Springboard News

Springboard Schools improves teaching and learning for California’s most-challenged students

Best Practices Institute in Fresno addresses Leading for Equity – Focusing on High School English Language Learners

San Francisco, 18 July 2006 — Education leaders in California face a myriad of challenges and constraints. Springboard Schools helps them address those challenges by discovering the secrets of California public schools that are successful despite serving highly challenged student populations – kids struggling to learn English and escape poverty. That knowledge is passed on to education leaders around the state through several unique programs. One tool for transmitting that information is Springboard Schools’ series of Best Practices Institutes (BPIs).

Best Practices Institutes are events where school leadership teams learn from their peers and others about the methods used in challenged, yet successful, schools. These events bring together school leaders – superintendents, principals, teachers and others – with education researchers and leaders in school reform. These educators share a concern for improving the quality of teaching and learning. At the BPI they build a synergy of ideas, tools, and techniques that enables the attendees to return to their schools with new energy and ideas, leading to higher achievement for their students.

The next Institute will take place August 2-3, 2006, at California State University Fresno. This event continues the series of Best Practice Institutes produced throughout California since 1998 by Springboard Schools. About 100 education leaders from the Central Valley will be participating, representing nine school districts. The Institute is funded by James Irvine Foundation.

A new feature of this BPI is that each participating high school will be bringing two to four students to work with UC Berkeley seniors who will help the students develop leadership skills to enable them to provide a voice for ELL students in their schools.
This BPI is the first of its kind – focusing intently on the needs of English Language Learning (ELL) students in high school. This group of students has traditionally had the greatest challenges in meeting achievement goals due to the difficulty older students have learning a new language, and the fact that ELL students are typically from low-income families. At this Best Practices Institute, Springboard Schools, along with experts from around California, will provide tools and techniques to enable educators and educational administrators to improve the results they get in teaching ELL students in high school.

Presenters at the event include:

• Keynote speaker, Kevin Clark, Clark Consulting Group, discussing Focus on Equity
• Jim Hollis, SpringWare™ data tools
  
• Sandra Kofford, Southwest High School, Assistant Principal
  
• Dr. Ida Oberman, Springboard Schools Director of Research and Evaluation
  
• Denise Rand and Angel Munez, CELDT and EL development
  
• Laraine Roberts and Valerie Himes, Springboard Schools, School culture
  
• Susan Stout and Chris Smith, San Joaquin Valley Writing Project, Support for ELL students and teachers
  
• Don Zundel, Apple regional manager, Technical support of ELL students
  

About Springboard Schools

Springboard Schools is a California-based nonprofit and non-partisan network of educators committed to raising student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap. Springboard Schools was founded in 1995 as the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). Since that time, Springboard Schools has worked with 325 schools in 74 districts in the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Valley, and Southern California.

In 2001, researchers at Stanford University’s Center for Research on the Context of Teaching found that achievement in Springboard Schools’ (then BASRC) client schools rose at a faster rate than in a carefully-matched comparison group of schools, and that those schools that implemented the program with the most fidelity made the greatest gains.

Springboard Schools works with education organizations and their leaders at every level of the system to provide them with knowledge, skills and tools to create school systems in which good teaching is the norm in every classroom for every student. The Springboard Schools research team has developed a reputation as a reliable source of information that is useful to both practitioners and policy-makers.

For more information, please visit the Springboard Schools website: www.SpringboardSchools.org, email info (at) springboardschools.org, or call 415 348-5500.