Longfellow PTA Presentation

Hi,
  Thank you for attending. Follow the link below to see the slides from the presentation last night.

Office of Family Engagement and Equity Presentation

Thank you for the wonderful questions and conversation today.  I really appreciated your thoughtful feedback.  You can find the link to the presentation below the break.

BUSD Parent Teacher Association Meeting Presentation October 23, 2017

Thank you for attending. Please feel free ask questions in the comments or email me directly. The link to the presentation is found below.

Update on the Academic Support Index for Berkeley Unified School Distict

What are the "Headwinds" for experiencing school as an African American?

Unlike headwinds such as having a disability or being an English Learner, the relationship between race/ethnicity and academic outcomes is less direct.  In the graphic below each of the potential contributors to the headwind includes the author of a significant paper or book on the topic.  (Citations are below)  I'm happy to include additional references so please feel free to email me suggestions.

An Introduction to the Academic Support Index for Educators

Last fall at an EdSource conference, a lawyer who was one of the speakers stated "Good data is a civil right".  It made me think about the data we have and how we are using it. Its not just enough to have good data, we have to use it wisely and effectively.

One of the most valuable ways to use data in education is to better understand the students we serve.  Data can help us understand who our students are, what they know, and what they have yet to learn.  The better we know our students, the more effective we become in helping them succeed.  We also need to pay attention to what we are doing to try to improve student outcomes. When we identify practices or programs that are making a difference, we need to share them with other educators. Likewise, when an intervention isn't getting the results we hoped for,  we need to go back to the drawing board, revisit our theory of action, and either make adjustments or go a different direction. We owe it to students to make sure we are providing them with the best possible education.

What would you do with $100 million?

In a paper presented at the California Educational Research Association annual conference in Sacramento last December I demonstrated how the Academic Support Index was able to identify up to 40% more underperforming students than the current practice used for the Local Control Funding Formula Supplemental (LCFF-S) budget.  Using the ASI method instead of the LCFF-S method could potentially result in the reallocation of up to $100 million dollars in the state of California.  The ASI method was able to do this while having significantly lower rates of both false positives as well as false negatives.

CERA Presentation: ASI vs. LCFF

Hi,
  Thank you for attending my presentation today.  If you have any questions or are interested in using the Academic Support Index please email me at davestevens@berkeley.net.  If you would like to view the presentation, please click here. 

A post for schools where all the students might considered to be "at-risk"

A number of schools have asked if the Academic Support Index would help them as "all of our students are at risk."  "At-risk" is a binary categorical variable dividing students into two groups: those who are at-risk and those that aren't.  Is a student a little bit at-risk? A medium amount? A lot?  The term "at-risk" does not tell you the degree to which a student is at-risk for academic under performance. And how is that pool of "at-risk students being identified?  By being poor?  First generation? Having a disability? By race?

LCAP: Which is better at identifying potentially underperforming students: ASI 3+ or "Unduplicated"?

I was wondering: How different are the categories of ASI 3 and higher and the LCAP's "Unduplicated students" and how well do they predict academic difficulties?

One consideration for schools working to improve the outcomes for struggling students...

The graphic below is an important consideration when working with students who struggle academically.  It is based on a presentation by Dr. Frank Worrell of the University of California Berkeley given at the Berkeley Unified School District's Research Symposium on November 6th, 2015.

 Essentially, he says that protection of self worth is a primary driver in human decision making.   I put together the graphic below to try to summarize this point.  There are four student pathways: "I study and succeed", "I don't study and I succeed", "I study and I fail", and "I don't study and I fail".  

Boosting Test Performance for Academically At-Risk Students and Interrupting the Predictability of Student Outcomes

The California High School Exit Exam is a critical gatekeeper for students who struggle academically. Failing to pass the CAHSEE during the initial administration in the tenth grade has significant impacts on students’ opportunities to prepare for post-secondary educational options. In addition to CAHSEE being a requirement for receiving a high-school diploma, failing to pass the exam often puts students into a remedial academic track limiting access to higher level English, math, and science courses. Successful completion of higher-level courses in high school is a proven and requisite measure of college preparedness.  Across the state of California, CAHSEE passing rates have been intractably linked to race throughout the history of the exam: On average, White and Asian students have higher passing rates, while African American and Hispanic/Latino students have lower passing rates. Similar patterns have been seen in our school district.

Identifying Students for Support During the Transition from Middle School to High School

The transition from middle to high school is a critical period of time for students. Students who do not make this adjustment smoothly experience long-lasting impacts on both graduation progress as well as post-secondary options. Identifying students who will require additional support, both academic as well as socio-emotional, is critical.  Increasingly schools have “early warning systems” to catch students as they begin to show signs of difficulty with this transition. The reactive nature of these systems often means that students are already in a difficult situation by the time they show up on schools’ radars.

           

The Impact of disproportionality when disaggregating student performance by race

How might the narrative change if we could talk about student performance while simultaneously addressing the disproportionality of disability, English Learner, and low socioeconomic status?  Having a disability, being poor, and/or being an English Learner are not equally distributed across all racial/ethic categories as seen in the slide below: