Learning from the best: just for the Kids-California is a free school improvement system that provides performance data on the state's schools, as well as best practices from high-performing/ high-poverty schools.

West Putnam Elementary School Principal Katherine Johnson knew she had to make some changes at her Porterville school. In 1999, the school was on California's Underperforming Schools Program list. Johnson and her team had to come up with a new school plan to raise student academic achievement.

They got down to business immediately. "The first step was to identify the problem. We realized we needed hard data to do that." But only limited data analysis systems existed for the team to thoroughly analyze and compare student state test scores.

Around this time, Porterville Unified School District curriculum director Gary Ingraham learned about Just for the Kids-California (www.jftk-ca.org).

JFTK-CA was developed and built by the California business community under the leadership of California Business for Education Excellence, the National Center for Educational Account ability and California State University Office of the Chancellor.

This free school improvement system provides user-friendly data on the performance of all 8,700 public schools in California and most importantly, proven best practices from high performing/ high poverty schools across the state and country.

"I was hearing from principals and others that they wanted student test score data to analyze and review long-term what was happening at their school," said Ingraham. "Until Just for the Kids--California, only a limited database existed that provided data to review performance at a school district, school or even a specific grade level over a period of more than one year."

Meanwhile, Johnson and her leadership team, which also included five teachers and an instructional assistant, manually reviewed every test taken by every student in the school and put together a database of their own. The problem became clear. Their students lacked language and literacy skills to meet grade-level standards.

Armed with that knowledge, the team put together a comprehensive reform plan. The reforms began in 2000 and included ensuring a block of time in the morning for uninterrupted reading instruction and working with parents to make sure their children arrived at school on time. And Johnson worked with the district and one-on-one with parents to try and keep students from transferring out mid-year, another problem identified through data.

Teachers from each grade scheduled regular meetings to review grade-level standards and discuss specific teaching practices to make sure instruction was consistent across and between each grade level. They also reviewed student test scores and used the scores to identify students who needed extra help.

Johnson asked teachers to turn in weekly lesson plans, which were focused on the standards that were being taught that week. Johnson reviewed them each week. Teachers were given additional focused training.

West Putnam also participated with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Focus on Learning program to complete a comprehensive school evaluation, including a study on student learning. West Putnam used JFTK-CA data in conjunction with the WASC program. Johnson says she's proud of the fact that "West Putnam is the first California elementary school in California to receive full WASC accreditation."

Student test scores improved. West Putnam was removed from the Under-performing Schools Program. It met its Adequate Yearly Progress targets. In three years, from 2002-2004, overall school wide AYP proficiency in reading jumped more than nine percentage points. During that same time, AYP proficiency rates for English language learners improved by five percentage points in language arts. The proficiency rates for socio-economically disadvantaged students jumped an impressive 10 percentage points and Hispanic students improved by 10 percentage points as well.

Judging from the 2005 data recently released in August, West Putnam is still on track. Language arts scores are up 13 percentage points since 2002 and math scores are up 21 points.

"Everyone worked smarter, but without the willingness and eagerness of my teachers that these kids will succeed, we would not have achieved such positive results," said Johnson. "I'm so thankful I have teachers who have this belief system. I know and they know we still have room for improvement, but we know we'll get there."

Benchmarking progress

By 2004, it was clear the reforms were working. But Johnson still kept asking the district for more data. "I knew what we were doing was having an impact, but there was no easy way to analyze and benchmark our progress over time so we could make critical, mid-course corrections."

By now, Porterville Unified curriculum director Ingraham had met with Just for the Kids-California staff, who had given a demonstration of the online school improvement system to Tulare County school administrators. Ingraham's goal was to provide an easy-to-understand tool that was complementary to the work he and his staff were already doing to help schools in Porterville Unified better understand and use data.

