Good Schools For All

The Sweetwater Union High School District is the largest secondary school district in the state. A few years ago, the district decided to move its schools onto the same calendar system.

On this week’s podcast, Karen Janney, superintendent of the Sweetwater Union High School District, joins co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn to talk about how she helped develop the district’s common calendar and the impact the change has had on families.

“Before 2007, we had families on up to three different schedules. So they could be at an elementary school district on one calendar, at a middle school on another calendar and at a high school on another calendar,” Janney said. “It just wasn’t good for families.”

Families faced challenges with calendar misalignments such as planning for varied bus schedules, attempting to transfer students to schools to make up credits and trying to plan summer vacations.

“A lot of time the older siblings take care of the younger siblings and if they’re on two different calendars, it makes it even that much tougher for families,” Janney said.

But under the common calendar system, the district provides students with an aligned school schedule and about six weeks of summer vacation.

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Two-thirds: According to a 2007 study by Johns Hopkins University, two-thirds of the ninth-grade reading achievement gap can be attributed to summer learning loss; the other third comes from gaps that arise in early childhood.

Diamond Educational Excellence Partnership, sponsored by the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, has worked with San Diego Unified to put in place a summer enrichment program for rising second and third graders that has been successful in sustaining and building reading skills for more than 90 percent of participants, according to an evaluation by UCSD.

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The Barrio Logan College Institute is an after-school program that serves low-income disadvantaged students from across the county and prepares them to go to college. One way the organization says it transforms students’ lives is by educating and empowering parents to exercise school choice.

On this week’s podcast, Barrio Logan College Institute Executive Director Jose Cruz joined co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn to talk about school choice and how to create a so-called college-going culture.

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Every kid learns at his or her own pace. They each need something different when it comes to education. Personalized learning has emerged as a response to kids' individualized needs and their varied pace of learning. It's a radically different educational approach that's been gaining steam lately thanks to technology that allows teachers to better track students and provide them with personalized educational experiences.

On this week's podcast, co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn talk to someone who’s putting the personalized learning approach into practice.

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Normally, the County Board of Education race isn’t one that makes it into headlines. But this year, four of the five spots on the board are up for grabs. And things are heating up.

The folks elected to the County Board of Education wield some power. They do things like approve the San Diego Office of Education‘s annual budget, select and choose the very powerful county superintendent. The board also serves as the appeals board for charter schools that have been denied the right to open by a district in San Diego County.

In this week’s podcast, co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn tried to put on a debate between District 1 incumbent Gregg Robinson and his challenger, Mark Powell.  District 1 represents most of the city of San Diego on the board. Only Robinson accepted the opportunity to debate. But Lewis and Kohn got Powell on the phone after to ask why he wouldn’t face off with Robinson.

One hot topic in the race is charter schools and whether the candidates would support more of them in San Diego.

“I’m sure there are really good charter schools and there’s really bad charter schools,” said Powell. “I would give a fair evaluation if, in fact, an appeal does come to the county board.”

Robinson, a professor of sociology at Grossmont College, says he, too, supports charter schools, but only when they’re effective.

“Charter schools have been very helpful with low-income students in inner-city areas,” he said. “So I support them in those kind of circumstances if they’re doing the job they’re really designed for, but I’m not a rubber-stamp for charter schools.”

 1,600: The number of at-risk students currently enrolled in San Diego County Office of Education schools. About 12,000 at-risk students cycle through County Office of Education schools over the course of the school year.

We also have a Number of the Week correction. In our May 5 episode, we said 75 percent of middle and high school students are long-term English-learners. The correct number is 75 percent of middle and high school English-learners are in long-term programs.

John Spiegel, science coordinator at the San Diego County Office of Education: County schools are beginning to adopt dramatically different standards for teaching science. To help make the transition, Spiegel and his staff have provided professional development opportunities, online resources and more to teachers and schools. For more on this, listen to our March 31 interview with Trish Williams.

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Damian checked a little box when he registered his son Ethan for kindergarten. It indicated that the family predominantly spoke Spanish at home.

At the time, Damian had no idea his son would be classified as an English-learner, and that the designation would follow his son around, having a profound impact on his education.

It's been difficult, Damian said, to get the school district to recognize that, although his son still speaks Spanish at home, he's a smart kid who's excelling in many ways.

