The board continued discussion and provided feedback on incorporating technical and policy changes to student-level data processing and developing the resources necessary to support the annual release of the California School Dashboard by Nov. 15.
California Department of Education (CDE) staff presented items including a review of new and existing College/Career Indicator (CCI) measures; options for adoption of growth model performance categories; how the long-term English learners (LTEL) student group qualified for differentiated assistance on the 2024 Dashboard and suggested changes to the Suspension Rate Indicator for LTELs; options to incorporate the Science Indicator into Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) eligibility criteria; an overview of Dashboard Alternative School Status (DASS) along with a review of DASS application/renewal criteria and of Priority 1 teacher assignment data. (Additional information on each item is available in the agenda item.)
However, noting the importance of ensuring the “career” aspect of the indicator isn’t an afterthought, Board President Linda Darling-Hammond said, “I don’t know that we want to be restricted to just A-G silos, because you could be taking a course, for example, in nutrition, on your way to becoming a nutritionist in a health professions academy. And as we’re thinking about career academies and pathways … we need to figure out a way to allow for titles that may be legitimate areas of study that might not be obvious to A-G while also being sure they’re substantive and so on.”
Essentially, a student reclassified will no longer have their progress counted toward an LEA’s LTEL performance, but new LTEL students are included. So, hypothetically, Darling-Hammond illustrated, an LEA could keep from reclassifying students so that their average doesn’t suffer as additional LTELs with lower performance are added into their count, and they aren’t identified as being eligible for differentiated assistance.
Instead, she suggested the LTEL indicator work similarly to the English Learner Progress Indicator (ELPI).
“Basically, what the ELPI is doing is asking how many kids are making progress. In fact, we’ve asked the federal government at one point to use, for federal purposes, the ELPI plus reclassification as a way of understanding whether kids are making progress, which is what we’re asking districts to do, to make sure that every student is making progress,” Darling-Hammond noted. “As we make these decisions, what’s the right way to identify districts or schools for differentiated assistance here? And how do we make this a rational system that does not have counterproductive incentives built into it?”
The plan seeks to align and integrate state literacy initiatives, content standards and state guidance to support educators. The revised version includes updates from recent legislation and initiatives targeting literacy in California, references to updated guidance documents and more.
With the 2025 SLP approved, the CDE will initiate another competitive grant process to select new Literacy Lead Agencies — subgrantees tasked with focusing on a statewide literacy priority detailed in the SLP to support scaling and sustaining grant projects — to lead projects that focus on the 2025 statewide literacy priorities in the revised SLP.
- A fourth cohort of California Community Schools Partnership Program implementation grant recipients was approved. Implementation grants are available to LEAs or consortia that have developed community school implementation plans with each of their school communities.
- CDE staff alongside and the Kern County Superintendent of Schools presented an update on the development and curation of high-quality instructional materials for use by LEAs and educators on the California Educators Together (CaET) platform to enhance teaching and learning statewide.