The legislation, known as Assembly Bill 484, will fully replace the current STAR testing system in the 2014-15 school year with a new statewide computerized exam that will assess students’ knowledge on an individual basis and the success of the new curriculum that many states are in the process of adopting nationwide.

“This is one of the most important and revolutionary changes to education policy, and California is the right state to lead the way,” said Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, who drafted the bill, in a press release.

The testing system — Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress — differs from STAR in style and content, according to Frank Worrell, a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Unlike STAR, which predominantly uses pencil and paper, MAPP is completely computer-based, allowing the test to adapt to the ability of the test-taker.

Worrell posed a hypothetical in which two students are given 10 questions and both students answer the first four questions correctly to explain how MAPP works.

“Then one student answers question five wrong, and the other answers it right,” Worrell said. “The first student will then get an easier question designed to figure out what that student doesn’t understand. The one who answers it right will get a more complex, challenging problem.”

Worrell added that the benefit of the test is “a more precise understanding of what students are learning and where their weaknesses are.”

MAPP also tests what students are learning in the classroom — namely, the new Common Core standard, which will be rolled out on a practice basis for some subjects in some grades for the 2013-14 school year.

The curriculum aims to make students think critically and conceptually, making them competitive for a globalized college and career environment, said Karen Hemphill, president of the Berkeley Unified School District School Board.

Hemphill added that the curriculum seeks to change the way schools teach English and mathematics. For mathematics, changes will help students gain a better conceptual understanding of arithmetic and algebra.

Meanwhile, English reading curriculums will feature less fiction. Hemphill estimates that students in middle school will read approximately 50 percent nonfiction, while high school students will read about 70 percent nonfiction.

While Hemphill said she was excited for the changes, she acknowledged there would be a districtwide learning curve as the new curriculum is implemented. To ease the transition, the district plans to host workshops for teachers and parents. It also plans to give intermediary tests this year to make sure students are prepared for next year’s MAPP.

Contact Savannah Luschei at sluschei@dailycal.org.

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Anthony Bongco/Staff

Berkeley Unified School District’s truancy rate is significantly higher than the state’s average for the 2011-12 academic year.

In a 2013 report, state Attorney General Kamala Harris raised concerns that a trend of rising truancy rates across the state could lead to a rise in high school dropouts, with dropouts costing the state $46 billion a year.

Truancy is defined as a student’s missing at least half an hour of class without an excuse at least three times in one academic year, according to the California Department of Education. About six out of every 10 students in the Berkeley school district are truants.

The district’s truancy rate, which is 60.2 percent in the 2011-12 academic year, is far higher than the state average of 28.5 percent during the same time period, the department’s website states.

According to the report, 82 percent of prisoners in the United States are high school dropouts.

Despite these truancy statistics, Reaa Puri, a former Berkeley High student and current freshman at UC Berkeley, believes the situation is actually far less serious.

“I don’t think truancy is correlated with a rise in crime,” Puri said. “There are students who skip school due to already having gotten into colleges.”

Over the past few years, the school district has developed new approaches to resolve the problem. New measures include an automatic system that informs parents when their children are absent, as well as changes in the way students are punished for truancy, said Karen Hemphill, president of the school board.

Two years ago, students’ grades dropped by one letter if they had five unexcused absences, according to Hemphill. Now, truants are barred from attending events, such as prom or gamedays, and are given opportunities to make up for the hours they lost by attending Saturday school.

“It’s like ‘The Breakfast Club’ — but they actually do work,” said Hemphill.

Chronic truants are referred to the School Attendance Review Board, where school administrators engage with students and parents to discuss the underlying issues for the truancy and to work together to create a solution. The SARB can also report a student — or, in the case of elementary school truancy, a family — to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Currently, the school is partnering with Berkeley Police Department and implementing increased security at campus entrances to help staunch rising truancy rates. If the police sees a student under 16 outside of class during school hours, they will escort the student back to school, Hemphill said.

“There is a message now on campus about going to class,” she said.

Contact Giacomo Toginini at gtognini@dailycal.org.

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Assembly Bill 484, authored by Assemblymember Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would end the STAR tests that California schools use to judge performance in math and English.

Unlike current testing methods, the new assessments will have public school students take statewide assessments on computers and explain their reasoning through essays in both English and math subjects.

