Thank you. Good morning and welcome to today's event sponsored by the Learning Policy Institute and Ed Source. I'm Patrick Shields, the Executive Director of the Learning Policy Institute. So our goal today is to take a step back and reflect on California's recent journey from what was really a struggling state, one that on the national stage was labeled from having gone from first to worse to now one of the nation's leaders in terms of our focus on high-quality education and equitable education for all students in the state. We really have come a long way in the last ten years. In a couple of minutes, Laura Hernandez from the Learning Policy Institute is going to describe the seismic shifts in California education in terms of funding and accountability, standards, and who gets to make decisions about our schools. Laura's going to start the conversation about these changes and their impacts on policy, on practice, on opportunities for learning for students in the state, and ultimately on student outcomes. We want to use the day to take stock of how far we have come and at this time with new leadership in the state to think about where we still need to go. The title of the report that we're publishing today is the California Way, the Golden States Quest, to build an equitable and excellent education system. We use the term quest purposefully because we have made great, great progress, but we're still on that journey. As we'll hear from Laura and the other panelists, there's much work to be done. The recent strikes across the state, including the one that started today in Oakland, underscore that we still have challenges. We have too few adults in our schools. Our class sizes are too high. Teacher turnover is unacceptable. There simply aren't enough resources yet in the schools. But as we think about these challenges and how we're going to take them on in the next four years, we also have to remember that the successes that we've made over the last decade have been a function of the hard work of advocates, community groups, practitioners and policymakers throughout the state. And as we take on the challenges, these same groups, these same advocates, these same community groups who are represented here today in the room are going to be there fighting every step of the way. So we're thankful to our funders. The SD Bechtel Jr. Foundation funded this report. The Stuart Foundation funds a series of work in this area. And we at the Learning Policy Institute get core operating support from the Sandler Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Before we get started, I just want to ask people to make sure that they have their cell phones off or on silent to let you know that the restrooms are right through this door here. And if there is an emergency, which we have had before, there are exit doors here, here and through the lobby through which you came. So right now I'll turn it over to Louis Friedberg, who's the Executive Director of Ed Source. Louis? Good morning to all of you. It's a pleasure to see you here today at this point of transition and hope not only in California on a range of issues, but in California education specifically. This conversation comes at a time when, as all of you know, we have a new governor, a new State Superintendent of Public Instruction from whom we will hear shortly, and a new likelihood of the State Board of Education, whom we will also hear from, but wearing another hat today. It also comes at a time of deep concern at turmoil in districts, as Patrick just referred to in Ed Source's home base of Oakland. We have a strike that unfortunately just began today. But today we'll be looking at what has been accomplished over the past eight years and what has yet to be done. And I think we would all agree what happens in California matters. In Congress, at least in the House of Representatives, education policy is now in the hands of Democrats for the first time in eight years. A couple of weeks ago I met with Representative Bobby Scott from Virginia, who's chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, and he's trying to put a break on some of the policies implemented by the Trump administration over the last several years. But arguably what we do here in California, what I like to call the country of California, has a much more direct impact on kids. And what we do here shapes the lives of millions of kids, one in eight public school children in the United States, and that's in addition to millions more young people in early education and higher education programs. Over the past eight years, Ed Source has tracked all these permutations, the ins and outs of the multi-dimensional reforms that have been put in place by Governor Brown, by the State Board, by the good folks over at CDE, State Superintendent, and of course by the administrators, teachers and staff from hundreds of districts and thousands of schools in California. I think it's fair to say that this has not been a comparable period in California's history where so many education reforms have been put in place under a single governor. I think some people saw the local control funding formula as something entirely new, but actually it's two principal features, the local control aspect of it and the funding formula weren't altogether new. Many of you in the room recall the term subsidiarity. There was an ancient theological term that Governor Brown somehow was able to integrate and make a central part of the reform process. Basic idea being that central authority, whether it's a Vatican or Sacramento, should stay out of local matters unless it can handle those local matters better. And as for the funding formula, it's a weighted student formula which was how Governor Brown articulated in his State of the State speech in 2012. Well, that was a term that was in Title I, 1965, and in many other federal grants and many states had that concept. But somehow all this came together in a remarkably coherent policy framework and also a philosophical framework. I was fortunate actually on the last day that Jerry Brown was in office, or it was a Friday, the last interview that he did in the governor's office and my colleague and I, John Fenstwall, talked with him about what he viewed as his accomplishments, which he didn't really want to focus on. He said local control funding formula was just the mechanics of it. Really, the philosophical key, we talked about Martin Buber, the German philosopher. The key is in the meeting, the meeting between the student and the teacher. And that is what he saw as his legacy, is really trying to get local control and his focus on the creativity that goes on in the classroom. So all these works represent the work in progress. But I think we all have a sense that California is headed in the right direction. We have an opportunity to lead the nation on the education front, especially in light of the incredibly diverse and rich student population that we have. This is a great moment to look at what has been accomplished and where we need to go. And on that note, I'm going to ask Laura Hernandez, who is one of the co-authors, the three co-authors of this most excellent report that LPI put out, just came out this morning. So let me hand it over to Laura Hernandez. Good morning, everyone. I am honored to be here on behalf of LPI and my amazing co-authors to share findings from this newly published report that explores many of the key points that Patrick and Louis just spoke on around California's progress in advancing equity and excellence. And as Patrick shared, I felt it was a timely and important moment for us to take stock of California's progress given the many economic and educational shifts we've seen in just 10 short years, some of which are highlighted here. So we've gone from being in the midst of a deep recession which was accompanied by significant cuts to education to feeling the positive effects of resurging economic growth. And with that growth, we've implemented more equitable funding, increasing funds to all districts from regional monies to districts with large populations of high-need learners. We've also witnessed significant changes in our standards, credentialing, and accountability approaches, ultimately moving from a more punitive approach to a more supportive systems that elevate the importance of multiple measures of success. And in this context, like Louis just mentioned, we've seen a move away from top-down decision-making to a groundbreaking approach that seeks to empower local knowledge and expertise. So all of these shifts have coalesced to create what we call a sea change in California. Through the relentless efforts of a cross-section of organizations and individuals seeking to advance equity and excellence in our schools, many of whom are here today, we now see multiple policies assembling to construct an unprecedented approach to comprehensive and systemic reform. And given this unique moment that California finds itself in, our research really aimed to take stock of what progress has been made. So on one level, our research asked, how did we get here? What efforts led to the enactment of these policies and how did these efforts influence what we see today? But in addition, we wanted to understand how practice and culture has changed. What impact has this combination of policies had on budgeting, instruction, climate engagement, and student outcomes? And importantly, what work remains to be done? What does California still need to do to advance equity and excellence for all students? To answer these questions, we first conducted an exhaustive, and I mean exhaustive literature review, where we identified themes and promising practices from our review of studies, policy briefs, and news articles on LCFF and other concurrent reforms. And in this way, we built from the work done by researchers, including those from PACE, the LCFF Research Collaborative, and the Getting Down to Facts II report series. So we wanted to acknowledge and appreciate their contributions to our collective learning. But we also supplemented our review for targeted interviews with key decision makers and advocates to elaborate on these themes and practices that emerged. And in the full report, you'll see that we detail the decades-long efforts of individuals and groups who paved the way for this unique moment and have allowed for so many to remain committed to the fulfillment of its vision. But for the remainder of this presentation, I'll focus on the changes we're seeing in practice and areas for growth that our research surfaced. So with the local control funding formula, we have seen more equitable funding among California districts, which has offset the decreases felt acutely after the recession and explicitly recognized the increased cost it takes to serve high-need students. And with this recognition reports point to changes in district culture, particularly how equity is now a prominent and central feature of budgeting conversations. And with these shifting mindsets, some districts are allocating resources with equity in mind and exploring innovative ways to ensure monies are reaching sites and students who need it most. And to illustrate in the Los Angeles Unified School District, who has partnered with the Coalition of Community Groups, they've developed a Student Equity Need Index, an innovative tool that allows the district to equitably calculate and distribute LCFF funds to sites with concentrated need. And two of our panelists today will be able to speak to that initiative. But despite these positive trends, there are significant roadblocks to resource equity. We do still feel the financial squeeze generated by earlier disinvestment, a burden that will continue to grow in the face of the state's silent recession, the rising cost that we see in districts with relation to teacher pensions facilities and to the teacher shortage. And these claims point to questions about the overall adequacy of K-12 funding to meet student needs. An argument underscored by the recent strike in Los Angeles and the one beginning in Oakland today. Other critiques call for state funding to be a company, excuse me, by more transparency around the use of supplemental and concentration funds to ensure that monies are reaching students who need it most. And also point to the ongoing challenge of overcoming the compliance orientation or mentality that decades of categorical funding have ingrained in many district cultures. In the arena of teaching and learning, we see districts reinvesting in capacity building, an important step in rebuilding the state's professional learning infrastructure, which was largely decimated after the recession. Districts, for example, have used funds to support the rollout of Common Core and to provide targeted professional development around LCFF target groups. But districts have also allocated funds to allow for more teacher collaboration and job-embedded supports, including access to coaches or teacher leaders. A case in point is the Chula Vista Elementary School District, who have leveraged their funds to codify a promising system of collaborative learning for its educators. And we will hear more from Dr. Francisco Escobedo on our first panel today, who may be able to speak more to that. Another key trend that we found in professional learning are the growth of learning networks, so networks that allow districts and regions to systematically share knowledge across areas to be able to spur continuous improvement. So some examples are Math & Common, the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence's Professional Learning Networks, and Instructional Leadership Core as well, which our panelists, Danielle Letts, will be able to speak to, is another promising form for this sort of learning exchange. And with these professional shifts, we do see some changes in instruction. We have a growing body of research that tells us that California classrooms are increasingly characterized by student-centered learning, instead of the less robust practices we saw proliferate under NCLB. And with growing attention to college and career readiness, we also see districts allocating resources to more rigorous core sequences, like A to G-aligned classes and real-world learning programs that foster 21st-century skills. But like with resource equity, many barriers remain to improving teaching and learning. Although we have bright spots, we see gaps in quality and access to rich professional development, suggesting there's still a long road ahead to rebuilding the state's professional learning infrastructure. Questions also remain about supports for LCFF target groups. While research points to increased attention to English learners, foster youth and low-income students, some suggest that districts are still falling short. And others, too, point to the needs of other subgroups not named under LCFF, like students with special needs or African-American students and question what resources can be generated to support them. And finally, the teacher shortage poses a significant challenge. The shortage and its accompanying turnover has resulted in a hiring of tens of thousands of teachers with substandard credentials, which has implications for student learning. But it also stifles the capacity-building continuous improvement at the center of LCFF that require teachers to stay and engage in ongoing professional learning for sustained periods of time. In addition to teaching and learning, the spotlight that California has put on school climate, with that, we see evidence that districts are using their funds to try to make improvements in this area. So we see districts using funds to increase support for students' holistic needs, including hiring more staff like psychologists or social workers when compared to staffing rates before LCFF. Districts are also investing in evidence-based practices like