Transcripts For SFGTV2 20120927 : vimarsana.com

talked about it was right time, right place. that there was somebody that was there to help him. it wasn t because he had this really great plan did & it was all in alignment. he went to san francisco state and somebody took a chance on him and said, this is a program, you re going to be on probation. but if you don t make it, if you don t do what you re supposed to, it s on you. and that really resonated with a lot of the young folks that we had there. and then i also have for you a copy of the summary of the goals of the work sheet for where we are with that project and where people feel like we should be moving towards. i also wanted to just have david and salina come up and share with you really quickly. so, david nyree is staff for the human rights commission. thank you, commissioner davis. i consider this a groundbreaking day for the city and county of san francisco and the african-american community as we go beyond reports and studies and continue to put forth a real action toward addressing important issues that impact the african-american community as it relates to both retaining the african-american community in san francisco as well as attracting the populations of the city. historically education has been an essential and key component for many african americans toward backing the cycle of poverty and creating opportunities to succeed, flourish, thrive, and be empowered. and i thank the supervisors and the members of the board of education for fostering this important public dialogue. over the past year the human rights commission has dedicated has been dedicated to addressing and implementing many of the findings and recommendations found in the equity reports spanning two decades, including the much talked about unfinished agenda and the african-american outmigration reports. a critical analysis of these reports conduct bid staff at the human rights commission found that action on the part of city leadership and experience a realistic collaborative with the city department was the number one asked and the most essential element toward effectuating real and tangible outcomes to again both retain and attract african-american community in and to san francisco. i believe this hearing is a vital advancement to that end. i am pleased to share with you a progress report on the hrc implementation efforts will see we have already taken on a variety of projects that highlight the intersection between the role of education and the personal and professional development of african-american youth in san francisco. the hrt realizes that it does take a village, as the saying gos, to effectuate positive outcomes and i hope this hearing signals a real commitment from city leaders to foster more collaborations toward empowering the african-american community in san francisco to succeed, flourish, and thrive. with that the hrc is proud of the community collaboratives we have already established to date to continue our efforts on implementing the findings and recommendations of the various diversity reports. we have with us today salina from the santa and juvenile criminal justice who will briefly comment on the school to prison pipeline, particularly the high criminalization of african-american girls in san francisco. i give you ms. salina tiji. hi, thank you very much for having me. as i was introduced, i worked for the center on juvenile and criminal justice. it is a nonprofit base in san francisco, we provide services, technical assistance and [speaker not understood] analysis. i know a there are a lot of people who can really speak to the educational gap a lot better than i can so i m going to limit my comments to justice involved youth and really make the connection because it is important to think about this issue not in a vacuum, recognizing that a lot of youth who have educational barriers also have mental health issues, public health issues, child welfare, there is a lot of cross over to youth, dependency system and really struggle with educational barriers in terms of getting access to the school system. and, so, cjcj has been studying arrest trends in san francisco for decades before the board of supervisors multiple times in the past on those. so, i just wanted to share with you that educational barriers, specifically for youth of color, is also sort of mirrored in arrest trends in san francisco. the latest study we did was in april 2012 and, in fact, less than 9% of the city s youth population is african-american and they actually comprise 56% san francisco juvenile drug felony arrest. that s a huge, really unusual disparity that actually is more unusual than elsewhere in california. and especially for female youth. so, the city s african-american female youth account for over 40% of drug felony arrests for african-american female youth in california, 40%, and have a arrest rates 50 times higher than their counterparts in other counties. now, why that should be is really an issue for the public safety committee, but i would argue also for this committee since educational barriers also contribute to those kinds of trends. you ll know about the school-prison pipeline. other things to consider in terms of, you want solutions based in this hearing, so i just wanted to mention a hearing that cjcj participates in we provide to juveniles in san francisco as well. the san francisco public defenders office has a legal education advocacy program, leap, which cjcj partners with that provides legal advocacy for juvenile justices, juveniles in school hearings, school board disciplinary hearings. they ve had a lot of success getting students back into public school. i know that is a huge barrier. if your justice involved, getting reinvolved in public school is a huge barrier for a lot of youth. that s a program that s had a lot of success, sb 10 88 was signed into law this year. hopefully providing also some smooth transition with youth coming out of the justice system enrolled back into school. so, i think the arrest trends that are highlighted in our report, and i would be happy to get you copies of them, is sore of worth a hearing in and of itself. but i think in terms of especially as you discussed barriers, making the connection between all of these and maybe we need a multi-system approach to ensuring that youth get the education that they need because often barriers occur. those other systems that are not necessarily immediately educationally related. so, thank