to do each day up until the spring California Standards Tests are given. It helps teachers stay on target. “There’s not a lot of time to waste,” says
Principal Kenneth Eggert. “Each minute is precious.” Principal Elizabeth Vigil at California
Middle School in Sacramento gets teachers to focus on the standards by emphasizing what students are learning, not what they are
doing. At this school of about 700 students, which has an ethnically mixed population of seventh- and eighth-graders, student en- gagement is key. When Vigil asks a student what he has learned that day, she expects a ready answer. And that answer needs to show his understanding of the subject, not just be a recitation of what he has done. “The focus is on student learning, not teachers teaching,” she says.
Each day in every classroom at California
Middle, seventh- and eighth-graders have two-part learning objectives: first, what they are going to learn that day; second, how they are going to prove that they learned it before they leave the room. These objectives are posted for everyone to see. Many of the schools in the EdSource
study had large numbers of English learners. The schools found that the best way to help those children, and the entire school, learn the standards was by focusing on literacy in English – the ability to read for knowledge and be able to write clearly and think criti- cally about what you have read.
The story behind the test scores At East Palo Alto Charter School, south
of San Francisco, more than half of the al- most 500 K-8 students come from families where English is not the primary language. Although the school’s API is well above the state’s performance target of 800, standard- ized test scores don’t tell the whole story, Principal Laura Ramirez says. “When students are tested on an authen-
tic reading assessment, particularly if they are asked to read nonfiction texts, they do not score nearly as well,” she says. This has prompted the school to look at
Developmental Reading Assessment data over time to get a handle on students’ liter- acy levels. This research-based test evaluates three components of reading: engagement, oral reading f luency, and comprehension. The DRA data provide “something that a standardized test can’t give you,” she says. Granger Junior High School in National
City, south of San Diego, has a similar focus. In this school of about 1,000 primarily La- tino and Filipino seventh, eighth and ninth graders, teachers have to teach reading and writing as well as their subject area, says Principal Mary Rose Peralta. For example, the math department has developed math- based writing prompts that ask students to explain their thinking. Students must also learn the academic
language in each subject (such as “quotient” in math or “metaphor” in English) and use those words in their writing. Every class- room has a word wall that includes the aca- Continued on page 28
26 Leadership
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