social-emotional learning, PBIS, and restorative justice. And here, our report highlights the work of San Diego Unified and their efforts to become a restorative justice district, which they have done by piloting restorative justice, conducting professional development to really build an infrastructure to support whole district rollout. But we also draw attention to the required use of climate surveys, so tools that are garnering broader perspectives and can shed light on climate efforts in schools. And here, we note the promising work by the core districts, which have been featured in several PACE reports around social-emotional learning and how surveys can be interpreted and used to inform action. So while we've seen strides in school improvement, California still lags behind the public services and the provision of services. We also continue to see students in the state's highest poverty districts with significantly less access to personnel who provide social-emotional supports. The use of climate data remains an area of growth. Many hold questions about survey rigor and their consistent implementation, but they also point to the need for supports for districts and schools to help them interpret data to make strategic improvements. And along those lines, research points to the overall need for ongoing professional development around school climate. While educators and leaders who've earned their credentials under the state's revised educator standards report more exposure to topics related to school climate, they still clamor for more development around nurturing positive school environments. With California's imperative for local decision-making and community engagement, we are seeing that district leaders have broad support for these engagement requirements, as suggested by one recent study where 75% of surveyed district leaders agreed that community involvement helped ensure that district goals aligned with local needs. And with this enthusiasm for engagement, research is showing that districts are creating more opportunities and forms for stakeholders to lend their input. Another dynamic that we see emerging is that community groups are also taking this opportunity to partner with districts to augment their capacity. So groups such as families in schools and Californians for Justice who work with historically marginalized students and families have played a pivotal role in district outreach by facilitating some of this engagement and modeling culturally responsive and meaningful strategies. This is a trend where seeing promising trends challenges still persist. The length and complexity of district LCAPs is often and primarily cited as the barrier to fuller engagement. But also district capacity itself remains limited, making it difficult for them to actualize the state's vision. In many instances, limited district capacity have made it difficult to include diverse voices and even led some districts to default to more transactional forms of engagement, those emphasizing information dissemination instead of true dialogue among partners. Some studies also point to trust as a critical factor in district community engagement suggesting that more intentional relationship building may be necessary for the state's vision to be met. And finally, what have all these changes in funding, accountability and engagement? How are California students doing? What outcomes is the state producing in this new context? So across a range of outcomes we see California students making progress but ample work still needs to be done to improve excellence and equity in our schools. So we see evidence of this in California NAEP scores, whereas California once ranked leading the state now ranks between 25th and 35th and its average scores near national averages. And while that reflects improvement in absolute and relative terms, there is still ample room for growth and gaps in performance between students of color and white counterparts persist. Also notable is that analyses of state test scores identify similar trends in achievement and achievement gaps. We see similar trends in graduation rates so rates have steadily risen since 2010, despite the slight dip we see as a result of the new calculation formulas instituted in 2017. But at the same time gaps between racial groups, which we see here depicted, have persisted while we see these overall improvements. And this is an important point that's elevated by one of our panelists, Dr. Rucker Johnson, in his Getting Down to Facts 2 report, which he can speak more to on this panel today. And these trends hold true for suspension and expulsion. And in some cases, significant improvement in this arena, which has resulted in increased learning hours for students, particularly African American youth. At the same time, punitive discipline practices continue to disproportionately affect students of color, suggesting that more work is necessary to ensure schools are inclusive and responsive to all. So what does this mean all for the road ahead? Through our findings, we suggest that California stayed a course on its multifaceted and equity-oriented vision, but must address key roadblocks to deepen impact. Primary among these is funding. We suggest that the state should continue supporting LCFF fundamentals and other investments, including those for early childhood. Yet California should refine its policies to increase the adequacy of its formula and should improve the transparency of budgeting practices to ensure that equity is truly being achieved. Issues related to capacity are also clear areas for growth. The state should build upon its existing assets and bright spots to create a more comprehensive professional learning structure. And the continued development and investment in networks for professional learning can be a critical part of that path forward. And finally, the ongoing teacher shortage continues to undermine many of the promising efforts that the state and its districts are embarking on, making policies to build a stable, diverse, and well-prepared workforce a critical priority. So in closing, we do see significant progress in California, along with significant need. So for the remainder of our event today, we hope to engage you and our speakers in rich discussions about the road ahead and our ongoing quest to advance equity and excellence. Thank you for your time. And without further ado, I will turn it over to Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond to introduce our next speaker. Thank you, Laura, for sharing the details of the report. I want to recognize the lead author, Roberta Ferger, who is going to be moderating a later panel. How we landed where we are today in education is a big undertaking, and it's a story that needs to be told. Many folks know Roberta in a variety of ways, but she started out as a journalist, and so the telling of the story is well instantiated in the long journey that we got here with many, many, many wonderful narratives along the way, and we appreciate having that broad vision. It's especially true now with the new leadership we have with education in this state, and this brings me to our keynote speaker, who better to help us begin to look ahead than our new state superintendent, Tony Thurman. Tony has a long track record of advocating for schools and children from public service, from his 20 year career as a social worker to his time as an assembly member in the California legislature where he took action on a wide variety of supports for children to his most recent election as 28th California state superintendent of public instruction. Tony is an advocate for all children, and especially those placed furthest from opportunity. He has a rich agenda to support those commitments. He's also a wonderful friend and a father and family man. I was speaking to him earlier this morning as he was getting his kids off to school in Richmond where they were heading off on a trip during their break to feed immigrant children on both sides of the Southern California border, and that's the kind of heart Tony has and that he has developed in his own children and that he will develop in the work that we do on behalf of children in this state. Tony. Good morning. I know we can do better than that. Good morning. Oh, hey, hey Linda, thank you. You know, I was when the governor gave his state of the state address, was that last week? You know, time is flying by, you know, it's a month and a half on the job and nothing broken yet, hopefully. When the governor, I had the best seat now sitting on the assembly floor as the governor talked about his choice to be the new chair of the state board of education and Linda Darling-Hammond. Thank you, Linda, and I'm excited to work with you. You know, I'm appreciative to have come to the legislature at a time when we had the local control funding formula and I know that, you know, Dr. Curse has been a part of that framework and dreaming that you know, as someone who was on a school board in 2008, when the economy was probably the worst we've seen, my first night as being sworn in on the school board before I even put my hand down, they said we want you to vote to close 10 schools. I almost passed out. I cussed a lot of bad words too right before that happened and I just thought this can't be a good thing and they said, well, we know it's bad for kids but we're going to ask you to do it anyway because the state's making us do it. And you know, I took issue with that. I thought if it's bad for kids, we have no business doing it. We have to have the political will to find ways to help our young people and thankfully ... Hey, well, alright then. Because I've been on a city council that was one of five cities in our unified school district, I knew that we could reach out to our council members in those five cities and say, these are our kids and they came to our rescue with money to help pay for the cost that our district was struggling with. But that is not the case anymore and districts continue to struggle and LCFF has meant a great deal to school districts who say we cannot do the work that you passed down without the funding to do it. So I love the framework of LCFF. I love the framework of local control. I love the framework of LCAP saying we want to engage partners and stakeholders, parents, students, teachers, educators, administrators all coming together to create a document that says we can, as a community, prioritize the students who should get the additional help that they need. To me, that is equity. I love that we have last year legislation that says that LCFF should be amended to have more money to support the districts that serve the lowest performing students and was honored to support that legislation. But we have so much more to do. We are where we are and I'm hopeful that this new beginning, a new governor, a new legislature means a time for us to come together as partners and say that California will lead the way and the best way that we can lead is to move away from being 45th in the nation or 41st. People debate, is it 41? Is it 46? Is it 45th? Whatever it is, it's not good enough. The kids of California deserve to be number one.  So let's put kids who we think are number one, let's make our budget look like that and treat them like they're number one and move from being 45th I wanted to offer thanks to all of you who are reaching for excellence and reaching for equity. The six-year-old me thanks you for what you do because the six-year-old me was a kid who was the son of immigrants from Panama. My mother was a teacher who taught in San Jose. My father was an immigrant who came all the way from Detroit, Michigan by way of Mississippi. It's okay to laugh, it really doesn't hurt. My father served in Vietnam and I did not see my father until I became an adult. I found my father on the internet so my mom raised four kids by herself until she could not. She was very sick and when I was six years old she lost her battle of cancer and my sibling group and I got split up. Two state in San Jose the youngest two, myself and my five-year-old brother got sent to live in Philadelphia with a cousin that we never met until we showed up on her doorstep and she raised us even though she worked two jobs and went to night school to get her own education. She raised us on the free lunch program on food stamps. I'm talking about food stamp coupons not the EBT card and a lot of government cheese and I know a lot of you are looking at me like what is government cheese? It comes in a big old box with thick plastic wrapped inside and if you can get through it it's the best grilled cheese sandwich you might ever have. It's a public program that really helped me and I always joked that we ate so much government cheese that I thought that USDA was a brand name. The point is this, the greatest public program that I ever had a chance to participate in was getting a public education. It literally saved my life. When I think about the kind of gaps and cracks that I could have fallen into, I'm thankful that I had educators who believed in me who said that your life will be different than it started. That in spite of coming from humble beginnings it was an education that opened doors for me to become a social worker spent 20 years working with young people working in our schools to get elected to many offices and I think about it every single day how easy it would have been for me to end up in California State Prison and instead I ended up as the state superintendent of the great state of California. We need to give that to all 6 million of our kids. That's what reaching for equity is about. That is what this time is about. It is time for us to say that now we're going to put our words into practice. We've said for decades that we can close the school to prison pipeline if we give every young person quality education before they start kindergarten. But yet we still have an achievement gap and an opportunity gap that persists for African-American students for Latinos and English learners from kids who come from low income backgrounds. It is time for us to put our money where our mouth is and to say that we will provide the early education for all of our students in our state and I'm honored to be in this office and assuming this office at a time that we have a governor who not only we have a governor get this all we have a governor who campaigned on early education and universal preschool you know when's the last time you heard those types of things and then in his remarks the governor in his budget proposal essentially if you listen to what he said 51% of what he talked about in his proposed budget was early education through K-12 and higher ed. If you look at what the social services contribution was that's 71% of the budget when's the last time you heard a governor say we are going to take juvenile corrections out of corrections and put it into a social service context that sounds like a framework for closing the school to prison pipeline that sounds like our momentum is now. Many of you probably were in the assembly hearing yesterday that focus on creating universal preschool. Some of you may even have attended the workshop that the California Department of Education has created for how we close the achievement gap. In the same week we are having conversations my point is our timing is now the momentum is now the report and I'm thankful for the report thank you Linda and your team for giving me an advance copy of all I saw on the top of it was embargoed. Can I do I have to recall the tweets that I put about the report. I appreciate the report for helping us to see the accomplishments that have been made as a result of this framework around LCFF around LCAP. I'm appreciative that the governor and his budget proposal has given more money to address the cost to really enhance LCFF to reflect some of the rising costs of