Best Practices Institutes

What would it take to close the achievement gap?
How can we help all students – including those learning English – reach high standards?

These are the questions that keep educators up at night – but we no longer have to to find the answers ourselves.

Springboard Schools' Best Practices Institutes distill the key findings of our extensive research into educational best practices. This vital information is presented as tools, tips, and techniques that are immediately useful in your district office and schools. These events are most valuable when attended by teams of 4-7 education leaders from your district or school.

Dates and Locations

	Location and Dates
Topic	Northern California	Central Valley	Southern California
Best Practices Institutes	Dec 5'08 -Santa Clara COE	Jan 25 '08 - CSU Frenso
	Jan 24 '08 Sacramento COE
	Feb 7 '08 - Alameda COE
Governance Best Practices
Central Valley ELL HS Network BPI		June 11-12 CSU Fresno
HURRY! Seating is limited. Click Here to Register your Team.
Check back often. The BPI schedule is dynamic and changes frequently.

Need accommodations, information or directions? Click here.

The Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Send a Team to the Best Practices Institutes.

Best Practices Institute Details

Springboard Schools is engaged in a three-year “California Best Practices Study” to find the answers we need. Springboard Schools’s research:

• Begins by using data to identify high performing, high poverty and gap-closing schools and districts.
• Involves teams that include both researchers and practitioners in intensive, on-site investigation of what really lies behind eye-opening results; and
• Translates what we find into practical tools and materials that make up the content for the Springboard Schools Best Practices Institutes.

Every year, the Springboard Schools Best Practices Institutes bring together our own research team along with representatives from the high-poverty, high-performing districts and schools we’ve studied. The Best Practices Institutes give a team from your district the chance to learn the lessons and hear the stories behind remarkable results.

You’ll walk away with new ideas, new energy and a new sense of what is possible — and also with practical tools that you can put in place in your own school or district.

Learn Lessons from High Performers

The high performers that you’ll meet at a Springboard Schools Best Practices Institute are real people from real California schools and districts. They grapple with the same challenges you do: impoverished communities...bare-bones resources ...students learning English—yet they are getting results, and they are eager to share what they know.

What You Can Expect

At a Springboard Schools Best Practice Institute, you and your team will:

• Learn what works. We’ll introduce you to Springboard Schools researchers and to practitioners from high-performing, high-poverty schools and districts. You’ll learn their strategies and how you can make them work for you. 
• Work with experienced coaches and consultants. Coaching from our expert team will help your team identify your strengths and gaps, adapt the strategies you’re hearing about to your own context and leave knowing what to do next.
• Rub shoulders with your peers. You’ll be in the company of school and district leaders who share your commitment for improving teaching and learning for all of our children.
• Lay the foundation for next steps that will transform your school for the better.

What You’ll Learn

Closing the gap takes doing things differently. For example, did you know that High Performers:

• Work together across classrooms, schools, and the district office — as a coherent team to provide consistent support for improved teaching and learning?
• Use frequent, diagnostic assessments to determine needs and adjust teaching — right away?
• Adopt textbooks and use both pacing guides and common assessments — in both elementary and high schools?  
• Provide teachers with regular collaboration time — even when confronted with budget cuts?
• Set explicit and measurable goals for improvement — for each student group, at each grade level— and in each classroom?
• Define “professionalism” in new ways — ways that can change our lives for the better?

Some High Performers' Examples:

In Central Union High School District, 60% of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, yet 80% of incoming freshman graduate four years later — as opposed to the state average of 69%.
  
At Kimball Elementary School in National School District, 63% of students are English Learners. The school beats the state average by 10% for students at both the “Early Advanced” and “Advanced” stages of English language proficiency, as measured by the California English Language Development Test.
  
In Selma Unified School District in the Central Valley, 79% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and 79% are Hispanic — yet Selma High School brings more than three times as many students to proficient or above on the Language Arts California Standards Test as do high schools with similar demographics. This school also outperforms comparable schools by 17% in students reaching proficient or above in geometry.