POWER has developed a strong Education Strategy Team including top leaders from targeted schools within LAUSD District 3. The Team includes parents, teachers, classified employees, principals and union members. The Strategy Team has for the past three years shaped and created POWER’s long-term reform agenda for LAUSD schools in West Los Angeles. For the next three years the Strategy Team has identified four focus areas: participating in health and safety inspections and improvements at local schools, increasing parent leadership and decision making roles in schools, winning commitments from the Department of Education to involve parents in the implementation of No Child Left Behind funds, and creating a Parent-Teacher Mentor Program, as well as working with School Board Member Marlene Canter on Food Improvement.

Lagging middle schools targeted
New plans to boost student achievement to roll out this summer
Daily News, May 26, 2008 by Connie Llanos
Alarmed by slumping student achievement at Los Angeles Unified middle schools, district officials are moving this summer to roll out several programs designed to improve performance amid criticism that middle-schoolers have been overlooked for too long. (Click here to read the rest of the article)

Education Reform

POWER firmly believes that a free public education is a human right, and that all children are capable of the highest levels of academic achievement. POWER also believes that to help close the achievement gap, teachers, principals and other school personnel must build collaborative relationships with parents and community leaders.

POWER parent leaders organize to cultivate a network of relationships between community leaders, schools, churches, businesses, service agencies, and other public and private institutions to serve as a vehicle for education reform, democratic involvement and community improvement.

POWER parent leaders are sick and tired of their children receiving a second rate education; of being told that they and their children are to blame for their children’s poor education; that schools don’t have any money to address their most important needs.

To address the problem of low student achievement at schools in West Los Angeles, parents organize to work on the following issues: Improving teaching and learning and Access and accountability.

Improving teaching and learning will be accomplished by: collaborative relationship among teachers, professional development relevant to teachers’ needs, intervention programs, bilingual education. Access and accountability will be achieved by: collaborative relationships between parents, teachers and the principal, shared decision making power, review of data on school performance (test scores), community school review – assessment of school performance concurrent with test scores, parent participation in School Site Councils.

Over the next three years POWER will:

1. Increase percentage of students at Stoner Elementary scoring at Proficiency level on California Standards Test (CST) by 10% each year.
   • English Language (Grades 2-5)
   • Mathematics (Grades 2-5)
2. Increase the number of parents voting during School Site Councils elections
3. Increase the number of POWER parent leaders making decisions on the School Site Councils
4. Implement a community school review of student achievement

What are AYP and PI?

The federal law requires schools, districts, and the state as a whole to demonstrate adequate yearly progress (AYP) in English/language arts and math. To do this, student test results are matched to Annual Measurable Objectives (AMOs) based on proficiency levels. That is, the state sets annual targets for how many students must test proficient or above in order to make AYP.

For the 2006-07 testing cycle, the AMO targets were:

In fact, 2006-07 marks the third consecutive year that the AMO targets have remained the same. Beginning with 2007-08, however, targets will increase yearly until they reach 100 percent in 2013-14. This schedule of AMO increases was established with the anticipation that schools and districts would experience greater academic gains in the later years after they had time to adjust to issues such as alignment of instruction with state content standards.

The "proficient" threshold on CAHSEE for NCLB purposes requires a scale score of 380 for each of the English/language arts and math components. A passing score on the exit exam, for California graduation, is a scale score of 350 for each of the English/language arts and math components.

Each school and district must meet the AMOs in order to make AYP. Further, NCLB asks for that result from all of the numerically significant subgroups—up to seven ethnic groups and the socioeconomically disadvantaged students (which the state already included in its accountability system) plus English learners and Special Education students (which it hadn't until 2006). If any one of these subgroups doesn't meet both AMOs, the school or district fails to make AYP.

However, a "safe harbor" provision permits schools and districts to make AYP if the percent of students "below proficient" in the district, school, or subgroup decreased by 10% from the previous year. Further, if a school/district does not make AYP solely because of its students with disabilities subgroup not making the math AMOs, 20 percentage points are added to "percent proficient or above" for that subgroup's math AMO. In addition, if a school or district does not meet an AMO or participation rate condition in a given year, a provision allows for two- or three-year averaging of values if that will meet the condition.

NCLB also requires that 95% of all students—and 95% of each significant subgroup—must participate in each test. Again, a lower participation rate for just one subgroup prevents the school or district from making AYP. "Significant" is defined as at least 100 pupils or at least 50 students who comprise 15% or more of the total enrollment.

Two additional indicators are factored into AYP:

1. High school graduation rates (defined as the number of graduates divided by the graduates plus dropouts over the previous four years) must be at least 82.9% or improve by .1% over the prior year; or improve by .2% over the second prior year.

2. The school or district API score must be at least 590 or 1 point higher than the previous year.

According to NCLB, every school that lists a student in grades 9-12 must show a graduation rate. If a traditional comprehensive high school doesn't have a graduation rate (e.g., doesn't have a senior class), a proxy rate is calculated based on the school's available dropout and enrollment data. The district's rate or the countywide average graduation rate is used for all other schools that list a student in grades 9-12 but doesn't have its own graduation rate. 

According to NCLB, a school receiving Title I funds is placed in “Program Improvement” (PI) if the school or any of its numerically significant subgroups fails to make AYP for two consecutive years based on the same factor (e.g., the English/language arts AMO, the math AMO, or the participation rate). Additionally, the school goes into PI if it does not meet the API indicator for two consecutive years or, if it is a high school, fails to meet the graduation rate indicator for two consecutive years. A school gets out of PI if it makes AYP for two years in a row.

In August 2003, 1,200 schools were in or entered Program Improvement, according to the CDE. The number rose to 1,601 in the 2003-04 cycle. In September 2004-05 320 new schools moved into PI, and 121 schools moved out of PI. For September 2006, 639 schools moved into PI and 104 exited, and in 2007 232 schools moved into PI and 41 exited. This means 2,208 schools, more than 20% of California's schools, are in some stage of needing improvement.

NCLB lists a series of increasingly serious interventions for schools that remain in Program Improvement. These begin with revising a plan for the school and giving parents the option to transfer their students to schools that are not in PI, with the district providing transportation. The second year adds providing professional development and offering tutoring to low-income students. If the school hasn't made AYP in four years, the outcome could be significant restructuring or takeover in the fifth year.