education and to address the conversation around the cost of pension. One of the many work groups that we are launching is a work group that focuses on how do we identify permanent funding sources of revenue for schools, for education. Why do I why do I lift that up because you all know as well as I do that when we have another economic downturn if we don't have new permanent sources of revenue everything that has been created through LCFF and through some of the things being proposed in the governor's budget they will be eviscerated and we'll be having a conversation about cutting programs that we know are bad for kids. We will be hearing school board members and superintendents and leaders in education saying things like this we know it's bad for kids but we're asking you to do it anyway. Well if it's bad for kids let's not do it. Let's find a better way to serve kids and let's find a way to get past our structural financial deficit that impacts what we do educationally and programmatically. Some of you know that in 2020 what happens with Proposition 13 and that means that there could be a kind of split role tax that could develop another 11 billion dollars for the state general fund maybe four to five maybe even six billion dollars for K-12 education. I think these are the things we need to be talking about. Now please someone sitting in this room right now texting their friends saying Tony Thurman just said he wants us to get our taxes raised that is not what we're talking about. This measure, as I understand it as it is in vision which shields seniors homeowners and small business people from paying more taxes but for large commercial property owners they'd be asked to pay their fair share they'd be asked to see the loophole close that they have benefited from since Prop 13 passed in the 70s I don't know about you but I think our schools could use that money and more and so if you care about developing, you should clap for that. She's the only person who's saying oh he's not going to tax me look if you're a millionaire or you own a lot of commercial property well then you should be concerned but anyone else every other Californian who's in working class or middle class who's worked hard to support our economy who's tightened their belt to say that we are a family and that we work together to support our state and our economy and we have folks to do the same thing but we can't do it alone if you read the Getting Down to Facts 2 report you know that the number that we need to properly fund education in the state is in the billions like hundreds so we have to be looking at every type of permanent revenue source that we can so that we can ensure all of our kids get a quality education through higher education because I would love it if we could change the narrative and stop having people fight over well is the money going into K-12 or is it going into higher education as far as I'm concerned that's a false narrative we should be talking about money from early education through K-12 education through higher education because a long time ago students in this state could get a higher education a quality higher education for almost nothing all of our students are homeless and hungry and struggling to keep up with the rising costs of getting in a higher education there'll be a million and a half jobs in technology in just a few years at the rate that we are going we will only have half of the applicants for those jobs unless we make changes to ensure that we have computer science offered through our schools from early education through 12th grade and that our kids have technology that works you know that's a great one some students told me that the way they get access to wifi is when a truck with a hotspot pulls up because of limits in their community this is California we can and we will do better we will lead we will reach for equity we will reach for excellence all of our students can achieve I'll never forget the time that the billionaire person told me they said Tony you should only focus on the kids that promise and potential and I told them to their face I reject that notion all of our kids should promise and potential it's on us to help them develop that potential so let us be the ones who together reach for excellence reach for equity and help every one of our students achieve is that okay with you is that alright with you I need to know raise your right hand say yeah that was I believe that you can do better I believe that we will set the bar high for our students it broke my heart to hear a critical leader in education a few weeks ago say that as it relates to how we serve students of color getting into a university and being retained in a university this person actually said well maybe we should set goals that are achievable and I said you know what our job is to set the bar high right the title of today is reaching for excellence and equity it means we set the bar high and we give students the tools that they need to get to achieve those goals and so I'm going to ask you one more time are you ready to reach for excellence are you ready to make sure every single student gets the same great opportunities to an education let me say oh yeah that's it I'm done I'm going to drop the mic because I feel the hook coming thank you for your work I hope you will come and join us at the department of education I hope you will reach out to us for the number of work groups that we've put together that address everything from closing the achievement gap to getting new revenue for our schools to stem and steam a career technical education to early education if you want to be a part of it there is a place for you I look forward to our great work together have a great day thank you everyone thank you superintendent Thurman let's just give him a round of applause before he leaves great to see the passing of the baton and the new energy in Sacramento and I'm going to ask our panel to pull up these seats and I'm going to move over here you know one of the great things about California we talk about the gold we talk about Silicon Valley but I think you know the greatest asset we have are people and got five amazing people here who have been working in the trenches at different levels of education and thinking about the country of California it's just really a small number of people who are making all of this all of this work and many of you in this room as well so I'm just going to introduce the panelists very quickly my cursed many of you know professor emeritus of education at business administration at Stanford privileged about 25 years ago kind of set me on this path as he has many other people probably many of you in this room and he's just played an instrumental role in the reforms that we've seen in the last eight years probably much more than we actually know Mike is very modest about his engagement in these issues very happy to have superintendent Francisco Escobedo who's superintendent in Chula Vista right on the border one of the more contested zones in the country serves more than 29,000 students and showing great success in leveraging the resources there to target supports towards highest need students many English learners but not all of them you'll tell us a little bit more about that thank you thank you for coming up it's tough to leave your district even for a day next to him is Aurea Montes Rodriguez she's executive vice president of the community coalition she oversees education reform campaigns there LA has also been a contested zone recently glad to see things have moved along a bit there and under her leadership community coalition has supported equity centered initiatives like the student equity needs index we'll hear a little bit more about that talking about teachers the heart of this entire enterprise we're thrilled to have Daniel Letz who is a fifth grade teacher of the instructional leadership core which I'd like to hear more about and we will shortly a teacher led professional development network that has trained more than 200 teacher leaders welcome Daniel and at the end of the row David Ratray many of you know him as well really been really so instrumental in bringing the business community into this discussion David oversees the center for education excellence and talent development at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce LA area chamber of commerce as well as the school to career partnership of Los Angeles so let me talk go to Mike first Mike as we were just saying such a significant role in many of these reforms that we've seen in the last eight years can you just summarize and I know this is a tough job for anybody particularly a professor what are the major accomplishments that you see of the LCFF and the reforms that they were and the challenges they were intended to address well the LPI group I think outlined a lot of the outcomes that we've had and from the process so I'm going to talk about the design of state reform that has taken place over the last eight to ten years the design is really important and our approach is what one calls systemic reform in other words you look at all parts of the education system and you need to address virtually all of those parts and you need to do that in a coherent and aligned way so that the parts all fit together they're all working with the same synergy in the same directions LPI displayed that in part through the puzzle pieces but let me do it briefly through just one of our outcomes which are in the standards when you look at it we've overhauled every one of our major standards now with art understanding we have the new math standards new English language art standards next generation science standards history civic standards for the first time we have computer science standards we passed health framework and standards and so how do you fit that into this then you have to adopt new materials new content new various instructional things like textbooks those have to align to your standards and we've been able to accomplish that we have a brand new assessment of course a smarter balanced assessment it's computer adaptive students have to go into it and defend their answers it has a performance exam where they have to put things together and come to their own conclusions and that standard is set at the level of college and career ready so that's a very high standard the old assessment CST somebody picked a number out of the air called 800 and that became nirvana and I never could figure out what there was magic about 800 so we went through a standard setting process of what really is college and career ready then as LPI indicated in their presentation we've done a great deal of change with our capacity built with our teachers the crucial skills that carry on in the school nobody mentioned what Linda Darling Hammond did on the California teacher commission that's one of the great untold stories completely revamping our standards for entering the profession tightening and weeding out some of the weak providers overhauling the performance exam teachers have to demonstrate at the end of their teacher preparation I could go on but that's important and I'll speak in service education the another area that we have of course dealt with is finance which has been covered here I think pretty well English learners we have passed an English learners roadmap which provides I think a systemic integrated approach to this of course and now we have a new English learner assessment to replace the cell so we have much more of a comprehensive system there career and technical education we spent over a billion dollars on the career pathways trust linking high school community college and new pathways and then more money on overhauling the regional occupation centers college readiness I think in a pretty stunning development for me both Cal State and community colleges have dropped their traditional placement exams I mean this is you know the hegemony of the math departments has been broken up and I didn't expect to live to see that and so the now they're working much more closely with K-12 they use a smarter balanced assessment and thinking about placement so we've made a lot of headway reaching across those levels so let me stop there and mention some things that I think we need to do in the future to illuminate what LPI said I think on the capacity building the scale of it is mind boggling if you look at our math scores they're not great they're poor and I'm calculated off an envelope back of an envelope that we have maybe 120,000 teachers who need better math preparation to teach effectively to our standards that would include most of the elementary teachers and many of them in the middle grades as well we have you know we need a moonshot to do this the kinds of programs that we've had for capacity building of principals and teachers have been nibbling at the problem but they're not at the scale that we need I think another area that troubles me and that we haven't mentioned is special education I could spend 15 minutes on what you know the brief problems of them we're of course have a raging teacher shortage we have an outdated federal law we never over hold the finance system so it's not really effective and designed well and we have a lot of focus on procedures and not a lot of focus on whether kids are learning another area emerging is alternative schools when we identified the lowest schools for ESSA a lot of those were alternative schools with graduation rates below 67% and all of a sudden there's all these schools districts calling up how do I improve my alternative schools used to be called many of them are called continuation schools nobody much knows at this point so those are just some of the areas the biggest gap I would say a big gap in the systemic reform that was never addressed is teacher evaluation we're operating under the 1971 stall act a 1971 teacher evaluation act now the Obama administration I think got in the way of this in terms of being able to overhaul it sensibly but I think at some point that needs to be on the agenda so let me stop there and say that there was design and systemic thinking all the way across Mike just a quick question wanted just to ask your thoughts on the LCAP the local control and accountability plan which is such a central piece of this and really was designed to be able to hold districts accountable how do you think that's worked out and do you think this will be a useful document and won't go the way of the SARC the school accountability report card which is yeah I think the and part of the systemic reform was aligning accountability with all I just talked about and the the local control funding formula did a lot of that it's evolving it's getting better we have brand new transparency requirements coming online from some budget language in the 2018 budget and I think it incrementally gets better it's still a work in progress it has shaken things up at the local level we still need to build better connections between the LCAP which is often over here and the school budget operating on a bunch of old input formulas you know if you have 25 pupils you get a teacher and a 15th of a counselor and all that sort of thing so part of it is that the LCAP and the budget process need to work more in synergy and I think that's the role that we need to develop in the future okay terrific I know we're going to try to get some questions in from you do we have a way for cards on your table so if you have a question write it down and raise your hand and somebody will come and grab them and we'll see how many we can squeeze in I'm going to go to Superintendent Escobedo I should have mentioned you were in elementary school district that's been one of the largest elementary districts in the state these reforms that Mike Christ was talking about I'm wondering to what extent this has been an opportunity to for you to use