Educational Highlights - The Achievement Gap

The event was held before an audience of over 200 civic and education leaders, and began with a presentation from Dowell Myers, professor of urban planning and demography at the USC Price School of Public Policy. Professor Myers provided information on demographic trends, forecasting the slower rate of population growth, an increasing ratio of senior age and California born in the population, and the comparatively low rate of education spending per California student.

Moderated by Matt Miller (former host of the KCRW radio show “Left, Right and Center”), panelists were: Julia Lopez of the College Futures Foundation; Josh Pechthalt of the California Federation of Teachers; Timothy Stearns of the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Peter Taylor, of the ECMC Foundation and former CFO of the University of California system; Van Ton-Quinlivan, vice-chancellor of California’s Community Colleges; and Marshall Tuck of the New Teacher Center.

Focus Area 1: Closing the Achievement Gap

Recommendation: Intensify use of data to track student progress
Longitudinal data systems provide unique student identifiers to track growth, provide early warnings regarding students at risk, offer predictive information on college readiness, and track post-graduation success. Example: Fresno has improved academic preparation, doubling the rates of college-eligible graduates. They have had a laser-like focus on their data. Working with teachers and counselors, they instituted a performance improvement program to understand the progress of every student.

Recommendation: Focus resources on high poverty students
Students in high poverty areas bring the consequences of impacted communities to the classroom, and there is less support for their matriculation; for example, they have significantly less access to enriching experiences in their lives that support and supplement classroom learning. Therefore, more resources should be directed to those communities. The Local Control Funding formula is a good direction, and should continue with more of the existing funding going to the school level.

Recommendation: Universal pre-school and kindergarten
There is growing, national recognition that preschool is critical to success in later years. Preschool and kindergarten should be available in all public schools.