INTRODUCTION
The California Teachers Association Institute for Teaching's Schools of Greatest Need Initiative is an urgently needed program designed to build community investment and sustained reform in California's lowest performing schools. With $4 billion cut from public education in the state over the last two years, threatening hard won gains in class size reduction and school staffing, it is imperative that we find a new way to bring high quality, equitable schools to our most vulnerable communities.
In 2002, after nearly a year of holding "Listen, Learn, and Lead1" sessions, the California Teachers Association (CTA) Board of Directors decided to establish the Schools of Greatest Need Initiative (SGN). This is a long-term commitment to work in partnership with teachers, parents, community-based organizations, and businesses to create more effective strategies for increasing parental and community involvement in the future of California's Schools of Greatest Need.
This year, the Institute for Teaching (IFT), a nonprofit organization affiliated with the CTA, has begun selecting a number of schools in the state, starting in Pomona Unified School District, to inaugurate a community-based planning process and pilot program to improve student learning, increase professional training for new and emergency-credentialed teachers, build stronger involvement of parents from diverse cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and invite investment from individuals, businesses, and foundations. The IFT plans to raise $10 million for the program over five years.
THE CTA INSTITUTE FOR TEACHING
The IFT was founded in 1967 as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The mission of the IFT is to enhance, support, and sustain high quality teaching and high quality public schools for all California students. Through mobilizing teachers, special programs, research, conferences, networking, and community-based coalitions, the CTA Institute for Teaching seeks to advance public education and promote the common good of our students and communities.
THE PROBLEM
In recent years, California's public education system has struggled to provide equitable education to children living in poverty. Years of neglect have left the state's lowest performing schools in crisis, and the state budget shortfall can only exacerbate the problem. A sampling of the statistics provides the compelling case for the IFT's Schools of Greatest Need Initiative:
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There are over one million kindergarten through twelfth grade students who attend schools in the lowest two deciles of the Academic Performance Index, California's ranking system.
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Almost 95 percent of elementary school students in our lowest performing schools live in poverty; 93 percent of these students receive free or reduced lunch; and 62 percent are learning to speak English.
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Over 95 percent of all students in Schools of Greatest Need are ethnic minorities.
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Even after enacting class-size reduction, California has the third worst student-teacher ratio in the nation and ranks 30th in per-pupil spending.
INVOLVING TEACHERS AND PARENTS IN REFORM STRATEGIES
Current reforms attempting to address this crisis in public education were developed without significant teacher and parent input, and do not take into account the myriad poverty issues that affect a child's ability to learn. In the 2002 "Listen, Learn, and Lead" sessions, teachers told CTA what it was like to come to work in unsafe environments that neither serve the best interests of their students nor invite learning:
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Facilities are overcrowded and rundown, with inadequate heating and cooling systems.
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There is a chronic shortage of teaching materials and up-to-date textbooks.
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An inordinately high percentage of emergency credentialed and inexperienced teachers are employed in the Schools of Greatest Need, in working conditions that increase teacher turnover and attrition.
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The knowledge and experience of classroom teachers is too often overlooked in plans to improve schools.
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Parents from hugely diverse backgrounds find limited assistance or means to become more actively involved in their children's education.
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Schools lack solid relationships with local businesses, nonprofit organizations, clinics, preschools and neighbors, missing many opportunities for investment.
CREATING SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
Teachers agree that they are but one part of the school community that also includes children, parents, principals, school neighbors, community-based organizations, and local businesses. By strengthening school communities, students in low-performing schools will have a better chance at succeeding. Simply put, more people will be invested in their success.
The Schools of Greatest Need Initiative is a multi-phased approach to creating school communities that can devise real solutions for improving Schools of Greatest Need before the gap widens further:
Preplanning and Site Selection
Preplanning for this new program began in October 2002. An advisory committee comprising CTA Board members, local teachers and CTA regional staff met to develop criteria for selecting schools to participate in the program and identify possible pilot districts. Pomona Unified School District was chosen as the pilot program launch site based on both its large number of decile 1 and 2 schools and its pre-existing organizing capacity: The CTA local, Associated Pomona Teachers (APT), is strong and active, and a community organizing effort led by the Industrial Areas Foundation LA Metro Organizing Strategy (IAF) is already under way.