resources that you might have had otherwise to advance equity amongst your students right Lois you started this session talking about the interaction between the teacher and the student and our focus and how to utilize these resources is to fortify right that work between that teacher and the student and Mr. Curse talked about all the standards that were adopted I mean it takes time not only to understand the standards but then how do you implement these standards in the classroom so we invested 4.5 million dollars to ensure that there is a master teacher at every single site to really assist the teachers in making meaning out of the standards and then how are these standards then implemented in the classroom and these master teachers were selected by the teachers within the site because trust is really critical teachers need to know that they have a teacher that they can ask to come into the classroom that they can co-teach with the teacher to learn new practices as well but having a master teacher at every site is not enough just move your microphone a little bit away from your face pull it down okay we're just getting a bit get a little passionate about this okay but having a master teacher is not enough teachers still still having problems okay how's that down further how's that beautiful but having a master teacher is not enough actually sorry move it away from your mouth but I'm really having problems maybe you can help I'll try not to move pull it down okay how's that almost there we'll give it a go see heavy master teachers at every site is not enough teachers need time during the instructional day not after school during the instructional day to meet to meet to plan to understand how do you plan these standards how do you then create those important intervention students who may be English learners African Americans and not only academically but emotionally and socially they're also given the time being a teacher can be very isolated many teachers stay within their classroom and rarely do they have the opportunity to visit other teachers to visit other classrooms so it is time where the teachers and the administrators are afforded time to visit different classrooms within the school and looking at other schools that may have done better with students of similar demographics so teachers are freed up not only to collaborate but also to observe and share ideas not only within the school but across the system you know time is investment is critical critical for teachers because these standards have tremendous implication in the rigor and the type of creativity we expect our kids to to perform at the school so we spent $5.8 million to hire our teachers to take visual arts dance teachers to come in and free up to teachers so they can meet during instructional day our LCAP funds about $25 million I mean that's a significant percentage additionally I believe Superintendent Thurman talked a little bit about the social ills in the last five years we have a 20% increase of homelessness so we invested about $2 million with social workers and counselors to help our foster kids and our homeless students as well creating structures with the county mental health services to assist our teachers in our schools with the difficulties that our students face just have to ask you is this making a difference in your outcomes it's making a huge difference when you look at our target groups versus the state we pretty much double the input for example I believe in the state with African Americans about 30% typically are proficient or exceeding standards in our district is 64% when you look at English learners you see almost double the increases in exceeding you see it in our Filipino population you see it in our homeless population you see it in our foster kids a double digit gains above state average you know and you know thank you and again it's tough work but we afford our teachers truly professionals we afford our teachers to be leaders to construct their professional development as they observe what's occurring at their side we invest in fortifying that teacher-student interaction we create that support system to help our students with the difficulties that they find in their neighborhood and especially with all the political climate of deportation it's been very, very difficult just quickly on the millions that you invested in all these other programs was that through supplemental concentration funds or was that through your overall budget in other words what difference did this make to get those additional funds it's typically through our supplemental concentration funds however we definitely utilize some federal funds and LCFF funds to with the reclinic recession we have to cut into other funds to continue investing on our students and teachers okay terrific hopefully we can come back to you and again if you have any questions raise your hands and somebody will come and find you or I'm going to come back to you but I'm going to skip to Daniel let's stay in the schools I've been working with the Instructional Leadership Corps I'm wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about that and how key is the do you think the role of networks are teachers or otherwise in bringing some of these initiatives that are happening at a local level or in one school to more school to more districts so apparently the Instructional Leadership Corps is the best kept secret in California because every time I talk about it like wait what is that so I'm really happy to be able to talk about it today it's a joint project between the California Teachers Association and SCOPE and the National National Board Resource Center at Stanford and the idea was and SCOPE is the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy and Education okay okay yes I always worry about that one right the idea is teachers teaching teachers and teachers learning from teachers and using that as our basis for professional development I've been to I don't know how many professional development sessions in my teaching career and so many of them were those one day one shot then they're gone they're not in my district they can't answer those questions or it's like well when I did this in a class with 15 students OEL okay that's not my classroom so having those opportunities for teachers to share and work with other teachers and learn from one another and use our expertise has been an amazing opportunity for teachers in the state and I think the last numbers I saw were we've reached over 100,000 teachers in California which is amazing and what I'm seeing now is in particular a couple years ago we didn't have any professional development days built into our calendar they were all either summer or after school that's a limiting opportunity for professional development at 3.30 in afternoon after teaching all day there's only so much you're going to get out of professional development there in the middle of summer there's only so much you're going to get so having opportunity to build those into our calendar and that's part of our calendar now we actually have three days and could you just remind us that your district I teach in Alan Rock Union School District which is in East San Jose and those three professional development days it's actually in our collective bargaining agreement with our teachers association where they're jointly planned so teachers have input in what those professional development days are going to look like what are we going to be doing and the last couple years the majority of those sessions have been run by teachers some instructional coaches some teachers I've done a few we've had other teachers come in and it's been a really positive experience and what I've seen from teachers and the feedback I get from teachers because they can ask me so when you do this with your kids what happened or I tried this but this happened because we all know lessons don't always go right the first time I don't have that feedback or have somebody you can go talk to I get emails every day hey can you send me that activity you did or I tried this but this happened what do I do so be able to build those relationships and share with teachers it's been amazing so just how does it work so you've got a network of teachers you meet or is it virtual or how does it work well our mid-year conference tomorrow we'll be meeting in Santa Clara and we meet twice a year once in the summer once in the mid-year and that's where we all get together that's from teachers from all across California and that's where we do a lot of like check in what's working learning from another if some districts might have had or some teams might have had some difficulty getting on their districts professional development calendar if there was some tension between the two groups sometimes so just kind of help strategize how are you able to do that how are you able to be successful or if you're running other kind of difficulties there's probably somebody in the state who's had something similar that we can learn from and then from that you have the resource of like oh you know what this district this team and this district is doing this contact them and pull in the resources that way so it's just been a really great way to share throughout our state and how many teachers are involved now approximately just over 200 varies and fluctuates year to year but it's about 200 to 250 and some of the teachers are now instructional coaches some have gone into administration some teachers have left some new teachers have come in but it's just over about 200 okay so there's obviously room for growth in this right are the other networks like this or are you kind of is this a new model it's the only one I know like this one but I'm very proud of it and talk about it and anything we can do to encourage this idea of teachers teaching teachers and supporting teachers with what's working well in our classrooms and learning from one another because I think the role of collaboration has just been so key I think all the research shows that on multiple levels so if other teachers want to get involved how do do you have to apply or how does it work there is an application process and it started as a three-year project that was five years ago so actually the ILC program itself is only running for one more year and our focus right now is reaching rural areas because we know we have our districts and our schools who don't have a lot of resources nearby so how do you help support those teachers but then also developing sustainability so that when the ILC project itself goes away how do we still keep that foot in and be involved in those professional development decisions and planning that goes on at the district level okay terrific now let's go to the community level Aurea you have been involved in the community coalition very involved in the student equity needs index I think a lot of people heard about that when it first proposed it got instituted but how is that working out and explain how that works so I'm really happy to be here and to be a part of this conversation and I want to start by thanking the authors of the report because you did a really good job of lifting up the voices of students and parents who in my opinion in our organization's experience have been at the forefront of all of the educational equity work and the fight for educational justice the organization that I work for community coalition were based in south Los Angeles and we were founded in 1990 to deal with the impacts of the crack epidemic and part of what the founders did from the very beginning was emphasize that we had to organize high school age youth African American and Latino youth and we did that because we knew that it was going to take decades to undo the public and private disinvestment and the wide flight that south Los Angeles experienced and so our young people and parents from our community have been very actively engaged when you know south LA felt the worst impacts of prop 13 our young people were at the forefront of the A through G campaign to get the LAUSD the Los Angeles unified school district to adopt A through G college prep courses as the default curriculum for all students because in south Los Angeles what we found that even though the majority of students wanted to go on to college at a university the number one reason that students were not going to college was because they were missing one to three college prep courses and so you know the state legislature said not all students are going to go on to college so why do we need to offer college prep courses at all of the schools and black and brown parents organized and said you know actually we need to have high expectations we need to see more rigor of all students in our community to really allow students and our families to make the choice and so parents and students from south Los Angeles were a part of getting prop 30 passed and they were very engaged in the local control funding formula conversations and for the first time in decades we saw new revenue for public education and for the first time the governor you know took a position that we weren't going to penalized and punish children for being poor and for experiencing community issues like greater rates of violence or health issues like asthma right and so for us this was a real opportunity to organize students and parents and we came in coalition with east Los Angeles and inner city struggle and advancement project who is here in the room John Kim you'll hear from him a little bit later and we thought that it was this was a great opportunity for us to bring light and illuminate what living into equity with the local control funding formula especially when you looked at education and supplemental funds that were generating for the la usd almost one billion dollars a year for EL students foster youth and low income students and so we thought that this was an opportunity for us to marry organizing and the research and the data and we worked together to build a student equity need index that really looked at academic indicators that also took into account community indicators because we believe that schools are a reflection of the community that students attend and that we need to look at them as one and the same and so the student equity need index also incorporates community indicators exposure to gun violence and asthma rates and for us you know the students and parents led a campaign that focused on an inside and outside strategy where on the inside we were really getting the la usd leadership to understand why this funding formula is a smart way of really targeting resources that benefit the students who generated the additional dollars and on the community side really creating the awareness of the education of why these new targeted dollars would make a difference for high and highest need students in the la usd and so did the the board did allocate some funds to these schools that you identified as they're having the greatest need so in 2014 when it first passed the school district did not do a good job of implementing the student equity need index by applying dollars we actually sued the district and got the settled two years later and they allocated 150 million to 50 highest need schools over three years and that really helped to create the public awareness and in 2018 so last year April of 2018 students and parents organized and they really focused on working with the school board members and started with only two board members who were supportive of the equity index and actually got a unanimous vote to adopt the index as the new funding formula and updated index and allocating 25 million dollars to this current academic year and 263 million dollars to high and highest need schools starting in 2019-2020 so it comes with money, yes okay well this is certainly something other districts could think about in