PAST PROGRAMS OF THE LEARNING CURVE: A SERIES ON EDUCATION REFORM

Oct. 15, 2000
Exploding the Myth of Parent Disengagement
During the fall of 2000, San Diego Dialogue conducted a series of focus groups of parents whose children attend the lowest-performing schools in the San Diego Unified School District. We expected to find that the children did poorly in school, in part, because their parents don't care and don't help. What we found were parents who cared and who helped to the best of their ability, but who were frustrated by the often misleading, inaccurate and untimely information provided by the schools and the district. Study after study has shown that parent involvement is one of the most critical parts of a child's education. What can be done to ensure that schools and parents become full, equal partners in their students' education?

Speakers: Stephanie Gut, executive director, San Diego Organizing Project; Chuck Patterson, teacher and union leader, Sweetwater Union High School District; David Vallodalid, president, Parent Institute for Quality Education.

June 3, 2000
The Buck Stops Where?: Accountability in Public Education
Accountability is much more than the widespread public perception that if students do well on standardized tests, the teachers are doing fine. (And if they do badly, it's the teachers' fault.) An accountability system is a set of commitments, policies and practices that are designed to create and support good practices and continual self-evaluation within schools and school districts. Devising a system of genuine accountability is a complex task, involving a careful assignment of responsibilities and a thoughtful set of measures for assessing school effectiveness and student progress. Each attempt to make a school accountable must involve the question: "The buck stops where?" The answers are not always easy to determine, and developing a system of accountability based on that question is likely to be a multifaceted and complex task.

Speakers: Richard Elmore, professor of education, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University (see his PowerPoint presentation); Tyler Cramer, chairman, accountability subcommittee, Business Roundtable for Education; Kelly Peacock Wright, middle-school teacher and developer of national, state and district literacy and mathematics standards, San Diego Unified School District; Scott Reed, associate director, Pacific Institute for Community Organization (a faith-based agency that engages local communities in important issues, including school reform).

April 8, 2000
Excellence in Teaching
What is the single most important factor in student achievement? Repeatedly, studies have shown that the quality of the teacher has the greatest effect on how much and how well students learn. Over the next decade, our schools will need to recruit ever larger numbers of teachers. How can we ensure that as the number of teachers dramatically increases, the quality of teaching also gets higher?

Speakers: Kati Haycock, director of The Education Trust in Washington, D.C. (see her PowerPoint presentation); Steve Lilly, dean of the College of Education at California State University, San Marcos (see his PowerPoint presentation); Libia Gil, superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District; Deberie Gomez, deputy administrative officer for human resource services at San Diego Unified School District; Louise Phipps, principal of Mar Vista High School in the Sweetwater Union High School District; and Donald Raczka, president of the Poway Federation of Teachers in the Poway Unified School District.