Local Control and Accountability PlanningApril/May 2016
Leading Change
Making California School Reform Work
Spring is Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) season, as districts hold public hearings on their LCAPs.
In this issue of Leading Change, we provide resources and information about the evolving LCAP process, including a new set of studies that claim the LCAPs need an overhaul. The State Board of Education meets this Wednesday to consider doing just that. You can follow along with the live video feed of the meeting (click here for the agenda and link to the live webcast), or follow EdSource's John Fensterwald on Twitter, @jfenster for updates.
How has the LCAP process been unfolding in your district? Are parents and communities engaged? Please let us know.
Local Control and Accountability Plan meeting at King Elementary School in Santa Ana
EdSource's John Fensterwald looks at three reports from education advocates published in April that critique district Local Control and Accountability Plans statewide. The reports, Fensterwald writes, conclude that most district LCAPs are "confusing, inadequate and sometimes contrary to the law's purpose."
Of particular concern to these organizations: Lack of transparency about how funds are being channeled to serve high-needs students.
Read more.
Education Trust-West has just released a new set of resources designed to address some of these concerns about LCAP usefulness and transparency.
Through a partnership with the California Association of School Business Officials (CASBO) and Children Now, the organization developed tools to help districts create budgets and communicate with stakeholders. The toolkit includes an editable PowerPoint presentation that districts could easily adapt to present their budgets and LCAPs at parent and community meetings.
Read more.
Hsar Htoo translates at a parent meeting at Garfield Elementary School in Oakland
EdSource's Jane Adams reports on an effort to go beyond the typical "twice-a-year for 15-minutes" approach to parent teacher conferences. In a handful of districts, parents are getting more involved in their children's progress in school by using real-time comparative student data and group meetings, part of an approach to parent engagement known as Academic Parent-Teacher Teams.
Writes Adams, "The push for parent involvement in education is under scrutiny in California, where schools are two years into creating Local Control and Accountability Plans. But while weighing in on school budgets is important, said Heather Weiss, founder of the Harvard Family Research Project at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, parents need information they can use - details about what their child is supposed to be learning, whether that learning is on track and what specifically they can do to help at home."
Read more.
What about funding for special education students?
To help answer questions like these from parents, teachers, and other education stakeholders, EdSource has produced a free guide to the Local Control Funding Formula. Updated in February 2016, the guide provides succinct, easy-to-understand explanations of basic questions about how California's new funding formula works, and what impact it is having in communities. Along with the guide, we offer a video explanation of the funding formula and several other resources. Click here for the LCFF Guide.
It appears that the renamed Common Core tests in Louisiana, now called "LEAP 2016" but otherwise only slightly changed from the old assessments, with a shorter testing window, are meeting with greater approval from families. Only a handful of opt-outs have been reported.
Standardized testing for grades 3-8 and 11 was postponed in the entire state of New Jersey last week after a computer glitch left students staring at a blank screen and unable to log in. Test-maker Pearson apologized for the error. Other states have also experienced glitches in their computerized testing platform.