terms of targeting those funds even more specifically to the schools that really need the funds so I want to go to your, I don't know what part in crime but David Ratry the Chamber of Commerce David, you've been very involved in these reforms right from the beginning and just wondering given your business experience and could you highlight how the LCFF reinforces what you regard as important lessons from the business world? Sure but I want to take a moment just a tiny bit of privilege you know I have to say this seems like an incredible moment that if we drew up a blank piece of paper and said who are two of the greatest educators of our generation in the US it's Mike Kirst and Linda Darlin-Hammon and to have Mike having served us now two tours of duty but this last eight years with Linda at his side and now have that torch pass directly to Linda it's just a gift to me beyond all this imagination and hopes for California kids so I just want to acknowledge again these two individuals and they inspire so many of us and I'm one of those that whatever sort of Mike and Linda tell me to do that's what I do which is why I'm sitting here too because Linda said get your butt up to Sacramento so to your question some of you know but I was a business executive and I was sort of classically trained you might say as an MBA and tried to run a competitive company or companies and I was able to retire young white male privilege as that and I started trying to help education and I was sort of feeling like I was on the shore waiting into the ocean and education was on the wrong wave you were on the wave going out on the wave trying to come in because as I experienced in my business career we moved in the U.S. from an era that was kind of like the industrial age of management that was built our economy in the 50's and 60's it had characteristics like it was very bureaucratic it was very autocratic very top-down heavy control of power at the top of companies disempowerment at the front line we were hyper competitive we competed with external companies but we also competed internally we were obsessed with carrots and sticks the idea that people are not intrinsically motivated and they need extrinsic motivation to perform well and famously a CEO most of you are probably too young but Jack Welch who was ran GE and was seen as one of the best CEOs in the U.S. in the 70's and 80's he believed in forced ranking and that you would rank every employee every year and you fire the lowest 10% that was some great leadership strategy fire those bad employees every year and in the 80's as the Japanese from really taking a page from a great American consultant the Japanese really led with high-performing teams and positive work cultures and trying to create support for people on the premise that people were intrinsically motivated and great work cultures tapped into that intrinsic motivation and people brought their A game and it was shocking to me when I found out as I moved into education you were sort of educators were taking the page out of the Jack Welch book I knew that that's terrible with API, AYP, the KC value-added turnaround schools it's just all negative reductive things no wonder teachers didn't want to be in schools I was like come on these are like hostile work cultures so to me it's been so profoundly wonderful that Linda and Mike and so many of you have turned California into a place where we are pro people, we're pro teacher we're pro educator, we're pro kids and we're building positive work cultures and that's LCFF and LCAP and really replacing an API which is a reductive ranking structure to a dashboard that gives information so people can use their own inner wisdom and intrinsic motivation to work in teams it's just so much more positive the work's half done and I think now the next eight years we're going to go to the high point on the hill for kids I just ask a quick follow-up David we hear complaints from business community so often we're not getting kids, we're not getting the labor force we've got to import them H1B is just a key part of the whole Silicon Valley success story where do you see that debate or I don't know that dynamic our business is the business community still complaining are we doing what we need to do to get students to the workplace better prepared it's a natural tendency I think for any of us whether it's the business community sort of blaming higher ed or higher ed blaming K-12 K-12 blaming early ed to sort of sit back and say they weren't ready when they came to me I think the good news is more and more of us all are saying we're all in this together and it's about collaboration both hierarchical you might say as you progress through education into a workforce but also horizontally as like the CUNY coalition or other partners work together most business people that I deal with they're amazed with the kids that we have in California and they know that they're lucky to have them come into their workplace and they need to get more engaged and not just sit back and wait until they graduate too they need to work with teachers and schools and help young people get internships and job shadowing and come in the classrooms as a business person throughout the whole developmental experience of a young person and not just sort of sit back and wait until they graduate college and then complain you think this webinar nuisance emphasis college from cradle to career is going to mean we're going to have to engage the business community even more in terms of that career piece of it I think so, yeah I think we're in a big turn in California and it's a really good turn but we have a long way to go and the business community needs to get far more engaged and be a true partner of cradle to career education but I think those prospects are high okay terrific we have a few questions I'm going to ask the panelists I think we have about 10 minutes and one minute answers I'm asking you questions which really we could spend an hour answering so it's a challenge one question there's been a lot of discussion about progress and continuing challenges within the K-troll system what you see is the relationship between closing education gaps and addressing the deep disparity in opportunities outside of school you want to sure and I'm just going to adjust your mic one more okay I can see what the problem is there okay I think that'll do it okay okay so to rephrase the question is what are we doing to mitigate the opportunity gaps outside of the school is that possible and it is possible I think more than ever the opportunity gap is on that whole social emotional field I think as schools we need to rethink that academics along with the emotional and social aspect is really critical our students need to learn how to resolve conflict how to work together as teams at our district we are investing 15 minutes a day to teach those specific skills of communication and collaboration explicitly to ensure that index increases we've actually tested our kids on social emotional intelligence and one things that we found out is that our kids they feel lonely in school they don't feel connected in school they don't feel that an adult listens to them so focus for this year has been how do we enhance that adult to student relationship so I think that's one way to mitigate those those opportunity gaps you know that may happen and I know there's a push now we have an assumed community schools and that is supposed to address some of those broader issues but quick comment later on I know John Kim is going to talk about schools and communities first but for us there is definitely a need for more funding even Los Angeles Unified School District does not have projects a deficit like in the next three years right and so there's a need for school funding but California we've done pretty good at taxing ourselves in other areas whether it's to build new parks whether it's to look at public safety right but we haven't done a good job of using formulas like the student equity need index to direct those resources to communities that have a greater need and so in Los Angeles we're actually working with the advancement project and LA voice to get the Board of Supervisors to adopt a justice equity need index that takes cost savings from Prop 47 and from us from California incarcerating less people right to target some of those cost savings to communities that are experiencing higher levels of violence so we definitely have to have a community approach also to address need where students are experiencing other social issues outside of school and remind us what Prop 47 is so Prop 47 we classified major felonies so nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors which allowed a lot of people to be released from prison and we classify their felonies okay terrific well another question I'm going to ask Mike and maybe David Ratrack and on this is anyone concerned about the growing pension liability and how is it affecting school districts budgets now and going forward yeah well I would obviously people are concerned about the pension liabilities and I think that we need to reconsider some of the basic underlying factors there in terms of how long teachers need to work to get a pension or administrators what the style of the benefits can be in the future it I don't think we're going to be and should do anything about the people that currently have contracts for benefits but I do think there needs to be a rethinking of the underlying assumptions and approaches that we've been taking in the past so just backing up the rates without any rethinking of some of the conceptual underpinnings I think is not going to work over the long run David Ratrack any thoughts on this well I think it does relate to the earlier points about funding education well when you fund something well and you try to create a great employer for people to want to work and teach for a lifetime you give them a respectable pension and you have to fund that it's just that simple we underfunded that for a long time so that's why we got ourselves behind the eight ball I think Jerry Brown did the right thing to say we need to start to fix that and work with the legislature but I think we over corrected by putting too much burden on districts and not enough new money into the whole system at the beginning I think it's these are long term structural things you have to figure out and we really didn't face them but I think if we face them courageously and gradually over five or ten years and we put more money in the system for many things but that included these are solvable issues just from the superintendent's level this pension issue is this real oh it's grave it's undercutting the potential the progress that we're seeing now with pension cost just skyrocketing it's eroding many of the new LCFF dollars that we have received before and it's going to continue to increase to twenty twenty one I believe and we'll see from there but when you look at the amount of money I believe is seventy ten cents per dollar goes in pension cost for every new dollar we receive so that's significant well I have you I had a couple of questions about your master teacher program I'm going to ask Danielle because this has also been an issue of pathways for teachers and really freeing them up to use their skills what actually do they do these master teachers and how often do they meet and train other teachers well let me give you an example of a typical day when teachers are in collaboration time the master teacher may come in and show resources out there to help teachers with creating assignments that are connected to the standards during a typical day the master teacher may be invited by a novice teacher to help with classroom management or how to teach a specific math skill and either the master teacher will teach and the novice teacher will see or they will co-teach together as well so there's different frameworks it could be in a typical day that the master teacher may do a walkthrough with a team of teachers going from class to class and sharing three things looking at the learning environment student actions and teacher actions and we have success criteria for each and then the master teacher may also along with teachers provide future professional development opportunities as well those are three specifics let me ask Daniel is this something you are in your network or is that an opportunity for the master teachers in the districts you are working with it's difficult I look at mine and we struggle with trying to find the time to make it work because I'm in the classroom all day so for me to be out of my classroom for even just an hour means somebody needs to be with my kids I'm fortunate that I have a very supportive administrator and if he can cover it or get somebody to cover it he will have to be very supportive and I'm sure that's a huge part time so every other week she's available but again you have to schedule her so the scheduling becomes a huge issue two years ago we did a mini lesson study with a group of teachers and the coordination that it took to get teachers released to go observe other teachers was enormous just the amount of conversations and that was for nine people so I absolutely appreciate the idea of time and having that release time and the collaboration time because we don't have enough of that built into our days as it is and teachers need that to be able to go observe somebody to go talk with somebody to plan together to review your data and what does this mean, where are we going to go next and we don't have that built in in the general sense like I'm fortunate or I'm at to have my administrator try to put in as much as possible but between trying to get sub coverage or trying to get somebody else to cover it there's all these things that are working against it just because of the way the system is currently designed and I think if we had something built in place where you had those opportunities I can't even imagine how powerful that would be for teachers and then in turn the students very much to my curse I know this has been one of your concerns about the teaching how do we get professional development have you do the last word I did want to just maybe we did get a question unfortunately I don't have time to get into it but the question I think suggests what the issue is what role can high quality after school and summer learning programs do that's a key part of this whole cradle to career and dealing with some of those opportunity gaps but Mike in terms of your concerns about the teacher core and getting what they need to do the best possible work and just in terms of what you thought when you started out on this I mean to get these reforms in place in really a place at the state that really is a country are you feeling are you feeling about that right now you know as we hand over the torch well I in terms of California I'm still very concerned about it I think the LPI has report as really the right directions the scale of it and the time at source did a really good article on are teachers ready for the next generation science standards this is a tremendous change and for particularly elementary and middle school teachers we've overthrown the whole conceptual base of science now with a focus on not just content knowledge but interdisciplinary knowledge applying science so here these elementary teachers in their classroom and here my sitting in Sacramento we've done English language arts math and science history they're supposed to be doing doing much more civics and health so you know I look at the typical elementary teacher and the scope of what we have done in overhauling and rethinking what is most what students need to know and be able to do and so that that's what I think we need to step back and my only critique of the LPI report is it doesn't have the scale of it it's just so big if we were Rhode Island we could get people in this room and solve these problems but you know we have 350,000 or so teachers and administrators going up and it's really the scale of it is still I think yet for us to address quickly one of the key issues on the table is more money for schools and I know you have heard you've expressed frustration but this comes up in almost every conversation and there's no easy fix to this but do you think we need more money I mean because we already as Governor Newsom pointed out 98 monies went from 47 billion 7 years ago to 80 billion next year that's not some change Yes we do need more money I would point out that we were in the 40s if you don't adjust for costs and I'll come back to costs we went from the 40s to near the national average what you're facing your tail is the housing costs go up too fast and you know teachers and administrators have to live somewhere so you know then we adjust for the costs and we find we drop down to 41st so as long as the cost pressures are so high then in terms of housing and living costs we definitely need a generation model it's got to be on the revenue side so let's see what happens in 2020 on the amendment to Proposition 13 on business and commercial property the states that are ahead of us have a three stool system federal, state, local we essentially have a federal and state system the local property tax is tax locally and brought into Sacramento and we recirculate it so when you read that we have property tax yeah but we control it through the finance formula in Sacramento so if we I don't really know how to do it without getting local taxation back or extending taxes to services more services in that regard because the sales tax is just on hard goods and that's a model from 30, 40 years ago so those two big parameters getting local flexibility on property taxation or extending states or the taxes to services I think those are probably there we may have milked the income tax as much as we can there may be more to do there on that note we're hoping that Mike Kirst we're counting on him staying involved in California education but I really wanted to thank the five people here and this is what makes all of this work this is why we are making progress and makes me optimistic that we can actually get to the goals that we're all striving for big round of applause for our panel thank you so much for the design thank you it was really fun hearing from you okay good morning everyone I'm Roberta Ferger senior writer and director of storytelling for the Learning Policy Institute we're fortunate to have another group of dynamic and engaged panelists to help frame this next conversation which is focused on next steps for California policy before we get started I want to introduce our guests first to my left Heather Huff Heather is the executive director of PACE Policy Analysis for California Education PACE produced the recent Getting Down to Facts two studies and will share with us some of the key findings of those studies Rutger Johnson to her left is an associate professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC California Berkeley he specializes in the economics of education with a focus on the impacts of poverty and inequality on life chances Rutger will share about his study on the impact of LCFF on student outcomes and also the policy implications for that study John Kim is the executive director of the advancement project a statewide organization whose work is focused on prioritizing the needs of marginalized communities the advancement project is also part of a coalition that is advancing a new revenue initiative here in California which John will tell us a bit about next is Tom Armolino Tom is executive director of the California collaborative for educational excellence in his role Tom is really at the center of the state's effort to create a coherent system of support so we can talk about that today as well and last but not least Assemblymember Patrick O'Donnell as chair of the assembly education committee assemblymember O'Donnell has a unique vantage point on policymaking in the state as he and his staff review many of the education bills that come before the legislature we look forward to his comments as well so welcome again one note as with the previous panel you have cards on your table questions that come up during the conversation please jot them down and one of my colleagues will pick them up and we'll get to at least a few of them before the end so first Heather for you research has played a pivotal role in education policymaking in California both identifying need and also assessing progress in September pace released getting down to facts too 36 research studies analyzing a range of issues from the pre-k to 12 to set the stage for this panel tell us a little bit about the top three to five priorities that were elevated in those studies great studies and all of these researchers that were brought together to take stock of where we had been and start to lay out some of the paths a potential paths forward for the new administration we identified a couple of key points the first is that we have seen progress that we've made big investments in K-12 education and that there's reason to believe that we're on the right track as my colleague to the left will describe in a minute there's some evidence that there are positive changes in student outcomes but also there's broad stakeholder support for the kinds of changes that we've put into place the common core standards new testing the local control funding formula the LCAP process but we have a really long way to go to fully realize these opportunities as we've been discussing this morning and there's a couple of key places so one is that we've been making investments in K-12 but we have not been making as strong investments in early childhood and where we see that then as our students progress through the K-12 system is that our schools are actually doing a pretty good job of accelerating student achievement but when students step into our public system in kindergarten the achievement gap is already so large that our schools aren't able to close that gap and that just really points to the need to invest in the early childhood system and really to create a system where currently California does not have one compared to other states but even in the K-12 system we have a very important need to build capacity for the kinds of improvement that we want to see happen and the shift from No Child Left Behind from the API to where we're at now is really a shift to a continuous improvement approach. It's every person in the system from the teacher to the principal to the people who work in the school district to everyone at the state and our various state agencies play a particular role in driving improvement and it's a very different role than when somebody said we want people to be making decisions about how to invest their money and to be able to evaluate whether those investments have been effective and that's a big mindset shift it's a big structural shift and that capacity needs to be built at all of the levels of the system and the last piece which we've also discussed today is around funding we do not have enough funding in the system and we also have big issues that haven't been attended to yet such as pensions, such as special education funding and finance governance those things need to be addressed quickly in order for us to continue to move forward building the capacity to make use of all of the opportunities that we've been given in California. Thanks so much. One quick follow-up question you touched on this a little bit but where is there consensus around next steps from a policy perspective and in what areas do we need more research to really help inform next policy steps? Great question so I'll advertise this brief that we just wrote connecting the getting down to facts research to the governor's budget I would say that there's broad consensus in the broad strokes where there's not consensus is in where we how we're going to make these changes so while I think that there's a very general sense that early childhood is a place we need to invest some of the tensions that are still being discussed are when we talk about early childhood are we talking about seats are we talking about access or are we talking about quality and those are two different conversations and we need to be having both of those conversations simultaneously I think across any of these issues there are also there are similar types of conversations everyone agrees that the pension liability is a huge issue it's fantastic that we're putting some money as a state toward paying that down and relieving pressure for districts but how are we going to solve the structural problem that got us there and a lot of these solutions are not easy in any way they're going to require a lot of coalition building a lot of political will one of the getting down to facts studies estimated that we need a third more funding in order to adequately fund our schools and that's still less than what some northeastern states provide how are we going to get there what are we going to do as a state that will actually help us to make that investment and what about areas for more research are there areas that really we need to expand our knowledge from a research perspective in order to inform policy next steps there are always I'm a researcher so it's an easy question but yes there are always areas where we need more research I think that there are a couple of areas where we know we have needs in terms of understanding how we should move forward on implementing system one of the areas that comes to the forefront in many conversations I'm having is around special education that we've moved special education into the forefront of our accountability system and now we've shined a flashlight on to the performance of those students and there are lots of questions about how we make sense of the accountability data what kinds of actions are needed to best support those kids in school and when they leave our public education system and then I think as we begin to implement new policies there's always a critical need for research and evaluation that helps us know if we're actually accomplishing the things that we are trying to accomplish and in order to do that of course we need a really rock solid data system that helps us to learn about whether we're making the progress that we hope to. Thank you. Rucker keeping with the theme of research your research with Sean Tanner really provides the first analysis of the effects of LCFF and specifically the increase in resources and spending flexibility on student outcomes can you share with us the key findings from that work? Yeah thank you well I'm delighted to be here I want to thank first all of you who are just their dedication for excellence and equity and access and our schools certainly LPI and Linda and Louise Lewis just in terms of engaging this conversation I think that when I think about the issues regarding access I think it's important to frame where we started in other words the great recession really in school and quality really in terms of resources really increased following the recession and it required really I mean we're talking about like across the country 300,000 teachers and personnel laid off we're talking about 20% cuts in budgets and it really on the eve of LCFF being passed we still hadn't really meaningfully recovered from that and so LCFF when you think about what three major school reforms that this particular period encompasses it's LCFF it's the increases in state funded pre-K and trans just no kindergarten and then it's the new systems of support and these three are really taking head on the student achievement gaps that are really some of the pressing issues and these three policies with the LCFF dealing with the disparities in funding the pre-K and investments dealing with the gaps in school readiness on kindergarten entry and then the third about the new systems of support is really about targeting kind of targeted supports for district improvement and really trying to build that out now the reason I mention all three is because it's really the synergies between these three that really hold the promise of going the next mile and really kind of building these connections so what do we do in the interest of time we use annual data from 1995 through 2017 at the very detail district finance data link it to the student level achievement to try to really be among the first studies to document the impacts on student success and to really isolate the causal effects of spending we compare the changes in average student outcomes across courts from the same schools before and after the LCFF induced increases in spending and what we're able to document is that these impacts don't happen overnight but rather there is a kind of exposure or dose response that with each increasing year of exposure to the increased resources the first point is if these resources don't make it to the classroom well we shouldn't be expecting to see student improvement outcomes so if a lot of it is going to the pension in the future some of the successes I'm talking about now will definitely be undermined but what we do find in this particular period we're talking about the first three or four years of the rollout of education we're seeing increases in structural expenditures increases in teacher salaries albeit today marked the first day of the teacher strike in my kids school in Oakland Unified but that being said reductions in class size we're seeing those things occur and that is then translating into increases in high school graduation rates increases in student high school math and reading and in particular we're talking about a thousand dollar increase experienced consecutively in 10th, 11th, 12th throughout the high school years is leading to about a 5.9% increase in high school graduation rates and similarly we're seeing significant boosts in numeracy and literacy so that a thousand dollar increase experienced in four consecutive years 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade that by 11th grade is then leading to a 0.19 standard deviation increase in math achievement now you might think well what is that we're talking about that's equivalent to about 7 months of learning and it's about equivalent to about 38% of the average poor, non-poor achievement gap so these are significant progress now what you want to contextualize this is that Sean Reardon and others have documented that California students particularly middle income and lower income students are about a whole great level behind here's another states and so what that means a whole great level behind is that these gaps are closing via these investments and they require sustainment now just to kind of capitalize on some of the points that Heather made when we kind of relate to what's the way forward because I know I'm short on time they're pulling the plug but just a couple points that kind of put some empirical clothing around the issues around what's needed for the success these gaps of being a whole great level behind peers and other states is already appearing at kindergarten and what that means is that we need a more robust investment on the pre-K and transistor kindergarten to ensure that those investments in school readiness can be augmented so the four elements of that that kind of require some serious interrogation in terms of how we deal with this is that we have both see less than half of three and four year olds currently attend quality pre-K programs statewide we have a issue with regard to the funding with which let's see it's something on the order of a third of the median single parents budget is consumed with childcare costs remember that basically 58% of childcare in preschool workers are actually