Superintendent Michael Matsuda (center) with students.

Superintendent Michael Matsuda (middle) with students.

Michael Matsuda
May 18, 2015

Respected educational leaders like Michael Fullan, Linda Darling-Hammond and David Conley take repeatedly warned us that we should not make one big exam the main commuter of education reform. Sadly, it seems that with the new Smarter Counterbalanced Assessments that students throughout the state are taking now, many school districts are doing just that.

Across California, there is a danger that too many districts are focused on technology just to get students prepared for the Smarter Balanced exam and not investing in integrating education with technology. For case, it would exist a horrible misuse of public funds if students were using iPads just to have notes. Fullan warns of a missed opportunity if nosotros are not investing in training teachers to use applied science so that students can access more meaningful data and create ameliorate ways to trouble-solve.

English learner advocates such equally Shelly Spiegel-Coleman are concerned that since the Smarter Counterbalanced assessments exercise not mensurate speaking skills, oral communication will not be emphasized and long-term English learners will keep to languish behind mainstream students.

Civil rights leader and Cal State Long Beach professor Jose Moreno is concerned that districts will implement Common Core with a business concern-equally-usual approach and continue to narrowly focus on reading and math at the expense of all other content areas, thus limiting opportunities for Latinos and other underperforming groups for A-Chiliad readiness, which is required for university admissions. (A-Yard is the course sequence that includes globe languages, science, social studies, the arts and other courses in add-on to math and English language, which is a requirement for admission to UC and CSU universities.)

The question for us, therefore, is not how prepared are California's public schools for the Smarter Balanced Assessments, but how prepared are our half-dozen million K-12 students for college, career and civic life as the next generation of Americans? Many educators who truly want to teach beyond the test are struggling with what higher and career readiness actually means.

Fortunately, there is at least i organization that has adult a framework to help build capacity and agreement. The organization is the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, a consortium of educational organizations, businesses and educational nonprofits that have developed a host of tools and rubrics that are helping to motility the needle forward using easily understandable terms. For example, the "4 Cs" – collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking – is a term credited to P21 and is language that is attainable and widely used.

Moreover, the framework calls for access to a whole curriculum, including what we in California call the A-M requirements. It is vital to note that access to a whole curriculum should begin in preschool and should be provided during the school mean solar day. When schools had to comply with the demands of the No Child Left Backside law as well equally the accountability provisions triggered by the state's Bookish Performance Alphabetize, civic education, science, earth languages, the arts and career technical instruction were often pushed to after-schoolhouse activities or weren't taught at all. Millions of elementary and secondary school children, mostly low-income students and English learners, were given high dosages of reading and math test prep and tragically missed out on the other subjects. This is what happens when the test becomes the driver.

Just when higher and career readiness becomes the driver, neat things tin happen. Savanna High Schoolhouse in Anaheim is California's offset National P21 Exemplar School, and then named because the learning environment and school culture reverberate the fact that 21st century learning is taking identify and contributing to student success. Information technology is an urban public school that State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said "should be cloned." Why? Considering it has implemented reform without changing the instruction staff, without extra monies and without cherry-picking high-performing students.

What the staff did practice was closely examine the P21 Framework, David Conley'southward work on college readiness, and their own research to create a new vision, which has guided and transformed their school. Savanna students are doing well on measurable metrics including A-G readiness, graduation rates, Career Technical Teaching certificates, Seal of Biliteracy rates, writing and operation tasks, and pupil surveys.

Only more importantly, Savanna students exhibit hard-to-mensurate metrics such equally habits of mind, which are problem-solving, life-related skills necessary to operate effectively in guild and navigate difficult and complex situations. These skills are evident through senior capstone interviews, where students sit downwardly for twenty minutes with teachers and community members and reflect both orally and in writing on the relevance of their educational activity and their future plans.

I've personally interviewed students who may take many Cs on their transcripts, and who may accept only average SATs, simply who have demonstrated college and career readiness by overcoming difficult circumstances, often poverty-related, and who can articulate their goals well and have identified a realistic pathway for getting in that location.

What is happening at Savanna can happen everywhere if leaders have the courage to exercise what's right. It will take bold, innovative principals who can build teams of teacher leaders through collective capital – working together using combined skills and resources. And information technology will take superintendents and boards who develop 21st century visions that drive schoolhouse reform. Otherwise, it could exist business as usual.

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Michael Matsuda is superintendent of the Anaheim Marriage Loftier Schoolhouse District.

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