Liv Ames for EdSource

California's newest merely still unformed country education agency took a small step closer to becoming operational when its v lath members met for an all-day meeting in Sacramento Monday. But what the agency volition actually exercise and how it will office have yet to be determined.

The California Collaborative for Educational Excellence was created by Senate Bill 91, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in July 2022 to help school districts deport out the state's new school financing police force and achieve the goals that districts outline in their Local Control and Accountability Plans.

Funded with an initial $10 million in land back up, the agency is supposed to aid districts amend, not punish them if they neglect. This approach contrasts with the sanctions that the No Child Left Behind law imposed – and still imposes – on schools, including labeling thousands of them as existence "in need of improvement" and subjecting them to a range of consequences, including the possibility of shutting them down.

The legislation that established the collaborative made information technology clear that formal state intervention, such as assigning a state trustee to oversee a district's accountability plan, would be the last resort. As State Superintendent of Public Education Tom Torlakson alleged when the law was passed, "Nosotros besides see enormous potential in becoming a more than helpful partner, working side by side with school districts every bit they strive to improve results for students."

V members have been appointed to the collaborative'southward governing lath, including its chairperson, Sandra Thorstenson, superintendent of the Whittier Union Loftier School District. Other members are Tom Torlakson; Country Board of Didactics member Sue Burr; Tim Sbranti, the one-time mayor of Dublin and a teacher who directs  student activities at Dublin Loftier School; and Michael Watkins, the Santa Cruz County superintendent of schools.

The agency has all the same to rent an executive director. Information technology has contracted with the recruiting firm Leadership Associates to conduct a search to fill the position. In the document considered by the board yesterday, the firm projected it would consummate the search by July 1.

The goal of the agency, Thorstenson said, is to provide "support and assistance" to districts instead of wielding a "hammer."

At one point early in its meeting, board members pondered the exact functions of the however incipient bureau as they offered suggestions to make full out an easel pad with one column headed "what it is" and some other headed "what it is non."

"Every unmarried child in the state would do good from a system that attends to their needs," said Thorstenson. "Non all children are served equally."

Collaborative member Tim Sbranti urged caution in moving forward too quickly.

Source: California Department of Didactics webast

Collaborative fellow member Tim Sbranti urged caution in moving forward too chop-chop.

Board members also grappled with how quickly the bureau should really begin providing services to schools. Sbranti expressed caution nigh trying to move too quickly, even though the two-yr ceremony of the legislation establishing the collaborative is coming up. "I am hesitant to jump into the field until we are fully ready," he said.  "Bringing on an executive managing director is an of import kickoff step."

Others worried about whether expectations for what the agency could accomplish had been set too loftier.

Burr said that when the collaborative was appear, many people had hopes "we were going to be all things to all people, and I don't think we are." She besides recommended that the board look advisedly at how the new agency will mesh with other central players that have a role in overseeing school performance, including the superintendent of public instruction, the state lath and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Squad, or FCMAT, an agency that assists struggling districts to overcome financial and management difficulties.

Watkins said that inevitably expectations will exist high for the agency. But, he said, "this piece of work is an art, not a science." Rather than coming upward with across-the-board prescriptions, he said, what the agency does "will evolve in terms of how it deals with each district individually."

What'southward more, board members said, the work of the collaborative should be seen as part of a longer-range process. The process of "transformation of public education," Watkins said, will take at to the lowest degree 6 or 7 years.

The State Board of Instruction is at least two years from adopting a new accountability system that will make up one's mind which districts crave intervention. In detailed presentations to the collaborative's board, Stanford University professor of teaching Linda Darling-Hammond, who is also chair of the California Committee on Instructor Credentialing, and Michael Fullan, a Canadian education consultant who has worked extensively with districts in California, urged the members not to wait that long to human activity.

"Exist proactive," Darling-Hammond said. The collaborative should non wait "for districts to fall off the cliff" and then rush in to rebuild broken pieces. Information technology should be asking instead, she said, "how can nosotros deed earlier then to aid them?"

Fullan, a sharp critic of the federal government'southward arroyo to depression-performing schools under the No Kid Left Behind police, said the collaborative will be more constructive if districts view it as a resources and partner instead of an autocrat dispatching punishments and other forms of "negative accountability."

Darling-Hammond, who recently co-authored a paper envisioning a state accountability system, described the collaborative as the "orchestra usher" of schoolhouse improvement in all phases. Information technology should exist the trusted source that districts plough to, with a "strong, lean staff" that is experienced in running effective schools and is respected in the field, she said.

She proposed several possible roles for the collaborative. One big need, she said, is to spread noesis and research on constructive practices, whether in reducing student suspensions or teaching English language learners. "Wonderful work is being done in California without a systematic way to document and share information technology," she said.

She suggested several models for fostering school comeback. Ane is a "school quality review" process, used in New York and Chicago, in which teams of experts spend time in struggling schools, diagnosing problems. Some other method, used in Shanghai, is to pair  exemplary and struggling schools and so that teachers learn from each other. The success, she said, has been "amazing."

"Don't wait for years for a referral, for somebody to send you business organization," Darling-Hammond said. "Look for symbolically useful ways," she said, to demonstrate "the change from penalization to learning."

For Linda Darling-Hammond'south slide presentation to the lath, become hither, and for Michael Fullan'south slide presentation go here.

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