receiving public assistance so we're talking about low wages we're talking about actually they're not getting a lot of the training pieces to ensure high quality programs and then what you want to remember is that low income children 90% of low income children in unlicensed childcare settings of the children in those are low income so quality and access are part of that now the reason I mention all of this is because the synergies between pre-K and K-12 investments have to be thought of in concert and in other work we're documenting that basically when those things are done together and in concert that the total impact is much greater than the some of the parts and because I'm way out of time and probably way over my budget thank you I will stop now that's great so we're hearing duration and time these investments need to continue and also we need to think in a unified way about the pre-K to 12 continuum John you know the research shows as Recker's talked about in Heather is that the gaps in opportunities and outcomes are closing but they still persist we also know that there's an ongoing need for more funding we've heard that quite a bit more equitably spent to continue to close those gaps so John a key question is how do we generate these resources and I know the advancement project is part of a coalition advancing an initiative on the 2020 ballot can you tell us a little bit about that effort sure so good morning everyone I want to make sure this mic works you get a sense of how talented Janet Jackson really is when you have to work with one of these so I appreciate that so you kind of can't do this work without becoming a fan of history and looking back at sort of how decisions were made who really made them and for what reason and sort of how we got here at this particular point at the advancement project California one of the things that we're pretty clear about is that the political ecology of California has shifted such that the old modes of fighting for justice have to be updated so right so it's no longer that old school battle between a pure good on the outside and a pure evil on the inside right it's no longer the Dr. King versus the bull Connor kind of fights right we've seen a lot of shifting in terms of who are running our school districts who are running our cities who's running our state and many of them are our friends and so as opposed to looking for bad actors what we find more fruitful and more impactful is to look for where biases from generations ago had been baked into systems and how do we now route out the ghosts in those machines okay and when you look back in history you can find no scarier ghost no bigger ghost in our machine than prop 13 okay now I remember I was three years old when prop 13 passed and I remember thinking what the hell do you guys think in passing prop 13 I'm just kidding I remember I was three come on alright so you know if today's panels about scaling up and sustaining equity 40 plus years ago there was probably a similar conversation maybe a room like this that actually their point was how do we scale and sustain inequity and their answer was prop 13 okay so when we think about the reform of prop 13 that is coming up and let's be clear it's not maybe qualified it has qualified it qualified in December it's gonna be on the ballot unless something dramatic happens but it's gonna be the first thing that you see after all the candidate votes it's gonna be the first thing that you see to reform this thing for 40 years that has put one arm behind our back in terms of our state getting ready for the future right and so when I think about it I think about the 11 billion dollars that could be coming in sure that's gonna be huge but I also think about what story we're telling the future right what kind of state are we gonna be because in 1978 the signal to me and my generation was that this state was gonna only be golden for some people not for all of us okay and what we're saying here is either by race or by generation or by class there's gonna be a lines cut and people who got theirs are gonna hold on to theirs from 1978 onward and then everybody else good luck and so what we're looking at now moving forward is a proposition that actually opens those things up now let's be clear the campaign was a recently run campaign in 1978 they had three layers grandma's home you don't want grandma to lose her home there was underlying and underpinning of racial appeals that the hordes of black brown and asian people are gonna come take yours so let's lock that off but really the big thing underneath all of that was that corporate interests were designing it in a way so that they could have loopholes and get away with having to pay their fair share okay three layers of the campaign cake the third one many people didn't know about okay and all this campaign in 2020 is gonna do is get rid of that third layer grandma's home is not touched none of our homes will be touched and if anybody tries to tell you that they probably got a bridge to sell you as well okay what we're looking at is basically how do we say hey big corporation right you've gotten by 40 years without having to pay your fair share now it's time to kick in so we can all live into the future as a state 80% of the new revenue from our estimate will come from 8% of property owners of commercial property owners okay so it's really the sort of billionaire millionaire corporate class that we're looking at that we need to have them pay their fair share and for the economists in the room it means that we're not so overly reliant on just one type of tax in terms of personal property tax I'm sorry personal tax about actually getting some building some equity in the tax on the buildings that we are in the places that we stand, the land that we stand on okay so that's what the campaign is about let me just end by saying this of the 11 billion first that's estimates of a few years old so that number might go up as we move along what we're looking at is a 40-60 split of the revenue 40% of that would go to K-12 60% of that would go back into local jurisdictions like counties and cities and special districts including fire departments right we need that of the 40% for education dollars it will sit on top of Prop 98 dollars and it will be pooled into a state fund that will be distributed using sort of the equity principles of LCFF as well okay and so we're looking at 11 billion dollars 40% of it being distributed to K-12 and community colleges using equity as a principle and the last thing I'll say is this we're in an unprecedented position with this campaign we've qualified nearly two years in advance of the actual vote no proposition has done that before we have two years to build momentum to educate the public there are people in this room that actually were not born when Prop 13 was passed I was three but some people were not yet born and so we're going to have to do a lot of public education but the momentum is building the momentum is extraordinary and every time unfortunately one of our school districts has a strike it reignites the public conversation about what we haven't been doing for our schools and the answer to that very hard question a lot of time ends up we need to reform Prop 13 and so we're very excited about the momentum that's being built the campaign is growing the coalition is growing and so we're really excited to have to lock arms with everyone in this room to figure out how we make this change thank you so John a quick follow up one of the getting down to facts studies that Heather referenced so that it would take another 25 billion over 2016-17 spending to ensure that all students had a chance to meet the goals set by the state we're not going to get to that number overnight so how do we keep advancing equity even while achieving adequacy and funding that remains a work in progress sure so one story I think of a lot is we were doing these community mapping sessions in South LA I don't know if it was with our partners community coalition or maybe in Urban League and there was one young boy he was maybe 12 and he told the story of the bus stop was about five blocks away from campus and however heavy his backpack was and this is not a big kid you know he would have to run as fast as possible to get to campus because he had to avoid dangerous streets dangerous gangs and just all these other conditions in that community okay now I worry if my kid is mad at me as I'm dropping her off at school how she's going to do at school but this kid here who has to run for his dear life to get to campus so what are his chances to really succeed in that classroom and so one of the things that I think we need to be thoughtful about is what can we do on school campuses in the classroom and what is the ecology that we need to be building around some of these students that are based on just the whole kid the whole family and the whole community we really appreciate this administration thinking about the whole child but we also have to really be thoughtful about how do we also think about the juvenile justice system and how that gets done in parts of South LA how about fresh foods and vegetables how about parks how about all these things and the thing about the schools and communities first reform 2020 is that it'll do work on that other side of the ledger as well right it'll do work in terms of how counties can reform what these communities look like and not just what's going on in the classrooms and so I think we have to stop we were doing good job thinking systemically about equity but how do we start thinking ecologically about equity and about how we bring all these fights together because it may cost 25 billion if it was just the schools alone that was going to tackle all these challenges it may be less and more leverageable if we have all parts of our sort of governance working on this at the same time thank you so leveraging the whole system to advance the whole child Tom the research is clear and we heard this a bit from Laura during her presentation of the need for capacity building at every level of the system in the latest dashboard release for example nearly 400 districts were identified for targeted assistance through this 8-byte system of support the California collaborative for educational excellence is going to play a pivotal role plays a pivotal role in that system can you share with us your plans for connecting districts with the support they need to improve student opportunities and outcomes and as the other panelists have said thank you for this opportunity and thank you to the folks in the room for your care about children one of the things that I've experienced in this role I'm in my eighth month on the job now so is there is passion for kids everywhere everywhere I go we sit in schools and anywhere we go in groups folks are really focused around trying to figure out how we're going to do a better job for the children that were tasked with serving for those that don't know much about the California collaborative for educational excellence we're our fourth year of existence in the first three years and we came along with LCFF during that time we didn't have dashboard data we didn't have multiple years of data we had new assessments so during that first three years my predecessor Dr. Carl Cohn had lots of opportunities to experiment a little bit opportunities to kind of go in and try to think about how could we make a difference how could we build capacity and so the work that we have been doing over the past three years what I can tell you is some of that is ending some of that's changed in particular where it's changing is because of the data that we have now so when you mention the 400 schools now that have been identified those 400 districts that have been identified in our role in particular when we were developed the statute says that we were developed to advise and assist school districts, charter schools and county offices in particular around helping to implement the LCAP in addition that language now has changed and also talks about our role in being able to participate in what we now call the newest accountability system the system of support that is a key role that we are playing now in particular so if you there's a handout I don't know if it's on your desk or not but you will see these I don't expect you to read it but you can see there's a model I encourage you to look at this model in particular and it really defines our new system our role in particular in that is that the system now has been developed the system is focused on local control and you'll notice with these concentric circles is that everything leads back to the district and then it takes the next layer out and county offices in particular are designed and they receive funding to be that first level support for school districts the next level out now are these new what we call these geographic leads which are county offices as well some expertise in particular to make sure throughout the state that every county office throughout these various geographic regions has the capacity to serve the districts that they're asked to serve so what we know about county offices and I know them well I was a former county superintendent is that every county office is different just like every district is a little bit different some have more capacity than others based on size in particular so these geographic leads have this responsibility to make sure that they're whatever the district need may be that they can then be able to provide a resource maybe that their current county office doesn't have that ability then in addition to that there's a variety of other leads that have been funded in the state there are equity leads there are community engagement initiative that is new this year there are new self-leads there are math leads that you have some particular expertise in an area these geographic leads are intended to be able to make sure that they have access to those and know what those resources are so that they can make sure that if a district has that need they can get that the example I always use is that where I was from in Shasta County Shasta County was a very white county very poor we had very few EL students so as a county office that was not a resource that I tended to have when we had EL students who came in the district that had some needs that needed to be served I would often look to butte county so butte had more of a migrant ed program we would look to them we were colleagues I would look to the county superintendent we had a relationship and we would share some resources that's not the case everywhere now what would happen is that if there was a district in Shasta County who had that same need yes we could look to butte graphically we could also look to the other geographic leads we could also look to the new EL lead in particular to make sure that district gets that resource that's how the system is built part of our role in particular is working with the department of ed is to actually help manage that actually help bring these folks together last week we had a meeting with 80 folks in the room with all the leads in the room all talking about how are we going to make this system work make sure that we get that resource down to a district and that any district if you're in Modak or if you're in LA you would have that same ability so a large part of our role is shifting to be focused around the system of support another key role that's new this year we've always had the ability the state superintendent has always had the ability to assign us to a district so if there was a district in the state that they felt had some academic needs the state superintendent could say CC would like you to go in and provide some assistance that happened last spring for the first time in Englewood Unified so Englewood if you don't know Englewood