Reaching out to close the gap

Mean Mamas, ARCHES and other approaches to boosting student achievement

Rosa Harrison has some advice for educators who want to connect with parents and get them involved in their children’s schools.

“We have to not talk and talk and talk,” says the spirited mother of two, who works with a Hispanic parents group to build relationships with families in Santa Ana Unified School District, where almost
95 percent of students are Hispanic and poor. “We need to have big ears, small mouths and big hearts.”

Santa Ana is not the only district that’s listening to parents like Harrison and to groups like Padres Promotores de la Educación, the group to which she belongs (whose name, loosely translated, is Parents Promoting Education). Educators across the state are building connections with parents and representatives from community groups, foundations, businesses and institutions of higher education to address the needs of students from poor families, African American and Hispanic students, and English language learners—student subgroups who persistently lag far behind whites and Asians on virtually every conventional measure of academic performance. That’s a handy, thumbnail description of the much-discussed achievement gap, which state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell calls the most important civil rights issue of the decade, a fissure that educators throughout the state are working hard to close.

Gone are the days when public schools could survive as academic ivory towers run by education experts who had all the answers. Padres Promotores, for example, succeeds in part because it’s designed and operated by members of the very community the district is trying hardest to reach, rather than by professionals. This grassroots program helps Santa Ana Unified teach parents who have little formal education themselves how important college is to their children’s futures. Training volunteers to visit homes and conduct neighborhood workshops, these moms and dads work “padre a padre” (parent to parent) to spread the word about college prerequisites, applications and financial aid.

“Sometimes when people are very educated, they give us so much information we don’t know what they mean,” says Harrison, tactfully. “So we did our own curriculum.”

Since 2001, the group has conducted about 6,500 home visits, hosted some 650 community forums and hung 20,000 informational door hangers.

“Parents tell us they feel we understand their lives,” Harrison says. “We give them a voice.”

‘Schools … can’t do it alone’

No one is arguing that educators can, do or should abdicate their responsibilities for managing classrooms, providing effective teaching or promoting safe and healthy campus culture. But schools can’t manage all aspects of their students’ lives—nor should they try.

“By the time seniors graduate at age 18, they have spent just 10 percent of their lives in school—and none of their early formative years,” says Jo Ann Yee, CSBA’s senior director for Strategy Development, Achievement, Diversity and Urban Affairs.

In order to learn and thrive, students need—among other things—to be well nourished and physically and emotionally healthy. They do better when they have support at home and have parents who pay close attention to what’s going on in the classroom. And critics
point out that state and federal school accountability systems do not reflect that fact—or that students mature at different rates and learn in different ways.

Public schools in California must deal with a perfect storm of challenging factors that make their jobs especially difficult, says Yee. California’s students are among the most diverse in the nation; 41 percent speak languages other than English at home and 25 percent are learning English at school. The state has academic standards that are among the most rigorous in the country, but it requires schools in California to do their jobs on the cheap. Per-pupil funding here is well below the national average.

“Yet we expect schools to work miracles,”  Yee says.

Susan Heredia, a member of the Natomas Unified School District board and CSBA’s Director at Large, Hispanic, says she sympathizes with governing board members who feel overwhelmed by the enormous scope of the challenges. “I am concerned that there’s a perception out there that schools are responsible for addressing all these issues by themselves,” she says. “They may be tempted to look for a magic solution that can fix everything.”

But there are no easy fixes, making it all the more critical that governing boards reach out for additional support.

“Schools accept the accountability to improve student achievement,” says Yee. “But they cannot do it alone.”

Diane Siri, executive director of the Alliance for Regional Collaboration to Heighten Educational Success, couldn’t agree more.

“If there are some problems that are not getting better, I suggest it may be a problem that cannot be solved by a single district by itself,” says Siri. “Our goal is to link every public school in the state to regional collaboratives consisting of at least one community college, a baccalaureate-granting institution, a business, a community-based organization and a family-centered organization.”

Siri’s group—ARCHES—provides grants and technical support to 21 collaborative projects throughout California, including the Santa Ana Educational Partnership, the organization that includes Padres Promotores. Every year, more and more partnerships apply for ARCHES seed money, provided in part by private foundations and the California Academic Partnership Program.

A model to emulate

ARCHES requires collaboratives to set specific goals and provide solid evidence that what they are doing is working.

“This is not a friendship club,” Siri says. “It’s hard work. “

Advocates for collaborative solutions to the challenges facing schools and families concede that it’s difficult to engineer and establish partnerships and cooperative projects with other public agencies, institutions of higher learning, health care agencies, parents and businesses. But they hasten to add that the ultimate goal is to provide critical assistance to school districts and county offices of education—and, of course, to the children they serve.

Siri says she is excited that the idea of collaborating to help students is gaining traction among educators and policy-makers.

In 2006, state Superintendent O’Connell commissioned his P-16 Council, (of which CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin and Siri are members) to study ways to equalize the academic performance of all California’s diverse student populations—not by diminishing the accomplishment of higher-achieving groups, of course, but by raising the performance of lower-achieving groups. After a year of study and investigation, the P-16 Council released its report, “Closing the Achievement Gap.”

The report urges the state to foster partnerships that connect schools with higher education, cities and counties, parent groups, faith-based organizations, businesses and other interested parties. Embracing that recommendation in his annual State of Education address in January, O’Connell singled out ARCHES as a model
to emulate.

