November 2012
In November of 2012, members of the California Collaborative on District Reform (CCDR) joined many district officials from urban, suburban and rural areas and statewide advocacy groups in an invitation-only series of working group sessions on the weighted pupil formula. Representatives from the Department of Finance, State Board of Education, and the California Department of Education hosted the working group to gather feedback from stakeholders on key WPF design and implementation issues and on what changes, if any, need to be made to the accountability system to shift from a compliance-oriented system to one focused on ensuring all kids are college and career ready.
Nine of ten districts in the Collaborative participated as key stakeholders, providing invaluable examples to inform the resource allocation and accountability discussions. Representatives from Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) shared their vision of an accountability system that focused on better measures of student performance in accountability, such as college-and-career readiness measured for students in upper grades. FUSD currently has a metric for college-and-career readiness at the upper grade levels that informs how they target resources and interventions for students in the upper grades that are falling behind. CCDR representatives, Jennifer O’Day, Jeimee Estrada and Joel Knudson attended the working group sessions as part of the Collaborative’s efforts to work with district leaders to gather examples of funding allocation practices at the local level and guiding principles for the state to consider as state representatives seek to overhaul the school funding system.