Unified they have been on your state receivership for the last seven years which means they have a state loan they've lost over 8,000 students during that time over half of their students during that time state superintendent reached out to us and said we'd like you to go in I see if you can assist this district in the academic issues or needs that they may have in addition we had in Vallejo so Vallejo City Unified also reached out to us so the superintendent raised a hand and said we would really like some support we reached out to the county office we asked the state superintendent to assign us there because when we're assigned we can use our resources to help them then in the fall AB 1840 was developed so we're now the state law has now changed to where if any district goes in receivership we are automatically assigned to go in and do some work in that district right now in the state so we are now getting prepared to have conversations in Oakland also in South Monterey and so we're now have this ability to where we're going in alongside the county office and the State Department and other folks and sitting with that district and trying to figure out what it is that we can do to academically help them to try to create some systems and some supports to help them academically what's unique about that is that when these districts in the past have always had academic issues there's not a district in the state that's gone into receivership that didn't have academic issues right that shouldn't surprise any of us right they have a lack of resources so I think in maybe the next question I can share a little bit about some of what we've kind of seen as we've gone in there and where some of those concerns are yeah you know one of the things you mentioned when we were talking before today was that both in that one-on-one support for a district but also statewide the importance of relationships that often haven't existed in the past and I wonder if you can speak to that as you think about the challenges ahead but the role of relationships there yeah it's this shouldn't be unique to any of us either education is a pretty isolated system right we are trying to change that system this whole system is for everybody kind of working together collaborating together to try to make some differences you heard the superintendent earlier do this to talk about collaboration and then you heard the example of the teacher where the teachers are coming together I can remember as a district soup when we first started to work on collaborating I had teachers come to me and say I don't want to work with that teacher right I had some folks go I got things to do I got my kids to work with and it was time away from that I didn't see that they didn't see that that could actually be a resource to help them get better so we had to really make sure that we brought them together that we provided opportunities to develop trust we provided opportunities with some systems to help them so for example when they came together to make sure that we had some data in front of them we had opportunities for them to do some lesson study we had to kind of put some systemic practices in place to help them with that piece in our work in particular what we're finding is that districts and folks are working in isolation often right they work they're used to trying to solve these problems on their own right and so what's very interesting is that even with our work is some folks invite us in right and other opportunities we get invited in in the very beginning everybody's a little bit suspect can we trust each other and what are you going to do are you going to create more work how are you going to help help me this mindset also there's still an issue with folks even around this idea of differentiated assistance and when county offices now are expected to work with the district district's mindset see that in the old system is a status there's something wrong you're going to come in and tell me that I have to do something different and then hopefully you're going to leave right and they don't see that as a mindset that actually could be a resource to come to the table to try to be able to help them and look together and try to identify some root causes put some strategies in place and be a resource to help them Thank you Assemblymember O'Donnell we've heard a little bit about in this panel in the previous one the ways in which local districts and their teachers and their communities are embracing the shift from a state more state focused control to local control giving districts the ability to devise solutions and budget and plan budgeting in ways that reflect their local context how do you see the legislature balancing this important it's important policy making role within a local control framework especially as it relates to developing new policies and programs Thank you and thank you for the opportunity to be here I think first we need to look back when we talk about local control and what local control isn't my background is that of a classroom teacher 22 years teaching middle and high school and I can remember especially at the K-8 setting walking into classrooms at 2.24 in the afternoon and every student would have to be sitting on a number on a piece of carpet there would be scripted learning going on open court remember the open court days of course all in the name of closing the achievement gap but I think we know that micromanagement from Sacramento trying to micromanage the classroom from Sacramento doesn't work we tried it it didn't work so what did we do with the help of many people in this room Dr. Kirsch I see you there we came up with a local control funding formula probably one of the chief supporters of local control in the state capital I sit as the chair of the education committee and I can tell you I will see a number of bills this year that are going to come forward that seek to micromanage the classroom from Sacramento there will be bills that seek to re-establish our old categorical scheme wherein we had those 20 or so streams of funding there will even be bills that say every school has to start at this time or later those are the kinds of things I really push back on because we did that it didn't work I'm very supportive of the model of saying here's the bar here are the resources too few granted too few but here are the resources now meet that bar and so really my role as I see it I bring my classroom experience to Sacramento is to protect that local control funding formula and give it some time to saturate throughout California listen we have a thousand school districts 10,000 schools in the state of California we shouldn't be designing how they all act from the Sacramento level so taking that a little bit further we've heard both about the advances and about the challenges that exist and I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how you see working within the legislature to strengthen the reforms that have put in place and really provide that runway for the next 10 years well it's always educate and activate we get new members every two years in the state legislature sometimes in between and my job is often to sit down with them individually because they're going to come up with the bill everybody wants to do an education bill they all think they have to do something they have an example of a program that's working in their local district and they say hey every district in the state should do this let me tell you about it my job is to say wow that is a great idea you should keep doing it your district should keep doing it and maybe you should share it but it doesn't necessarily have to be state law that every district implements the same type of program so really my role is first to educate people and then when it comes to the committee level there's a political environment and I have to be you know sometimes very forceful and I'm not afraid to hit the red button but it comes up and a killer bill that I think is going to be detrimental to the local control concept well thank you I just want to remind folks at their tables if you do have questions feel free to put your hand up and someone will pick them up for all of the panelists so just jump in if you feel so moved we've really heard from a diversity of voices today and that diversity of engagement we know is going to be key to sustaining and deepening the work that's been started and we continue to build the capacity of all stakeholders from the students and parents and families to the educators in the classroom and the district and state level folks to really be full participants in local control funding formula so I just want to jump in on a few of the points that speak to that I think one of the things that I think the state's emphasis on local control I think our cautionary note is that it will fail with data systems that can inform what's working why it's working so that we can replicate successes and we can build a district's capacity to inform and it will spill over to learning and innovation random acts of innovation that aren't portable are really not so helpful so I think that's an important piece another piece is to remember that in work I've done previously it's important to recognize that our physical health and mental health services are actually the provision of them in our California school system is among the lowest in the country and that's actually an important part of whether it be absenteeism, asthma and other things that affect learning outcomes to have the kind of wraparound services so certainly other people can speak on it I'll jump in on that as well we had a paper in getting down to facts and community engagement one of the things that I think is critical is educating those stakeholders on what this process looks like and how it's different in the same way that we're talking about the mindsets around continuous improvement needing to be there for educators for policy makers it's also true for parents, communities and school boards I totally agree with what you said about the data that in order for parents and communities to advocate for what works they need to know how to push for that kind of evaluation and how to be consumers of that kind of evaluation and it's only then that we can actually engage those people in realizing the vision of true stakeholder engagement which is not, I read an article about this thing so now I'm going to push for it or my kid needs something different although there's a place for that as well but how can the community come together to be a player at the table and pushing the equity agenda great, John so before I started doing this kind of work I played a lot of music and I was in a lot of bands and one of the things that you learn quickly is that there are those people that want to get out there and shine on their own and then there are those people that want to be a part of the band and make a big sound all together and one of the things that we found and places that we do our advocacy is why we offer change is when everybody sees themselves as being part of a band and everyone sees themselves as being a part of a conversation and that they're sort of the sort of shared voice and power right, so let me say give you one quick example, when we passed with Cocoa and ICS that Sene idea and LAUSD tell people what Sene is the student equity need index which we had just talked about that campaign was about five years LAUSD had five superintendents in that same timeframe okay, LAUSD had this sort of revolving door of superintendents and there was one moment after we had passed the resolution that a superintendent was like what are we talking about what do you mean Sene, what is that and so it was up to the community to bring that conversation back in and say oh actually you all had passed this let's figure out how to improve it so on and so forth and so how do we build out voices not just within the isolated space of school classrooms and you know the administration or even the school board members but also in terms of community engagement how do we get parents how do we get community groups in there because unless that whole band is playing together you know it's going to start sounding pretty off pretty quickly and so I worry this experiment of local control very much hinges on capacity on the inside and outside and we don't think enough about that outside capacity great I think the thing about capacity is to first recognize where is the in capacity, so one of the things that we found is that in particular with the districts that are really struggling is that when we go in there we've been asked to do what they call the systemic academic reviews what we found is they have multiple plans there's not a lack of plans there's an LCAP but the LCAP is not an actionable LCAP it's very large it's something that only maybe the district office level folks exist often they have a strategic plan their strategic plan is because the LCAP is not working for them some of them have other reports from like the fiscal crisis management assistance team some have studied their special ed issues they have these multiple things that exist and what we try to do is really take a look at systemically what are the systemic practices that exist and what are the ones that do not exist and then determine where is that capacity lacking and then try to figure out how you can fill the hole so I think that's a main piece of work that we're doing you know we've been really trying in particular over these first three years to try to measure have we changed the practices in the field and can it be sustainable so when we leave now we were intended to do some work have folks been able to use those resources and be able to take those and continue doing them and in particular if you study the improvement science model it talks about that you're really trying to have folks learn to improve how to perform so the difference there is actually understanding the plan to study act model these short cycles and actually going in and trying to understand how you actually improve something I learn how to improve something then once you're able to do that take that and be able to scale that out right where what folks generally do is they attack a certain thing and they go after that thing and we get asked for that a lot we give us some resources to go after this one thing but it's not with any real coherence so there is no capacity built because you do it and maybe you get a little bit of growth and then we move on to the next thing and it's not something that's sustainable it may I think the challenge I have from the Sacramento level is when we talk about that capacity and that that need to improve how do we drive it from the state legislature and that's a very difficult question to answer because we really can't it has to be done at the local level and that's where you come in for sure and those are some of the challenges challenges I face every year with the little bills that come forward seek to do good things but again take us incrementally closer to micromanaging from the Sacramento level again keeping with you assembly member O'Donnell the last few years the legislature has made big strides in terms of addressing the systemic teacher shortage throughout the state we have a question from the audience that says given the shortages in K-12 education what do you see as the prospects for recruiting and preparing teachers and new administrators and staff to lead this new state system for pre-K to 12 so we've started to address the systemic need to bring more teachers in and keep more teachers in the classroom communications challenge as well how do we bring more people into a system that they want to stay in well there's volume and there's velocity so certainly we need more teachers and we're starting to see some improvement on that front I think the velocity we respond