In her leadership role as CSBA’s Director-at-Large, Hispanic, Heredia says she is urging her colleagues on governing boards to consider the benefits of collaboration.

“We’re saying, ‘Partner with other schools in your regions. Reach out to business, social services and health care agencies. Find out what they’re doing that’s working,’ ” she says. “They need to look at regional needs in a broad way.”

At the same time, Heredia adds, governing boards must be strategic.

“I think districts need to carefully examine what they need from a partnership, and what they should expect. We need to ask, ‘How do we hold ourselves accountable? Which of our structures and policies advance or impede learning? How will we know when we are making progress?’ ”

At CSBA’s 2007 Annual Education Conference, ARCHES figured prominently in workshops presented by the association’s five Student Issues Conference Groups—networks of shared interests that CSBA has been nourishing around the state to develop and disseminate powerful strategies for closing the gap. During their annual conference workshops, representatives from ARCHES and a number of collaboratives provided concrete examples of how these locally grown partnerships are improving educational opportunities for all students.

The Santa Ana Education Partnership—the group that the tactful Rosa Harrison works with—has a decades-long track record. One of the state’s oldest collaboratives, the partnership includes Santa Ana USD, the two-year Santa Ana College, California State University, Fullerton, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. Santa Ana’s is a “top-down” project initiated in 1983 by UC Irvine educators who asked the district how they could help prepare more local students for college and thus increase the number of students of color at UCI.

Since then, the project has expanded dramatically. It now includes business partners, local community groups, student affiliates, teachers and administrators. The education partnership runs a Saturday math academy and provides before- and after-school academic help for students as well as parent education programs and professional development
for teachers.

The partnership reports that its efforts have paid off: More students are taking pre-algebra in middle school, and proficiency rates in seventh- and eighth-grade math and English are up significantly. Between 1991 and 2005, high school algebra enrollment in the district has increased more than 500 percent, from 1,167 to 6,086. Santa Ana students who enrolled in Santa Ana College after graduating from high school are qualifying for placement in
college-level math classes at higher rates (up 57 percent), and 33 percent fewer students need remedial math.

“You can’t deny that these kinds of strategies are having an impact,” says partnership  leader Lilia Tanakeyowma, a dean at Santa Ana College.

New kid on the block

The Southern Alameda County Regional Educational Alliance is one of ARCHES’ newest collaboratives. It was initiated by African American school administrators and parents who were dismayed that so few black students in the area were meeting state academic standards and passing the California High School Exit Exam.

“African American students are [failing] the CAHSEE at two to three times the rates of other students in Southern Alameda County,” says Bobbie Brooks, a project manager with R.T. Fisher and Associates, an educational consulting firm that oversees the alliance. “We really want to stop having so many of our African American males incarcerated. We want them to go to college instead.”

During its inaugural year, the alliance is focusing on college awareness activities for middle school students and on improving eighth-grade math scores by providing intensive intervention for black students in the San Leandro and San Lorenzo unified school districts. Among other changes, alliance members say, educators need to examine whether their teaching methods are culturally sensitive and whether campus culture is hospitable to students of color.

“For African Americans, there is a specific pedagogy that works,” says Robyn Fisher, president and CEO of Fisher and Associates.

In addition to the San Leandro and San Lorenzo districts, the alliance also includes the Alameda County Office of Education; California State University, East Bay; Chabot College; the Southern Alameda County Alliance of African American Educators; and—signifying the stake the private sector has in public education—Johnson Controls International, an energy systems firm.

‘Mean Mamas’ focus on college

Poor academic achievement among African American students, even those from middle-class and affluent families, is a national phenomenon. In Poway Unified School District, two self-described “Mean Mamas” are holding the district, students and parents accountable for turning things around.

“Even in Poway, one of the best districts around, blacks are about 3 percent of the student population but about 14 percent of the special education population,” says Poway parent Darlene Willis, a former college dean who co-founded the Concerned Parents Alliance. “We empower students and teach them who they are. We tell them they had ancestors who did powerful things. So if someone says, ‘You can’t do well on this test,’ you know it’s not true.”

Working in partnership with Poway and San Diego unified school districts to prepare black students to be successful in college, the alliance operates a Saturday academy and takes students on college tours. Willis and fellow parent and project cofounder Marsha Dodson are finding themselves in great demand these days.

Their motivational “Mean Mamas” curriculum teaches parents about college prerequisites and application deadlines and encourages them to get involved with their children’s teachers and school administrators. “We started with five students and their parents in my living room,” says Dodson. “Now we have to cap the program because we’re getting families from other districts.”

What school boards can do

As part of an achievement gap workshop she led at CSBA’s Annual Education Conference last year, Dodson urged school board members to establish policies that include specific goals and benchmarks for closing the gaps between different groups of students. “Parents are your friends,” she says. “Create parent centers so they’re not intimidated. Call parents and tell them when college applications are due.”

If school boards find themselves facing tasks that at times seem insurmountable, it may be because they need to reach out and find community partners to shoulder some of the load. Collaborative solutions can actually make governing boards’ jobs a bit easier.

As CSBA’s Yee says, “The achievement gap cannot be closed without schools. But schools alone cannot close the gap.”

Carol Brydolf (cbrydolf@csba.org) is a staff writer for California Schools.