Joan Talbert Co-Authors Two Case Studies on Positive Outlier Districts in California

Joan Talbert, senior research scholar and co-director of the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching at Stanford University’s School of Education, co-authored two case studies on Clovis Unified School District (USD) and Sanger USD. These case studies are two of seven studied by researchers at the Learning Policy Institute in a mixed-methods study that sought to learn from positive outlier districts in which African American, Latino/a, and White students did better than predicted on California’s math and language arts tests from 2015 to 2017, after accounting for differences in socioeconomic status. The case studies on Sanger USD and Clovis USD describe critical practices and policies within the districts that promote student learning in the context of the Common Core State Standards and the deeper learning they seek to foster, especially among students of color. The Sanger case study builds on previous research that Talbert has conducted in the district and focuses on elements of the district’s multi-tiered system of support that Collaborative members explored in our June 2018 meeting