"That's my major concern is that I can't describe my kid to this bureaucracy in the right way," he said.

This week, hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn take a new approach to the podcast by weaving Damian and Ethan's story into the larger question of how our city, state and country is educating English-learners.

In November, voters will weigh the California Multilingual Education Act. The measure would essentially gut Proposition 227, the controversial statue that banned bilingual education in most classrooms unless parents specifically opt in.

Conor Williams, the founding director of the nonprofit New America's dual language learner national work group, joins the show to provide some statistics and context on the issue. Williams drops a bombshell when he shares which state is actually leading the way when it comes to its approach to English-learners.

"I'm amazed every time I say it – I can't even believe it myself," he said.

VOSD's education reporter Mario Koran also makes an appearance to talk about his New America fellowship and the future of his weekly column, The Learning Curve.

We've mentioned duel-language immersion schools in the past. There are 82 schools in San Diego that educate students in two languages. Two schools doing it well are the EJE Academies Charter School in El Cajon and the Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School. The two schools are recognized nationally for their efforts in providing a bilingual education to a diverse body of students.

75 percent: That's the number of California students in middle and high school who are considered long-term English Learners, which means they've been designated as English-learners for at least seven years.

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The move from play-based preschools to increasingly rigorous kindergarten classrooms is rough, for both kids and parents.

A Good Schools for All listener, Sally Cox, called in to share her story about a particularly jarring transition from preschool to kindergarten. She said she thought her son was well-prepared, but kids in his kindergarten class were expected to be reading by October, and her son quickly fell behind.

“I think the alignment issues between expectations in kindergarten and how children are prepared in preschool really need to be dealt with,” Cox said.

Hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn dig into the big transition problem, which is worsening thanks to a ratcheting up of academic expectations for kindergarteners. Transitional kindergarten, or TK, a public-school program offered to kids born between Sept. 2 and Dec. 2 as the first step of a two-year kindergarten class, has been one attempt at closing the early education achievement gap. 

TK is great for the small number of kids who happen to be born at the right time, Kohn said, but as a public policy it’s pretty terrible.

“It’s this privilege, this entitlement that’s only available if you happen to get pregnant and give birth in a certain little window,” she said. “What we’re giving away is a free, extra year of public schooling to the oldest incoming kindergarteners.”

Kohn’s not the only one with a TK pet peeve. Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed combining three state-funded programs: preschool, transitional kindergarten and a rating system. He wants to strip away existing requirements and give local school districts more control over how they use the money as long as they prioritize providing early education services to low-income and at-risk kids.

One big problem with the proposal is the lack of any additional funding, said Matt Doyle.

Doyle’s the executive director of innovation at Vista Unified School District. He came on the podcast this week to talk about Brown’s proposal and share some of the things his district has been doing to help ease the transition between preschool and kindergarten.

“We have actually identified the transition from preschool into kindergarten as probably the single greatest transition the child can make as they develop their cognitive academic abilities for college and career,” he said. “So for us this is the No. 1 issue.”

Got thoughts, opinions or experiences with this? Call 619-354-1085 and leave your name, neighborhood and story so we can play the voicemail on future episodes.

6,846: That’s the number of transitional kindergarteners we have in the San Diego region. The program just launched three years ago and it’s seen a big increase since its inception. There was a 67 percent increase in TK enrollment from the 2013-2014 to last year, and this year’s numbers are expected to see an even bigger jump.

The Quality Preschool Initiative: The program rates the quality of state-funded preschools and head start programs in San Diego County. It’s working because the San Diego County Office of Education is implementing the program effectively. The results of the program aren’t publicly available yet, but they will be soon.

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Education technology is exploding. This week in San Diego some of the major players in technology companies, their investors and education leaders gathered in San Diego for the ASU GSV Summit to talk about disrupting classrooms. We grabbed one of the attendees on his way to the talks.

Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Getting Smart, an organization that advocates for innovations in learning, joins the podcast to talk about how technology is increasingly entering and improving the educational system.

He said the dubbed EdTech movement is finally ready for real, widespread implementation in schools across the world.

"That revolution started 20 years ago but we're finally beginning to understand how to incorporate all these new tools into schools," he said. "Both in K-12 and higher ed."

