DRLN participants to develop and implement effective progress monitoring processes with tools, they will be prepared to embark on their Innovation journeys come August, with an understanding of how they will be engaging in continuous improvement cycles to enhance their data practices, programs, and systems.
Interested in learning more about each LEA’s innovation idea and action plan? Take a look at our DRLN Overview Handout or check out CCEE’s Learning Networks Google Site to explore the problems of practice identified by LEAs in not only the DRLN, but across all of I3’s learning networks. As our networks progress, the I3 Center will be updating the Google Site with measures of impact, as well as shareable resources that come out of our work. Aligned to I3’s goal of improving LEA capacity by collaboratively developing, delivering, sharing, and spotlighting research-based practices, we hope this Google Site can serve as a learning hub for California’s broader educational community.
Supporting Educators Through the Development of the California Educators Together Repository for High-Quality Online Instructional Materials
By Allan Taing, Senior Manager of Research & Impact Analysis
The CCEE, working with our partners at the California Department of Education (CDE) and the State Board of Education (SBE), are supporting Kern County Superintendent of Schools (KCSOS) as they serve as the project lead for the High Quality Online Instructional Materials project (HQOIM), as defined in Section 144 of AB 130 (Chapter 44, Statutes of 2021) and revised in Section 41 of AB 167 (Chapter 252, Statutes of 2021). This three-year $15 million dollar project is designed to enhance the educator professional learning infrastructure within the Statewide System of Support. The goals of this initiative are to develop and curate easy-to-use resources for local educational agencies (LEAs) and educators, establish a transparent process for vetting materials to ensure quality and alignment with state academic standards, and provide guidance and resources regarding the implementation and use of open educational resources.
During this first year of the project, KCSOS developed the California Educators Together High-Quality Lesson Design Rubric (CaET Rubric) to evaluate high quality materials and hosted two virtual Lesson Design Institutes in February and March, and one in-person Lesson Design Institute in May to train more than 100 educators to design rubric-aligned lesson plans. To further develop and promote the California Educators Together repository (CaET), KCSOS presented at 12 conferences and implemented a vetting collaborative to train evaluators to vet resources on the CaET repository using the CaET Rubric, resulting in 307 new rubric-aligned lessons, 304 new standards-based lessons, 779 new resources, and 2,938 existing lessons vetted. As a result of KCSOS efforts, the California Educators Together portal now has more than 25,000 users, including 6,832 new users over the past year. During the second year of the project, KCSOS will continue to offer virtual and in-person Lesson Design Institutes, continue efforts to disseminate high-quality rubric-aligned lessons and resources, and vet existing materials. KCSOS will also focus on potential partnerships to increase visibility of the CaET repository and new users.
WestEd is leading the external program evaluation of the HQOIM project. Key findings from the formative evaluation of the first year indicate that Kern County has built a team that is focused on educators, learns and adapts, listens to feedback, and is focused on key issues of sustainability, partnerships, and scaling up. Feedback from teachers attending the Lesson Design Institutes are overwhelmingly positive; in focus groups and interviews, educators are excited for the CaET Rubric and praised the quality of the institutes. In addition, the California Educators Together repository contains a wide variety of high-quality resources and capabilities, and the program team and educators are excited about the potential of new and different capabilities for this platform to further support effective teaching and learning.
To learn more about this evaluation, as well as evaluations for other statewide professional learning initiatives launched in 2021, please visit the CCEE Statewide Program Evaluation website.