you very much. so, again, i just want to thank you for really convening this hearing and moving forward. and i know we ve gone over our time, but, you know, to try and consolidate the work that s been done over the last 40 years to address the issue, it s really difficult. i did just want to leave you with a couple of things just in terms of what we ve considered and discussed within the african-american leadership council and what we ve talked about with regards to the human rights commission. and something that i hope will come from this hearing is that from this there is some kind of task force or some committee or some convening, much in the same way that you all spearheaded the lgbt senior task force to address some of those issues, that there is something that comes out of this. that people who have been following this for the last 40 years and feel like there s been nothing done have a voice and a way to check in. and then also just the idea around better coordination, whether it s of opportunities to network and to exposure, or between funding programs and agencies and stakeholders, and then also just around setting up standards around expectations and what is what the deliverables are. i feel dcyf are going to talk about some of their programs. but what does it look like for a service provider that s offering support around academic addressing the achievement gap, whether that s a check-in attendance. if it is an after school program, students should be going to school and coming to that program after. if they are not doing that, then there is no connection. or, you know, what does it look like in terms of number of minutes spent reading or time doing things that support that effort. and with that i actually submit to you just a device that we are actually using to work with san francisco unified around the programs that we ve done during the summer. and whether we are tracking where folks know in the school district ho numbers, whether we can actually look at the students that are in after school programs and what that impact is on their school day. and doing more trainings around what the state standards are, the schools know them. the school district knows them, but what about the service providers? what is it that the kids should be do at the end of the day, what that should look like. so, again, thank you for this and i look forward to seeing what comes from it. thank you very much. and i believe now we ll be hearing from our deputy superintendent. guadalupe guerrero. good afternoon, commissioner, and supervisors. guadalupe guerrero. i think i m in the eighth week for deputy superintendent for instruction, innovation and social justice. glad to speak on the topic today. let me switch over to our powerpoint. there we go, thank you. today s presentation there s a few things i want to be able to speak to just at a high level reminder of the school districts vision and goals for all students. but more importantly, share some data with you today and some outcomes for some of the targeted student populations that are the focus of conversation today, discuss and share with you some strategic actions and interventions that are showing promise in some of our schools that can only benefit to expand on and highlight some of those promising partnerships that are occurring. san francisco unified school district s vision for student success, we do expect that every student who enrolls in our schools will graduate from high school, will be ready for college and career and be equipped with the skills to be successful in the 21st century. san francisco unified adopted a bold strategic plan with three goals focused on access and equity, student achievement, and account ability. and accountability. and there are six key milestones our superintendent has laid out toward measuring our progress and student goals. there are a few in here i want to highlight. they re kind of chronological starting with the first milestone, and that s the percentage of students who are ready for kindergarten. and that s important to today s topic because 30% of our students, based on our assessment, are actually showing up ready for kindergarten. so, that is a point of input. we then have a fourth grade milestone where you see that number after a few years has gone up a bit to 70 and 72% for meaning in which language arts and math standards. similarly you see our milestones for eighth grade. and then a 10th grade we have a graduation exit exam, the kc exam. we have 80 and 84% of students passing the content areas. and then for our percentages, seniors that are actually graduating with the a through g sequence, we see a number of 52%. and then we have graduates in post secondary at 79. this past tuesday evening at our board of education meeting we spent some time going in detail through a lot of our district summary data. but today i m going to focus on our student subgroups, most relevant. this first slide is based on our performance on this past testing cycle of state tests, cfc. this first slide is on english language arts. these are the transfer proficient level. these are students who score at proficient or advanced. for a few student subgroups, these are for grades 2 through 11 test graders. let me start off by pointing out in the top right corner you ll notice the overall trend in san francisco is a 10% growth which double digit growth. so, we did show at our board the other night while there is a lot to be commended and san francisco is back on top as the top performing district. but while we enjoy that title we have the widest gap. it is something we are being attentive to. african-american, latino, native american and samoan. and while the district overall trend was 10% growth, what you notice over a five-year trend is african-american growth has bested the district average of 13% improvement, latino at 10% equal to the district s growth, native american at 14%, and samoan at 11%. the next slide is similar, but in the content area of mathematics on the state test. again, 8.2% district overall growth trend, african-american comparison 13% growth over five years, latino 10%, native american 7, and samoan 11%. superintendent, i m just wondering if there is anyway maybe later on to get the numbers of where the anglo and asian-american students are. okay. so, maybe in this next slide, we get to that point. so, this next slide is actually on the english language arts achievement gap. so, what s highlighted in this one