CSBA’s focus on closing the gap

CSBA has been marshalling its efforts to close the achievement gap on a number of fronts. Three years ago, the association established “Student Issues Conference Groups,” networks that bring school board members together to target the unique needs of African American, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific Islander and American Indian students, and of students in juvenile court schools supervised by counties.

Headed by CSBA’s directors-at-large, who represent these students on the association’s board, the conference groups are not committees, task forces or purveyors of “best practices,” says Jo Ann Yee, senior director for Strategy Development, Achievement, Diversity and Urban Affairs. Instead, she continues, these groups are “networks of people and districts” interested in “working together to address the needs of targeted groups of students.”

Thus far, the groups have focused on studying the demography of California districts to determine where the achievement gap is most pronounced, identifying the specific achievement disparities between student subgroups and surveying CSBA member school districts and county offices of education about current efforts to close the gap.

“We need to establish a baseline so we can see whether our efforts are making a difference,” Yee says. Preliminary survey data indicate that virtually all districts have made closing the achievement gap a top priority. But none of the survey respondents included specific achievement benchmarks in their school board or superintendent evaluations—a crucial, additional step that Yee says would hold superintendents and governing boards accountable.

Building networks to boost student success

CSBA also has a long history of promoting collaboration as an effective strategy to meet all the needs of students. More than a decade ago, CSBA joined with the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties to form the Cities, Counties and Schools Partnership. Its mission is to break down the boundaries between these groups of locally elected officials and share resources and strategies to focus on meeting the needs of children and families.

In addition, CSBA’s Student Issues Conference Groups are working with collaboration specialists at the Alliance for Regional Collaboration to Heighten Educational Success and other community partnerships throughout the state to identify successful achievement-gap-closing strategies.

“We’ve been trying to steer boards toward thinking about collaborating with business, social services and health care agencies and colleges and universities,” says Susan Heredia, CSBA Director at Large, Hispanic.

Learn More California

CSBA is also organizing “Learn More California,” an extensive public advocacy campaign to find out what communities want and need from their schools and to raise awareness of the need to adequately fund education. Learn More California is training local school and community leaders to teach members of the public how school financing works. Among other goals, the campaign is designed to underscore the need to increase public investment in education—an investment that has declined dramatically in past decades, even as the demands on schools have mushroomed. The campaign’s work is especially crucial now, as California faces a huge budget deficit.

The association is also building its capacity to support districts that are in Program Improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

“The strategies for avoiding or exiting PI status and the strategies for closing the achievement gap are very much the same,” says Dan Walden, CSBA’s director of Single District Governance Services. “Both are grounded in the principle that everything must be done to ensure that every child in California’s schools receives the best opportunities to help them achieve at high levels.”

—Carol Brydolf