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Communicating to Students, Families, & Communities

Long Beach Unified School District. (2018). High school readiness guide [Sample personalized student readiness report]. Available at https://cacollaborative.org/sites/default/files/6.1%20 LBUSD_2018_High_school_readiness_guide.pdf 

To help families make informed choices about which high school to attend, Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) designed this High School Readiness Guide to educate families about the districts’ School of Choice process and share the students’ current data. Through the School of Choice process, middle school students in the district can apply to any of over 40 high school pathways. A pathway is a small learning community, often within a larger high school, with a career or industry focus. Some of the pathways have special requirements for admission. The guide provides student data related to School of Choice such as the student’s academic grade point average and state assessment scores in mathematics and English-language arts, a school comparison matrix to compare different characterizes of the high schools, and other resources such as career interest matching, a mentor list, middle school progress, and a timeline of action steps for students and families.

Long Beach Unified School District. (2018). College–career readiness guide [Sample personalized student readiness report]. Available at http://www.lbschools.net/Asset/Files//Superintendent/ Parent_Forum/College-Career-Readiness-Guide-Sample.pdf

LBUSD provides this college and career readiness guide to students and their families twice a year to update students on their academic progress and offer suggested next steps along the path toward graduation and college. This report provides data on how competitive the student is for admission to a two-year community college and a four-year college or university based on the student’s transcript and SAT and PSAT scores. The document also provides a status report on whether the student is on track to graduate from high school and complete their A-G requirements, the number of AP/IB tests passed, and the number of weighted courses taken. In addition, the document provides guidance on creating a career plan based on areas of a student’s interest.

Polikoff, M. S. (2019). Gauging the revised California School Dashboard: Evidence from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier Voter Poll. Available at Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) website: https://edpolicyinca.org/sites/default/files/PB_Polikoff_Feb-2019.pdf

In late 2018, the California Department of Education rolled out an updated version of the California School Dashboard. The state made a number of substantive, technical, and stylistic changes in their revision of the Dashboard to help educators, parents, and the public make better use of school performance data. However, results from a 2019 PACE/USC Rossier poll of California voters find that while there is high support for the Dashboard and a strong preference for the revised Dashboard; there is continued low use of the Dashboard with troubling usage trends among different groups of voters. For instance, just 30 percent of those with incomes below $35,000 had heard of the Dashboard compared to 61 percent of those with incomes above $250; and in terms of use, just 6 percent of those with incomes below $35,000 said they had visited the Dashboard compared to 30 percent of those with incomes above $250,000. The author suggests that the state might need to do more to reach out to less educated or lower income voters if the goal is to put more data in their hands to make decisions about where to send their children.