are two line graphs, one for african-american/latino, and the top line graph actually represents the district average. and what i want to point out is, again, a different way to represent it over five years, you ll notice that there was there is a persisting achievement gap, the first thing you ll notice. but if you look at the district average of 50.5 in 2008, you ll notice that 28.3 is one subgroup s performance and the other one is 22.6. there was quite a margin or gap there, 22 and 27%. if you fast forward to 2012, our latest test results, you ll notice that one really hasn t budged in the english language arts and the other one has shrunk by just a few percentage points. so, in this next slide, instead of actually comparing to the district average we ve actually disaggregated in this line graph, the top line graph actually represents our chinese and white students. so, you also see the achievement gap illustrated not just in comparison to the district average, but actually in comparison to those subgroups. and what you ll notice there is that the achievement gap actually gets even more significant. so, five years ago you saw 43.4 gap with one subgroup and 37.7 with one. and while there s been a slight narrowing, that gap persists and is still wide. so, it s worth noting that everybody s performance is going up. the african-american and latino is narrowing slightly but there is still a persistent gap there. this slide is similarly shows the same trend only it s in mathematics. you see a little bit more growth in some cases. again, this one is in comparison to chinese and white students on the top line graph. you see an even wider gap when you don t factor them into the district average. so, you see 54% performance achievement gap five years ago, narrowing a bit, but still persisting. this next table is high school success and retention for two student populations, latino and african-american. just looking at the first row there, the latino state demographic graduation rate is 70.4 with a 17.7 drop-out rate. 11% of those students still engaged with their school districts and perhaps a fifth year of credit recovery program. in san francisco that graduation rate is at 67.2 for la tin owedx, 18.6% drop out and 14% still engaged. latinoses at thurs owe good marshal and burton, those were pulled out, specific schools we want to shed light on statistics for, thurgood marshall 38% overall graduation rate, 5% still engaged with the school in some fashion. at burton 68, drop-out 22, still enrolled 9. for african-american state graduation rate of 62.8. the district pretty much on par with that rate. at marshall, you see it a bit, a few percentage points higher than that. and burton actually has been enjoying a bit of or a greater succession than the district average, 82.6%. but still with the 17.4 drop-out rate. so, here you see sort of a comparison from 09-10 to 10-11. so you can see there how that graduation rate has improved in a one-year difference there in our state from 74 to 76% and the district from 77 to 82%, which is a 5% improvement at burton from 78% to 78.9, just slight increase, but at marshall, 75.6 has increased to a 77.8% graduation rate. so, since we re talking graduation, it s hard to separate that from the actual requirement. so, the board adopted a through g requirement. it is important to notice whether we re on track or not as students who are falling under that policy are going to be enjoying success. so, what i want to point out here with these three subgroups listed, african-american, latino and samoan is you see four columns after that. whether they re on track, you see a c. these are students who are getting a c or better in the a through g core sequence. that means they re taking courses for california state university or university of california eligible. so, these are students who are on track for doing that. these are our present juniors in high school right now. you ll notice that we have 2,122 students who are on track. it s not a typo. we have the exact same number of students based on sort of our best data today that are not on track. so, that means we don t have a c or better in all of their courses on that a through g sequence. in the third or fourth column where it says on track or off track d, these are students who are getting a d or better in that same core sequence. so, they can get a d in the a through g core sequence and meet district graduation requirements because they re taking the core sequence that they wouldn t be eligible to apply for a csu or uc school. so, what you re going to notice in the fourth column which is sort of the most alarming one here is these are students that are both not finishing school uc or ucs eligible and not graduating san francisco unified school district with a diploma if this pattern persists. so, just to call it out, for our 2014 class, african-american students, those are 246 kids today not on track. these are students that are not performing with a d or better in their required courses and only 76 that are on track if you look at the minimal requirements. if you see the 2015 class, you see that number there. now, of course, as they become juniors and seniors, you ll notice that the sequence gets even a little more stringent. so, the big question is what are some of the strategic actions and interventionses for closing this achievement gap, which is persisted for generations? commissioner. excuse me, deputy lieutenant. i have a question or clarification on the last slide. does that include students that are just in our regular schools or does that include our county schools? good afternoon, bill sanders, director division of curriculum instruction. it includes all students in that grade. okay, thank you. thank you. it s good to have you back up. your back up. so, a few strategies and interventions for tackling the issue here is a big push in our district at the moment becoming oriented towards implementing an english language arts and core curriculum. one is very focused on the common courses standard for different level of rigger. it s a different level of practice and something our teacher and principals at the moment are becoming familiar with. it s adopting materials. we just adopted new k through 8 language arts materials for students. so, again, getting better quality instructional materials to teach those standards. we re also expanding our use of assessments to inform instruction. so, more and more steps are being put in