California K-12 schools are transitioning from the current curriculum to the Common Core curriculum, which has been adopted by 45 states. Teachers will be trained to prepare their students for the Common Core standard, which will be adopted by all schools by the 2014-15 school year.

“If you’re in the middle of switching but using the old test, what’s the relevancy of the data you’re collecting?” said Karen Hemphill, president of the Berkeley Unified School District School Board.

The new curriculum is intended to teach students to think conceptually and write analytically in all subjects. The STAR tests do not reflect the curriculum of the Common Core, and this bill aims to make that adjustment sooner.

Frank Worrell, a campus professor in the Graduate School of Education, said the Common Core program will benefit students by preparing them to think conceptually, as is required at the college level.

“What we need to see is the conceptual understanding in students who didn’t necessarily have good conceptual understanding before,” Worrell said. “It will be interesting for us to look at our materials and see that we are actually in line with what they are doing at K-12.”

If the bill is passed, students will take field tests of the new Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress in place of math and English STAR tests this school year. MAPP is a set of assessments aligned to Common Core, and AB 484 includes plans to permanently replace STAR with MAPP in the 2014-15 school year.

The currently used Academic Performance Index, a collection of data from standardized tests, would not be recorded for the next two years, because the data collected from the new testing curriculum cannot be compared to the API data taken from the previous STAR tests.

The bill has been cleared by the Senate Appropriations Committee and is awaiting a vote on the state Senate floor.

“We will know so much more after the State Accountability meeting in October,” said Debbi D’Angelo, the Berkeley school district’s director of evaluation and assessment, in an email. “Through the hard work from the teachers and professional development department, we are preparing students for these exciting changes.”

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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Jan Flatley-Feldman/File

Berkeley public schools have seen an overall improvement in performance on state tests, according to a progress report released Aug. 29.

According to the California Department of Education’s report, the Berkeley Unified School District achieved an Academic Performance Index score of 821, surpassing state goals. That score represents an improvement of 10 points over last year’s score of 811.

The API score is based on standardized tests and assessments and is used as a measurement of student progress in California K-12 public schools. It is scored on a scale of 200 to 1,000, with a statewide target of 800. Only four schools in the district did not meet this goal.

“The more people understand the test scores and the impact they have on our students, the more they will be able to help them to improve,” said Mark Coplan, spokesperson for Berkeley Unified School District.

Eight schools in the district saw a decrease in API scores. John Muir Elementary had the greatest drop — 41 points — and received a score of 782. The school’s principal, Audrey Amos, said faculty and administrators are already using the data to re-examine the curriculum.

In the first weeks of school, the report is shared with teachers, Amos said. Students also receive their individual reports to take home.

In the district, socioeconomically disadvantaged students’ API scores improved 21 points over last year, and African American students improved by 16 points. Still, school board President Karen Hemphill said these groups were 150 to 200 points behind other student groups.

“(There were) gains overall, but there’s not an acceleration,” Hemphill said. “The achievement gap isn’t narrowing.”

Hemphill said there will be more focus on underachieving student groups in the next year. She added that she hopes the implementation of the Common Core — a program that seeks to improve student success by aligning state education standards — eventually will help to narrow the achievement gap.

“Common Core is really changing the way schools teach all subjects,” Hemphill said. “I think that’s going to be the basis for making those strides.”

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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Pol Rebaque/Staff

In past years, the students of Berkeley Technology Academy, also known as B-Tech, were considered by some to be beyond help. The school had a history of academic struggle, with less than 12 percent of the senior class graduating in 2011.

Sheila Quintana was working as a school principal in Vallejo in 2011 when she was recruited to be an administrator at one of Berkeley’s schools. She was given the choice of either an elementary school, a middle school or B-Tech. She chose B-Tech.

“I was excited to work there — I chose B-Tech because I wanted to continue helping students who weren’t being served well by (traditional schools),” Quintana said. “I saw a lot of opportunity.”

B-Tech, founded in 2006, is an alternative school for high school students, most of whom lack the class credits needed to graduate.

Two years ago, only seven B-Tech students out of a class of 60 graduated. However, under Quintana, who became the principal in July 2011, 62 out of 73 students graduated this year, marking a dramatic change in the direction of the school.

When Quintana first came to B-Tech, the school was in dire need of supplies.

“There were no textbooks, workbooks or teacher materials,” Quintana said. “There were old sheets on the windows instead of blinds. It sent the message that this wasn’t a real school.”

