برچسب: prepare

  • We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change

    We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change


    Piedmont seventh graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco in 2019.

    Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

    I live on the coast of California, near the Point Reyes National Seashore. In February 2023, we endured an abnormally violent storm with 60 mph wind gusts that brought down a large redwood tree onto two cars parked in my driveway. I was shaken but grateful to be alive. I was also grateful for the generosity of my neighbor who allowed me to borrow her car for the next two weeks as I sorted things out.

    When the time came to return the borrowed car, I made sure to wash it, clean it out and return it with a full gas tank. I recalled hearing my father’s voice telling me to always return something you borrowed in better shape than when you got it.

    I realize that my generation of baby boomers has essentially “borrowed” and used the planet for our own purposes for the past 50 years. And now it is time for us to return what we borrowed — and turn it over to the next generation.

    Fifty years of population growth, industrial expansion, carbon burning and general lack of care has initiated a process of climate change that is generating a multitude of physical, economic and social crises. We are trying to mitigate these changes, but no matter how well we do that, we will nonetheless be turning over the planet to the next generation with irreparable damage done and in a state of accelerating decline.

    So what else can my generation do? 

    I think our generation owes it to the next generation to prepare them as well as we can for the world they will face. If we cannot return the earth to them in good shape, we can at least give them a powerful education so that they can survive — and do better than we have done — when it is their turn to assume stewardship of the planet.

    Preparing our children for the world they will inherit is the right thing to do — for them and for us.  But it also could be very good for the California education system. Preparing students for the world they will inherit could help schools find renewed purpose and achieve the relevance that students are demanding.

    In 2015, California published its Blueprint for Environmental Literacy. The document points out that K-12 students in California do not currently have “consistent access to adequately funded, high-quality learning experiences, in and out of the classroom, that build environmental literacy.” Many receive only a limited introduction to environmental content, and some have no access at all.

    Why has so little changed in our schools over the nine years since the blueprint was published? 

    One answer is that the state has not made environmental or climate change education a priority, nor has it invested in long-term, well-crafted initiatives to develop the capacity and propensity of the educational system to change itself. The state does relatively little to develop the curriculum, assessments and professional development that is required to create learning opportunities that can help students prepare for a world dominated by climate change. 

    Over the next five years, California is planning to invest about $10 billion a year to combat the effects of climate change. By contrast, the state presently invests less than 0.1% of this amount to support the development of climate change education.

    This means that for every $100 the state spends fighting climate change, it spends less than 1 cent on educating its students to understand the need for those efforts.

    For every student in California, we spend over $20,000 a year on their school education. Of this amount, we devote less than $2 per student annually to develop our capacity to promote climate change literacy.

    The Covid pandemic provides a clear example of what happens when investment in science and investment in education are not well-balanced. The nation succeeded in creating vaccines that were successful at fending off the worst effects of this new Covid virus. However, the lack of public understanding of vaccines, and in the science behind them, severely limited their timely adoption and success. 

    The same is true with climate change. In the long term, we will not be able address climate change without an equal emphasis on climate change education.  

    California is taking the lead in the nation in supporting policies and research that fight climate change. It could do the same with climate change education. 

    We very much need the next generation to be smarter and wiser than mine. This is not just my generation’s idea of what is good for our youth. They are already demanding of us that we do better in terms of mitigation, adaptation and education. Can we look them in the eye and honestly say to them that we are doing everything we can do to prepare them for what is coming?

    •••

    Mark St. John is founder of Inverness Research, a nonprofit organization that studies education initiatives, and a consultant to Ten Strands, a nonprofit organization promoting environmental literacy for California students.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • California schools prepare to introduce universal reading screening

    California schools prepare to introduce universal reading screening


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • By June 30, California schools must choose one of four screening tests recommended by a state panel. 
    • Most other states already have a universal reading screening test for early grades, but California has lagged behind.
    • West Contra Costa went through an intensive 18-month process before selecting mCLASS DIBELS as its screening test of choice.

    After a 10-year push from reading advocates, California schools are on the verge of requiring every student in kindergarten through second grade to get a quick screening test to detect challenges that could get in the way of them becoming proficient in reading.   

    Under 2023 legislation approved by the Legislature, every school district in the state is required to select the screening test it prefers by June 30. They can choose from among four options recommended by a state panel — and then begin administering the test during the coming school year. 

    California will be one of the few remaining states to introduce a universal screening test like this in K-2 grades. “This is something we have been fighting for for 10 years,” said Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA. Her organization co-sponsored four prior bills, which did not make it through the state Legislature, until it was included in the 2023 education budget bill

    The screening test had a powerful champion: Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Newsom was diagnosed with dyslexia in elementary school and still copes with it as governor. He has become a national spokesperson on the issue, even writing a children’s book about it, titled “Bill and Emma’s Big Hit.” 

    Districts will only be required to administer the screening test in the K-2 grades, in part because substantial research shows that reading mastery by the third grade is crucial for a student’s later academic success. 

    The test is not intended to provide a definitive diagnosis of dyslexia or other reading difficulties.  Instead, its goal is to be a guide for parents and teachers on whether further diagnosis is necessary and to prompt schools to provide other support services. 

