California Educator

CTA-sponsored and co-sponsored legislation for 2009-10 BILL # STATUS SECOND-GRADE TESTING SB 800 Would eliminate second-grade tests in the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program effective July 1, 2010. Senate Education UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE SB 810 Would establish a single-payer health insurance system in California. (Co-sponsored bill) Senate Appropriations IMMIGRATION INVESTIGATIONS AB 132 Would propose school procedures to make immigrant children know it is safe to come to school when there are immigration raids in the community. Would prohibit schools from collecting data on students' citizenship status. Passed Assembly; to Senate Education CONSEQUENCES OF DROPPING OUT AB 374 Would encourage schools to provide at-risk students with a "consequences of dropping out" notice developed by the CDE. (Co-sponsored bill) Assembly Appropriations COMMUNIT Y COLLEGE FUNDING AB 551 Would provide for a permanent backfill of shortfalls in property taxes to California Community Colleges. Assembly Appropriations 50% LAW COMPLIANCE AB 581 Would require the California Community Colleges chancellor's office to conduct annual random audits to ensure district compliance with existing law that requires 50 percent of education dollars to be spent on instructors' salaries. Assembly Appropriations 75/25 FACULT Y RATIO COMPLIANCE AB 1095 Would ensure full compliance with law that mandates 75 percent of instruction be performed by full-time faculty in California Community Colleges within three years of passage. Assembly Appropriations Hancock Leno Mendoza Block Furutani Torlakson Hill Photo by Glen Korengold QEIA Continued from page 26 ment under No Child Left Be hind. For 200708, the school met its API goal but not its AYP target. The school is in its fifth year of Program Improvement status under NCLB. Still, Eng lish learner students had the largest test score growth over two years. Smaller classes helped stu dents make progress, says Lan thripp. Sizes fell from 30 stu dents per classroom to an aver age now of 26.4 for grade 5 and 24.8 for grade 6. The school's target class size average is a manageable 24.7 students. "Modernization projects on our campus have resulted in more classrooms being built so that we did not have to spend QEIA dol lars on this," she says. "The extra planning dollars are being banked for use during years 6 and 7 [of QEIA] so that we may get our class size even lower than our re 36 California Educator | 22-40 June.09.indd 36 june quired average." Thanks in part to QEIA, all educators at the school have completed 40 hours of profes sional development, receive ex tra training about writing and instruction protocols, and en joy the help received from new curriculum coaches like Lan thripp. She spends half her time teaching language arts and so cial studies to sixthgraders, and the other half as a coach, demonstrating model lesson plans to colleagues, observing classes and fostering more col laboration. She took CTA training as well to become a school site contact, one of 335 now trained and working at one of the 487 QEIA schools. She attended the April 2 CTA site contact train ing in Pomona, while hundreds of other educators took part in the trainings on April 22 in Em eryville in the Bay Area and on April 30 in Santa Ana. Sheila Jo Himes, site rep for Mare Island Elementary School in Vallejo, says about her expe rience at the Emeryville QEIA event, "I interacted with teach ers from Redding, Oakland and Salinas. It was great to get ideas to take back to my school." Site contacts are building an online community to exchange ideas on the new www.qeia.org website. More resources are available on the QEIA section of www. cta.org, where educators can lis ten to podcasts of QEIA brief ings, look at research that shows the characteristics of successful schools, or read the professional development requirements for QEIA spelled out in the legisla tion that launched this program, SB 1133. The 43member CTA QEIA Workgroup, including site edu cators, CTA Board members and staff, met May 26 to assess the program. The workgroup urged educators to sign up for the popular QEIA training at CTA's Summer Institute in Au gust. This year, educators from NCLB Program Improvement schools are invited as well. On line registration is available at www.cta.org. The workgroup also discussed progress being made at schools like Susan B. Coombs, where district admin istrators and the Riverside County Office of Education Achievement Team have also provided vital support. "We are lucky to have QEIA," Lanthripp says of the law's po tential for helping her students achieve. "Our students are mak ing some progress. That's what matters." Mike Myslinski 2009 6/4/09 2:01:43 PM

• Cover