Of 151 students, about 90 percent are transfer students from Berkeley High School, and 10 percent are referred by the penal system. Most students are low-income minorities, and many deal with problems such as murder or incarceration of relatives, poverty and homelessness.

Under Quintana’s leadership, the school’s curriculum now satisfies the University of California’s A-G requirements, which are classes necessary to be admitted to any state university. The average SAT and California High School Exit Exam scores of the students have increased as well.

Recent B-Tech graduate Jude Tamyo said Quintana and the teachers press students to stay on track.

“They care more here, Tamyo said. “They don’t let you slack off and fail. There’s a feeling of community.”

After Quintana took office, she focused on addressing the personal problems that kept students from attending school and intervened by hiring guidance counselors. According to Sherene Randle, a teacher at B-Tech, counselor Debra Clark helps students through personal issues. Clark also regularly checks in with students to ensure they have the class credits necessary to graduate.

In addition to counseling, Quintana has implemented new teaching methods and has reassigned teachers to areas that better suit them. Berkeley Unified School District also assigned additional teachers to B-Tech who specialize in at-risk youth and are trained in conflict resolution, according to school board director, Karen Hemphill.

Quintana, the eighth child in a family of 11, grew up tutoring her older siblings at home and felt that teaching came naturally to her. As a teacher for more than 20 years, she concentrates foremost on instruction at B-Tech.

On a typical day, Quintana visits several classrooms to observe students, teachers and the interactions between them. She makes herself available to students and frequently meets with them between classes. Above all, she makes sure instruction is the top priority and directs as much funding as she can into the classroom.

Another problem Quintana recognized when she arrived was that students did not fully understand the class credits system, which led to credit deficiencies and low graduation rates. Quintana instituted the B-Tech Individualized Progress Plan, a program that allows students to review the credits they need to graduate, their class schedules and their CAHSEE scores. Students review their BIPP each term with their families.

“The information empowers the students,” Quintana said.

Hemphill said although the school has received little new funding, the school district has given B-Tech more flexibility with its current funding. Later in 2013, the school district will be working with B-Tech to design a new science lab, purchase a new computer lab and make structural repairs to the buildings.

According to Quintana, B-Tech has long been regarded a place where failed students go and never leave, and students have been thought of as “throwaway kids.”

“Watching students go from hopeless to hopeful is transforming,” Quintana said. “It’s rewarding to see them succeed.”

Contact Madeleine Pauker at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Both parties came to this agreement last week, and it is now subject to approval by members of both organizations, ending negotiations that have stretched back to January. Negotiations also include a one-time 2.5 percent bonus to teachers that will come before the end of the current school year.

“This provides some badly needed relief for teachers,” said Cathy Campbell, president of BFT. “Some of these teachers are on five or six years without a raise in the face of increasing health care costs.”

Teacher contracts have remained the same from 2008 to 2012 because both parties agreed that it would be best for the city to keep teacher salaries stagnant during times of economic uncertainty. Due to this and other cuts, the school district now finds itself with an $8.7 million surplus, which it is now using to increase wages.

“I think that in this case, there is a foundational respect for what teachers do within our community and district,” Campbell said. “The biggest hurdle in these negotiations was the uncertainty of the 2013 state budget.”

Karen Hemphill, president of the district school board, said that the school district was unable to reach a long-term agreement with the BFT and will continue negotiations in October. This is largely due to the uncertainty concerning the specifics of Gov. Jerry Brown’s new education reform proposal.

Brown’s proposal looks to change from a demographic-based funding system to a need-based one. The proposal looks to give more funding to districts with higher percentages of students who are English learners, economically disadvantaged or foster youth.

Both Hemphill and Campbell said Berkeley schools have avoided problems that other cities faced under reduced funding, such as furloughs and shorter school years, due to the community’s commitment to funding education by voting for items like Prop. 30 and the parcel tax.

“Even though the district had created a carry-over fund, without Prop. 30, we would deplete that in a year,” Hemphill said. “You didn’t know what you would have that you would be able to offer as compensation, and the unions obviously understood that.”

The Berkeley Council of Classified Employees, a sister union of the BFT that represents noncertified employees, is also negotiating with the school district on wage increases. However, Paula Phillips, president of BCCE, says that negotiations are not going as well as the ones with the BFT.