    However, Potente, a former teacher in San Francisco Unified, pointed out that the screening test could prevent students from being placed in special education classes unnecessarily. She said her 16-year-old son, who had reading difficulties, didn’t get any intervention until after the crucial third-grade milestone. 

    “If we had caught his challenges earlier and addressed them with the intensive instruction that he got later, he would not have needed special education,” she said. 

    “Screening is just the first step. How the districts respond to the needs of students is really what’s most important,” she said.

    How West Contra Costa Unified decided

    West Contra Costa Unified School District’s process for choosing what test to adopt offers a window into the intensive process that at least some districts have gone through. 

    The 30,000-student district in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving large numbers of low-income and English learner students, first established a 20-member task force — made up of its superintendent, teachers, principals, board members, school psychologists, and community representatives — 18 months ago.

    The district enlisted 150 teachers to try out mCLASS DIBELS and Multitudes, two of the four options offered by the state, and to provide detailed feedback. The district ruled out the two other options for a range of reasons. 

    After examining all of the information they received, district administrators recommended to the board of trustees at its May 14 meeting to select mCLASS DIBELS. (DIBELS, pronounced “dibbels,” is an acronym for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills.) 

    “mCLASS DIBELS was the overwhelming choice of our teachers,” Sonja Bell, the district’s director of curriculum instruction and development, told the board.

    The screening test is already in widespread use in many districts, notably in Los Angeles Unified.

    One feature that appealed to West Contra Costa teachers and parents is that the DIBELS test is quick — only taking between 1 and 7 minutes. Another plus is that it can be administered by the teacher while sitting with the student. The teacher can observe the student during the screening, which provides valuable information that might not be available if the test were taken on a computer or online. 

    Another attractive feature was that DIBELS has a Spanish component called Lectura, which will be essential for assessing the reading skills of the district’s large English learner population. 

    Among the many teachers already using the DIBELS test is Barbara Wenger, a second grade teacher at Nystrom Elementary in Hercules, one of several communities served by the district. The largest is the city of Richmond. 

    Like many teachers in West Contra Costa and other districts around the state, Wenger has been using the test voluntarily before the task force was set up —sometimes administering it monthly to assess a student’s progress. “I can’t emphasize how important this is to our instruction,” she said. 

    She recounted to the board at the May 14 meeting how DIBELS helped her identify a student who could only read four words a minute, instead of the expected 50 words. She put the student in an “intervention group” and gave her structured exercises. The student, she said, is now reading 104 words a minute, making it unnecessary to place her in a special education class. 

    “This is something we could only have done by identifying her at the beginning,” she said. 

    Having selected DIBELS as the screening test, the district will turn to a District Implementation Team to oversee a multiyear rollout plan. 

    The district has decided to go beyond the once-a-year screening called for in the legislation and to administer it three times during the year to assess a student’s progress more regularly. A three-year professional development plan for teachers will be phased in. 

    Crucially, the district says it will notify parents about the results of the screening shortly after it is administered. 

    Multitudes, the test developed by the Dyslexia Center at UC San Francisco, received some support from teachers because it is also a one-on-one test, is free to school districts, and was created by well-regarded practitioners at UCSF. It will launch in both Spanish and English in the fall of 2025. But reviewers had concerns that Multitudes is only administered once a year and that teachers aren’t familiar with it. 

    Like many districts, West Contra Costa is already using i-Ready, a screening test for early readers. But the test was not on the list of the four approved by the state. In addition, there were concerns that i-Ready is an online assessment, and just accessing it electronically presents some challenges to students, especially incoming kindergartners. 

    Nystrom Elementary’s Wenger said that DIBELS takes significantly less time to administer than i-Ready. It also shows how far a student is from their grade level, she said, but doesn’t flag kids in kindergarten who would benefit from intervention early on.

    DIBELS also has a clearer way of communicating results to parents, Wenger said. I-Ready, by contrast, “has a very complicated, confusing, and ultimately overwhelming, report home.” 

    Although supportive of the test, West Contra Costa board member Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy expressed concern that the test would add to the testing burden students are already experiencing. “We have so many tests already,” he said. 

    Bell, the director of curriculum instruction and development, reassured him that the DIBELS test is brief, and that teachers will be careful not to overtax students or push them beyond their ability. “They’ll stop when they see students have had enough,” she said.  

    As part of its implementation, the district collaborated closely with GO Public Schools, an advocacy organization, to get broad community input, especially through the organization’s Community-Led Committee on Literacy. 

    Natalie Walchuk, vice president of GO Public Schools and a former principal, said the process of choosing a screening test has become “a catalyst for meaningful instructional improvement” in the district. She praised the district for “going far beyond the minimal requirements” in the legislation.

    Potente pointed out that the screening test could prevent students from being placed in special education classes unnecessarily. She said her 16-year-old son, who had reading difficulties, didn’t get any intervention until after the crucial third-grade milestone. 

    “If we had caught his challenges earlier and addressed them with the intensive instruction that he got later, he would not have needed special education.”





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