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Schools

School District Task Force Seeks to Bolster Achievement Among Lagging Groups

Though the South San Francisco Unified School District saw testing gains overall last year, some ethnic groups defied the rising trend.

Despite having standardized test scores which have risen steadily district-wide over the past three years, the South San Francisco Unified School District is getting ready to hold public meetings to engage families of students who have not shown significant progress.

Over the last three years, scores on the California Standards Test in English-language arts and math have increased overall among SSFUSD students.  But some ethnic subgroups, including African-American and Pacific Islander students, have seen scores plateau or decline.

School board member Maurice Goodman, who is part of a special task force created to address the disconnect, says that it is hard to know why some subgroups have shown progress in terms of test scores while others have not, and that the board is looking at the hard data they have gathered to come up with solutions, rather than point fingers.

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"Students have to feel wanted, and that they belong," Goodman said of possible reasons for the disparity in scores. "We want to make sure that we are exhausting all avenues to accomplish that."

According to the state's 2009-2010 Accountability Progress Report, only 42.5 percent of African-American students and 43 percent of native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students tested proficient in English and 40.5 percent of African-American students and 53.8 percent of native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students tested proficient math last year.  

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Under the No Child Left Behind law, each ethnic group in a school district must meet a certain level of proficiency that increases every year; for the 2009-2010 school year, the requirement was 56 percent for English and 56.4 percent for math.  For the fourth year, SSFUSD has failed to meet its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements, giving the district a Program Improvement designation and putting it at risk of major administrative overhauls.

In order to make sure the district meets AYP for the coming year, Goodman explained that the school board's first step in correcting the imbalance is to hold regular public meetings with the superintendent, teachers and members of the school board in which families will be able to address educators and administration directly and work together to implement new strategies.

"Parent involvement is going to be key," Goodman explained. "Having families involved and coming to board meetings empowers them. Many of these families are coming from a history of underrepresentation, and we want to show them that not only do they belong, but they have a voice and we want to hear it."

The community forum tactic is nothing new to the district. Associate Superintendent of English Language Learner Programs and Student Learning Support Adolfo Malera, who is also on the task force to improve progress among all ethnic subgroups, helped create regular discourse between families and the district last year with his District's English Learner Advisory Committee and Superintendent's Parental Engagement Advisory Committee programs. Through these programs, families of English language learners meet regularly with teachers and administrators to discuss ways of bringing up test scores.

Malera says the purpose of these meetings is to help all parties involved understand what is going to make students successful.

"Through these meetings, we want to inform parents about the educational system, as well as their rights and responsibilities," he said, adding that, over the past year, he has seen meeting attendance increase.

The strategy has seemingly paid off, according to Malera, with the programs and instructional changes implemented as a result of the meetings resulting in English language learners meeting federal government standards for improvement last year.

"We believe we have seen a correlation between parents getting involved and the growth of our English learners," he said.

According to Goodman, the school board already has plans for various programs designed to provide additional support to students most in need, including a program that would bring in students from Skyline College as mentors to South San Francisco high school and junior high students. 

"We want to see changes," he said. "It's been proven that we can do it [with the English language learners] and I believe we can do it again."

"We know the effect families have on our students' achievement," Malera said.  "No blame is being assigned here. We are looking at this in terms of challenges and resolutions."

Goodman expressed his faith in the district's success for the coming year, but noted that students must continue to show progress for SSFUSD to graduate from its current Program Improvement status.

"I believe we'll make Adequate Yearly Progress this year, but there has to be a trend over two to three years," he said.

Malera said that the board will be inviting families of Pacific Islander and African-American students, as well as all community members, to attend upcoming meetings to get the ball rolling on new program implementation.  The first meeting is tentatively scheduled for early October.

 

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