School Context
Santee Education Complex is situated adjacent to Downtown Los Angeles in the Garment District of South Los Angeles, near Los Angeles Trade-Tech College. This is an area of Los Angeles undergoing a great deal of development and transformation due to the financial resources being invested in the area. Within a five-mile span expensive housing developments and urban commercial projects are rapidly changing the composition of the area.
The majority of Santee’s feeder population is comprised of Latino immigrant populations along with a smaller African American community. One of the largest and most marginalized subgroups is that of English Learners. According to the most recent school report card in the 2015-2016 school year, although 27% of school’s population is English Learners, only 19% of English Learners were “on track to graduate in four years” as opposed to 50% of Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP) students (SARC, 2016). In the same 2015-2016 school year, only 34% of students had made annual gains on the California English Language Development Test, 67% of English Learners had not reclassified within 5 years (Long Term English Learners or LTELS), and the reclassification rate was 14%.The recent English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC) also reveals that although students are doing well in Speaking and Listening, most English Learners are struggling to read and write at grade level (Los Angeles Unified School District, 2018).
Santee’s current population of English Learners is very diverse, including three distinct groups. Our current pathway for Newcomers includes instruction in the primary language for two years, at the end of which students struggle to make the transition into mainstream classes. The next largest population of English Learners is the Long-Term English Learners (LTEL) with a Special Education classification. These students struggle academically in both mainstream and Special Day Class (SDC) classrooms. The last group of English Learners is comprised of general education LTEL students. Much of our English Learner population does not graduate in four years, with only 64.4% culminating in 2017-2018 (California Department of Education, 2018). In addition, English Learners’ Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test results lag behind those of the rest of the school in both English and Math (Los Angeles Unified School District, 2018).
In January of 2016, Santee Education Complex published its Wester Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) report and included its improvement plans, which were aligned with the LAUSD’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) goals. At that time, the school identified five areas of need including: A-G Rate, English Learners Making Annual Progress on the CELDT, Students with 96% Attendance, Parent Participation Rate on School Experience Survey, and Expulsion Rate (Santee WASC Report, 2016). As a result of these findings, Santee staff revised the Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) to directly target funding to the LCAP goals. The SPSA team allocated funds to Professional Learning Community (PLC) conference attendance, planning time for syllabi alignment, the purchase of an intervention coordinator and college and career counselor, teacher planning time, after school tutoring programs, City Year teacher aides, Diploma Project Counselor, One-to-One Technology, Class-Size Reduction teachers, Community Representatives, and a Bridge Coordinator along with a Title III Instructional Coach.
In order to provide equity for English Learners, the funding for PLC implementation should be monitored more closely. PLCs receive funds annually to support teacher collaboration and data driven instruction; however, the goal of collaboration toward common syllabi and instructional practices has not been fully realized across departments. As a result, not all teachers are on board with common pacing, grading, and differentiation practices that could greatly benefit English Learners. In addition, although a large amount of money is targeted toward staff professional development, much of time is used for planning, rather than the refinement of instructional strategies. This is a large area of growth for the school especially if English Learners are expected to achieve at a higher level on annual assessments and more students are expected to complete the A-G completion rate.
One of the major shifts in LAUSD’s equity vision occurred this year through the Multilingual and Multicultural Education Department (MMED). MMED has revised the English Learner Master Plan to promote student Bi-literacy and include Standard English Learners (SELs). One of the goals of this work is to promote an assets-based theory of instruction. At the school level the Instructional Leadership Team has also made it a goal to ensure that more African American students feel comfortable on campus with a focus on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP). The Instructional Leadership Team is doing a book study and promoting CRP during their department meetings. In addition, since it is a WASC year, the WASC team surveyed the staff about professional development and the findings included more trainings on differentiating instruction for English Learners. Other decision makers at the school site include, the School Site Council (SSC) and English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC), which both influence the school’s professional development calendar along with the spending of the school’s Title I funds.
In thinking about a leadership project to promote equity and social justice, the teachers and stakeholders I plan to work with to inform and support the inquiry improvement plans would be the school’s ILT and the English Learner PLC. In addition, I could meet with the administrator over English Learners and ELAC along with the school principal to inform data analysis and reflect upon plans for inquiry.