Data on the Web site goes back to the first administration of the California Standards Test in 2002 for language arts and mathematics, and includes longitudinally linked performance data and Adequate Yearly Progress data for every school district, every school and every grade level in the state. Districts also sign-up for free and volunteer additional, student-level enrollment and attendance data to the system for a more comprehensive value-added analysis. Their schools then have the ability to use a password to view this more detailed analysis of data at each grade level for better decision-making.

Additionally, the JFTK-CA improvement system allows comparisons of one school and its grade levels to the performance of the 10 highest performing schools with equal or more challenging demographics across the state, and by region and by county. The goal is to help schools benchmark their performance against higher performing schools to set achievable goals for improvement, because they can connect to the high performers to learn what works.

After being part of the Tulare County presentation, Ingraham decided to set up a demonstration for his Porterville Unified administrators. "This is a tool anyone can use and it's comprehensive and user friendly. A principal, teacher or parent can take it to whatever level works for them," said Ingraham.

This system provides actionable data for both educators and parents. The purpose was to give educators a tool to get data to help evaluate their schools and identify and share best practices. The whole point of JFTK-CA is to lead the user to the "Best Practices" section, which includes 10 years of research, an organizing framework of best practices and hundreds of specific examples from high-performing schools identified through the data.

Parents use the data, too

Parents have caught on and are using the system too, because they like being able to evaluate the performance of their child's school in the context of improvement, not just ranking. "We've gotten calls from parents who want their child in a certain school based on what they found in the data," commented Ingraham.

After being part of the demonstration set up by Ingraham, Johnson designed a workshop for her leadership team and teachers at her school. West Putnam now uses JFTK-CA regularly, along with its own individual student test data and other tools to gauge student academic achievement.

Johnson also uses the feature to compare West Putnam to other higher performing schools with similar demographic and income make-ups. The system automatically combs through the statewide database and selects 10 schools that are out-performing hers at each grade and subject. The analysis provides top 10 comparables by region, county and even specific sub-groups of students, such as English learners or students with disabilities.

Johnson used the statewide list to identify schools with higher performance in language arts and set out on a road trip to meet with the principal at two schools in Salinas to find out how they were doing it. The principals shared advice, strategies and even school and lesson plans in a collegial, peer-to-peer fashion.

Johnson also looked on the "Best Practices" section of the toolkit to review the specific practices and examples from high-performing schools and found they were strikingly similar to what West Putnam was embarking upon. "What we instituted at West Putnam mirrored what other high-performing schools were doing," said a confident Johnson.

It was no surprise when Johnson received a call one day from another principal at an elementary school in the Central Valley who wanted to meet with her to discuss how West Putnam had achieved such improvement in proficiency rates. "He wanted to find out what we were doing right, just as I had gone to Salinas to learn from them. It made me proud of my teachers, and I was glad to be in a position where I could provide insight and help to a fellow principal to raise student achievement," said Johnson.

Just for the Kids--California staff has worked with literally thousands of teachers, principals and superintendents to help them learn what high performing schools are doing and to replicate it back at their own schools and districts.

The best practice research has found that high performing/high poverty schools have many of the same practices in common. They have a pervasive no excuses attitude. They expect everyone--students, teachers and administrators--to do their part in raising student academic achievement and closing achievement gaps. Most importantly, they hold themselves accountable for measurable results.

The teachers regularly and systematically talk to one another in organized grade-level meetings using data to inform their decision making and to continually refine, adjust and improve teaching practices in real time--not just an annual adjustment.

The goal of JFTK-CA is to make it easy for any school, particularly lower-performing schools, to replicate what high-performing schools are doing.

"That's what's so great about Just for the Kids-California," said Johnson. "It's a collaborative network that allows you to get together with colleagues and do things that are good for kids. And isn't that what being an educator is all about?"

Jim Lanich serves as president of California Business for Education Excellence (www.cbee.org) and executive director of Just For The Kids-California. California Business for Education Excellence was founded in 1999 to represent the business community in state education policy making and restore excellence to California education.