California Department of Education

Sacramento, California

Row 1:  Carol Dickson, Title I, CDE (NNPS Key Contact),
Maria Elena Huizar, Rosie Thomas, Howie DeLane, Diane Haney, Lucy Keola.                        Row 2: Colleen You, Kim Kenne, Geni Boyer, David Page, Angela McGuire, Jill Yoshikawa, Carol Gust, Ymasumac Maranon, Maxi Lee, Gina Natali, Francesca Wright, Elisa Gonzalez, Jeana Preston, Margo Hunkins.  These members of the Family Area Network (FAN) Board represent the California Department of Education (CDE) and such organizations as the state PTA, PIRC, WestEd, various school districts, county offices, parent organizations, and other groups and organizations that support the improvement of partnership programs across the state of California.

State-Level Leadership for Partnerships -                                                                      Leaders for parental involvement in the California Department of Education (CDE) are four-time winners of Partnership State Awards for developing and sustaining policies and state-level leadership on involvement. The Title I Policy and Partnerships (TIPP) office collaborates with other offices in CDE and with many state organizations to improve and enact state policies on family and community involvement.  In 2007, the leader for partnerships and colleagues worked to increase the quality and consistency of monitoring parent involvement policies and programs in districts that receive Title I funding.  Districts and schools are required, by law, to increase schools’ and parents’ capacities to organize and implement plans for partnerships and to involve families in evaluating Title I programs.

Most states are struggling to clarify the state’s roles in assessing districts’ work on partnerships, as required in Section 1118 of NCLB.  California is refining and improving its compliance monitoring instrument for reports on categorical programs.  To do this, California’s leaders obtained input from district and school leaders, advisory councils, and state administrators.  As one state leader commented, “It makes sense to use the Consolidated Application as a vehicle for gathering mandated parental involvement information.”  It is necessary for all evaluators to standardize the way they assess the districts and schools on partnerships.  Thus, leaders are working to increase the inter-rater reliability on the monitoring instruments.  The state’s leader for partnerships also aims to help state, district, and school leaders understand the importance of well-planned partnership programs for student success, as part of the school improvement process.

Encourage Districts and Schools to Improve Their Partnership Programs

California aims to:

“Promote increased student academic success by facilitating the development and implementation of comprehensive, continuing family-community-school partnerships in all California schools.” (California Strategic Plan for Parental Involvement in Education, 1992)

To meet this goal, the state department of education is working with many partners to increase awareness across the state, provide training for district leaders, school teams, and other educators, parents, and community leaders.  Working with the California Parent Center (CPC – see the Partnership Organization Award winner), the state leaders for partnerships supported 11 training conferences in 2005, and on-going regional training conferences in 06 and 07, giving particular attention to providing training for districts identified as needing improvement.