In addition to Pomona, the IFT is exploring schools in Inglewood and Pasadena, San Francisco, West Contra Costa County, and Vallejo. This exploration process can take six to ten months during which time numerous meetings-one-on-one and in small groups-are held with district leadership, principals, teachers and parents to build interest and commitment, understand concerns and community issues, and develop trust. Because the success of the program is predicated on strong relationships and mutual respect between the selected schools and the community as well as within the schools, this is both one of the most important and most time-consuming processes of the initiative.
Site Planning
Once school sites are selected, a committee representative of the total school community -teachers, parents, students, school administrators, community and business leaders - will engage in a local planning process. The goals of this process will be to build working relationships among the stakeholders, identify key problem areas, design strategies for improving student performance, create a team-based action plan with performance markers, and work with IFT development staff to secure adequate resources for implementation. The initial site planning process will take from four to eight months depending on the priorities of each school and the resources needed, but the process of identifying areas for improvement and developing action plans will be ongoing.
Implementation
Unlike centralized school reform programs, SGN is a school community-based process, from planning to implementation. School community leaders are the primary actors in implementing the plans they have created. SGN organizers will be hired to assist team leaders, work with teachers to create professional development strategies, and provide resources for other elements of the process-parent involvement training; technology upgrades; teaching materials; building stronger relationships with school neighbors and local businesses, etc. The IFT and its community-based partners will also continue working with teachers, administrators and parents to forge stronger relationships between them and increase the engagement of the entire school community to improve student learning.
Evaluation
Each site will develop an evaluation process to measure student performance and school improvement based on both quantitative and qualitative criteria. The IFT will closely monitor these schools, and an outside evaluator, the University of Arizona's Evaluation Group for the Analysis of Data (EGAD), will help create a plan to define and measure success. A mechanism will also be established to capture and share information with other schools about strategies that work.
PARTNERSHIPS
The IFT is currently in the process of developing program partnerships with a number of institutions to increase resources for professional development of teachers, program evaluation, leadership development, and parent organizing. These organizations include:
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WestEd-a highly regarded regional nonprofit educational research, development, and service agency-to assist with professional development of teachers
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University of Arizona's Evaluation Group for the Analysis of Data (EGAD)-a nationally recognized organization dedicated to advancing program evaluation through improved social science research methodology and measurement-to help develop evaluation procedures for the Schools of Greatest Need Initiative
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The California Endowment, to engage teachers in outreach for California's Healthy Families program since chronic illness and lack of health insurance impede learning
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The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), to collaborate on parent-school organizing in some of Los Angeles County's most impoverished schools and to provide training for parents, teachers, principals, and community organizers on the acclaimed organizing strategies of the Alliance Schools Initiative in Texas2
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The Pacific Institute for Community Organizing (PICO), to collaborate on teacher-parent organizing and home visits and small school development in the Sacramento Valley and in other regions where PICO is based
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Local business and community leaders to develop new resources for schools and new legislation that will ensure increased, as well as more equitable distribution of, school resources
A LONG-TERM PROCESS
The Schools of Greatest Need Initiative is not a quick fix. It is an intensive, long-term process to strengthen school communities and improve student achievement. The IFT plans to raise $10 million over the next five years to underwrite this school community planning, engage in dialogue with nationally recognized leaders in school reform, mobilize teachers, increase parental engagement, and help advocate for and secure increased academic resources for students. CTA itself is investing more than $1 million in contributions and in-kind support. Because each school and region has unique issues, the IFT has developed a process that can be modified and refined to help additional low-performing schools in the coming years.
April 2004
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1. CTA's "Listen, Learn and Lead" sessions were designed for a broad group of stakeholders to share their issues and concerns related to the Schools of Greatest Need; to learn what can be done to assist these schools; and for CTA to lead the fight in California to do something concrete to assist students in the Schools of Greatest Need. CTA leaders met with over 2000 teachers, parents and community members.
2. The Alliance Schools Initiative is a community-based program to increase student achievement in low-income areas throughout Texas. Since 1991, the Alliance Schools Initiative has focused on bringing parents together with teachers and community leaders to try to solve problems in schools, learn about school reform practices, and to work together to address the needs of children and their families.