place by teachers so they can learn whether where students are at&t any given point and monitor progress thou they re doing. it s access to the course. it s one thing to have standards and practices, but it has to be accessible to all students. and how do we deal with the readiness to learn issue? how do we better align pre-k and elementary? that s a big push for us. how do we differentiate our instruction? so it s culturally relevant? so it s accessible to students with special needs, students who are second language learners, how are we inclusive in that fashion? and then how across all of our schools are we dedicating time per allowed plan for english language development? so, we have a specific time during the day when instruction is being provided in eld or specialized instruction. and all of it, if we re implementing standards and we re differentiating our instruction, how do we monitor who is doing well and who isn t? and how do we respond and react? so, how do we make more robust multiple tiers of support and intervention for students that are not achieving? and, so, what are some of those targeted interventionses and supports for our prioritized subgroups which i refer to as african-american, english language learners and students with disabilities? these are targeted in our lea in the district. we said algebra 1 is required. we have more students taking that. we are enhancing grade 9 bridge program. so when we notice there are issues with eighth graders as we re going into school, they re getting additional remediational support with study skill to be successful and something that s shown a lot of promise for us is putting in place an early warning indicator system so we have much more accurate means of tracking which students are falling off track. if we look at a variety of factors, attendance, suspension rates, grade performance, et cetera, we should know right away who early on is in need of some support. so, you see some of our high schools who are enjoying some nice results. it s because they re paying attention to our early warning indicator system and for these sets of students, for example, who are creating mentor ships, additional targeted supports for these subgroups of students. and then the kc, the kc is an exit exam. you have to pass it to graduate. so, what are the tutoring supports we re making available to students who need that extra help? and then of course how do we make credit recovery and learning options available for students, not just during the summertime which has been great, but we ve been able to maintain alive thanks to the city, and during the school year a blended learning option. there are also lessons learned from what we see double and triple the rate of acceleration for these subgroups. specifically in superintendent zone schools where we did see a rate of improvement that was much greater than the san district. there are a few things we paid attention to leadership development, engaging parents and families and community partnerships, raising the capacity of our teachers to be successful with students, making sure the learning environments were equipped with the material and coaching for our teachers. also, it bears mention that there are a lot of places around our district where there are some very valued partnerships. this is not an exhaustive list, but just an example of ways that we re also engaging the community who works with families, who we need to be in alignment and partnership with. i ll just rattle off a few. naacp back on track, african-american honor roll, wonderful event, public a cheervs, mayor s public housing, p support, et cetera. these are all examples and i was really glad to hear in the earlier presentation because i agree, it s going to take that kind of collaboration and coordination around a shared set of goals and outcomes and it s going to take a multi-prong strategy if we re going to really accelerate and make an impact on this achievement gap. just a few examples of actual schools that are showing results so we know it s possible. i m not going to read off this whole list. we recently had some of our principals list some of the strategies that have garnered them double digit growth with student subgroups, for example, new traditions elementary. it s a school that s been recognized for closing the gap for african-american students. it s narrowing that. and there s a few things they re doing. they re engaged with their colleague principals on the topic, focused on exclusive practice for daunts with special needs. there s a lot of collaboration happening with teachers. they re using a lot of assessments to gauge how student s learning is progressing. they re having family events in the evenings based on math, same thing with charles drew, higher expectations, bringing in supplemental programs, software; focus on literacy and lots of collaboration time for the students the teachers to plan together. and then the secondary schools again just to name a few examples, you see some similar elements, some common planning time for teachers, enhanced after school and summer opportunities, enhanced student support, mental health, et cetera. so, some of the slides that didn t show tonight we showed to our board on tuesday night, there are other indicators. suspensions have gone down dramatically. our attendance is going up dramatically. so, we re definitely on the right track. i think the question of the day is we may be narrowing the achievement gap. however, we re also in a bit of a crisis mode because if this pattern persists we have an unacceptable number of students right now who require a much more robust intervention right now. where do we go now? continue to deepen our practice on support, our interventions, state standards driven, make sure we re reporting out to parents so they hold us accountable about the progress of learning in school. these are tough economic types, but stay aware of investment and funding opportunities out there, much like the [speaker not understood] able to show impact and we re in our final year there. i think there s a real scenario here with prop 30 and 38, the outcome of that is going to be super critical. that could be a big setback. i know that one of our supervisors has an upcoming resolution as well. that will help us kind of fill the gap with after school and other credit earning options. staying alive for some of these same subgroups of students. and then this is a working title. how do we get more