An example is the adaptive learning approach, he said, which uses computers or tablets and game-like software that, with just a few initial questions, understands a student's reading or math level then adjusts and makes follow-up questions harder or easier. The software also uses engaging graphics and makes the experience fun to keep students interested.

The result is a personalized learning experience for students and real-time data for teachers and parents who can easily track a child's progress and adjust accordingly. The ability to offer effective personalized learning makes the current obsession with making sure students are at the appropriate grade level in every subject seem outmoded.

The technological future of education Vander Ark describes sounds dreamy, but there's one big problem.

"The future is here – it's just not very evenly distributed," he said, quoting cyberpunk sci-fi author William Ford Gibson.

Not all schools are progressing at the same pace when it comes to using technology, Vander Ark said, and even when school districts do bring tech into classrooms, merely replacing textbooks with laptops isn't enough – there needs to be an entire tech ecosystem, which includes smart software, data tracking and innovative teaching techniques.

"That's the big challenge and a big reason progress has been relatively uneven," he said.

Also on this week’s podcast, co-hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn talk about a recent parenting win, the seductive attraction of the project-based learning approach used by schools like High Tech High and the uptick in private startups looking to invest in education technology for public schools.

4 percent: That's the projected proportion of private capital that's expected to be invested in education technology in the next decade. Right now, the number's just .4 percent, so that's a 10-fold increase in the next 10 years.

TEDxKids@ElCajon: Organized by the Cajon Valley Union School District, the annual event helps kids find what's unique and special about them and asks them to present to their community. Students from kindergarten through high school participate and it's become a successful, student-centric event.

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You might not have any idea what the California State Board of Education does. I didn't.

That is, until we talked to Trish Boyd Williams, a member of the board.

Williams lives in San Diego and has a major role on the board and she explained it to me for the latest episode of Good Schools for All.

It was that board, of course, that is the reason Common Core was adopted in California so we took the opportunity to break down how it's going and how the board determines its standards. My co-host Laura Kohn was screaming at the TV during a recent Republican presidential debate as they went on about Common Core. Take a listen to hear what she says they got wrong.

Williams said it's having a major impact in the state.

"What’s different about the Common Core state standards in English, Language Arts and Math over the previous standards in English and Math is that it shifts the focus. There’s less memorization of isolated facts, and there is more focus on bigger ideas, and on discussion, analysis, arguing from evidence, and critical thinking skills," Williams said.

Williams is also spearheading the adoption of new science standards for schools.

Devin Vodicka, the Superintendent of the Vista Unified School District, and was named Superintendent of the year by the California Association of School Administrators in 2015. Devon and his team are making thoughtful but ambitious changes in the schooling system. They are working from a “blueprint for educational excellence,” and are creating a very positive impact.

The achievement gap refers to the difference in educational achievement between different races or demographics. 72% of Asian students read at grade level last Spring, and only 30% of black students did. In 8th grade math, 73% of Asians students met grade level standards, and only 22% of black students did.

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I've always sensed a disconnect between school and life. For my own life, I came to understand it as a kind of convergence of lines — school is one of the lines, and if you follow it long enough and well enough, it will eventually converge with life and propel you forward.

In his film "Most Likely to Succeed," Greg Whiteley approaches the disconnect differently. As he tries to demonstrate in the film, the school line not only doesn't converge with the life line but is harmfully off track. Standardized tests and the so-called Prussian Method of education, where each subject — reading, math, social studies and science — is taught separately and aimed at building a base level of knowledge for everyone.

The movie centers on San Diego's High Tech High and its project-based teaching approach.

Whiteley is the filmmaker behind the critically acclaimed documentary "Mitt," an inside look with exclusive access to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. It turns out Whiteley and his wife and children live in Point Loma, and he dropped by for an interview with Laura Kohn and me for the latest episode of Good Schools for All.

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503,848: That's the number of students enrolled in public school in San Diego County. That’s more students than 20 other states.

Del Lago Academy: A 3-year-old high school in the Escondido district that focuses on biomedical and health sciences for students. They use project- and work-based learning, integrate technology and are a great example of a school system that is delivering innovative and inspiring education for children in a non-traditional way.

• "Most Likely to Succeed": A film by Greg Whiteley
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