Last year, state officials deployed the new California School Dashboard, giving parents, educators and the community a comprehensive and user-friendly look at how districts and their campuses are performing.
The dashboard, available online, offers a ton of information on everything from test scores and graduation rates to parent engagement and school climate. But to paraphrase basically every episode of G.I. Joe from our childhood, knowing is only half the battle.
For districts that aren’t meeting their dashboard performance goals, the state has also established a process by which county offices of education — like OCDE — and other agencies provide targeted help, known as differentiated assistance, to ensure all student needs are being met.
And here’s where we’re going with this.
The process of differentiated assistance is explained quite nicely in a new podcast produced by our friends at the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. In fact, the third episode of the CA School Field Trip podcast focuses specifically on efforts to buoy foster youth in the Anaheim Elementary School District, and it features Christine Olmstead, OCDE’s associate superintendent of instructional services.
Episode three of the CA School Field Trip podcast is about 20 minutes long and can be accessed through Apple’s iTunes service or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Also, be on the lookout for a new episode of OCDE’s The Deeper Learning Podcast, which is coming soon to a pair of headphones near you.