“A lot of my members’ paychecks have gone down between $200 and $300,” Phillips said. “So the district balances their budget off of the backs of the lowest-paid employees in our district.”

Contact Jose Hernandez at jhernandez@dailycal.org.

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Sinai was voted in unanimously by the four sitting board members from a pool of 10 candidates. Sinai will fill the seat vacated by former board president Leah Wilson, who stepped down in March after being appointed court executive officer for the Alameda County Superior Court. Wilson resigned citing concerns about a conflict of interest.

Current board president Karen Hemphill said that despite a strong applicant pool, Sinai had qualities that showed the board she was the most suitable person for the job.

“I felt that the Board needed someone who was already familiar with the District and was involved in public education and Julie met all of these attributes,” Hemphill said in an email.  “She has been a long-time public school activist, used to work for the District and in her current work at the university, it’s all about partnerships and collaboration.”

Before working at UC Berkeley, Sinai was also chief of staff to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. Sinai said she hopes to apply her previous community and university experience to the school district and help the board with its current challenges, which include a new superintendent, increased efforts to improve academic achievement and heated negotiations with teachers’ unions.

“My future plans are to become familiar with the issues that the board has to tackle and look how to move our equity work forward,” Sinai said. “I will also help with looking at the physical status of a student district and do whatever I can do to reach an agreement with the unions.”

Michelle Moskowitz, director of advocacy and institutional relations at UC Berkeley, works with Sinai and congratulated her appointment, saying she believes Sinai will exceed expectations on the board.

“I think Julie will be an amazing asset to the board, as she has many years of experience working for the city of Berkeley,” Moskowitz said. “They could not have made a better choice. All of her colleagues at the Government and Community Relations Office congratulate her.”

Hemphill said she is glad to be working with Sinai and believes that the board will benefit from working with her.

“I expect that Julie will be a great asset in building partnerships with our community, the County and of course the University,” Hemphill said in an email.  “She also will be great in furthering our work to advance overall academic achievement and Julie’s up close knowledge of what a governing body does and how an effective elected body works together through her work as the Mayor’s Chief of Staff will be very useful.”

Sinai will serve the remainder of Wilson’s term until the seat comes up for re-election in November 2014.

Contact Seif Abdelghaffar at sabdelghaffar@dailycal.org.

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Brian Crowell, who teaches history to ninth- and 10th-grade students at Berkeley High School, has been scheduled for a disciplinary meeting with the Berkeley Unified School District’s Human Resources Department set for Monday. The administration alleges Crowell inflated students’ grades and failed to take regular student attendance.

Crowell has also been referred to the Berkeley Peer Assistance and Review program, which evaluates underperforming teachers.

According to School Board Director Karen Hemphill, the B-PAR program is designed to fairly evaluate underperforming teachers and allows teachers to improve their teaching after receiving unsatisfactory evaluations instead of dismissing them outright. The B-PAR panel is made up of both teachers and administrators who jointly make evaluations.

BAMN, an activist group, alleges that the referral is a retaliation against Crowell, who had criticized Berkeley High School’s ninth-grade curriculum in February as being poorly designed. According to Crowell, he received notice of the referral for review and disciplinary hearing soon after sending a note about the curriculum to administrators at the school.

“The district has praised him in the past for having an ability to really connect with students in a way that is very unique,” said Shanta Driver, the national chair of BAMN and one of the attorneys representing Crowell. “None of these accusations against him came into being before he attacked the ninth-grade curriculum.”

Berkeley High School principal Pasquale Scuderi declined to comment, saying that Crowell’s situation is an internal issue. Hemphill said she could not comment on personnel matters but said this decision is made at the school-administration level, not at the school-board level.

Various BAMN affiliates spoke at the meeting, including Yvette Felarca, a BAMN organizer and teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, as did a number of Crowell’s students.

“He teaches about current events,” said UC Berkeley freshman Aillen Zazueta-Bella, a former student of Crowell. “He tells students that they can go to college. There is no reason for him to be here (in this situation).”

BAMN also said that Crowell was targeted because he compiled and publicized statistics that were critical of the administration’s B-PAR policies. An article published in the Berkeley High Jacket, the school’s newspaper, referencing Crowell’s data analysis, said that over the last decade, black and Latino teachers, female teachers and teachers over 50 have been disproportionately placed in the B-PAR program.

“We have teachers who have been at BHS for 30 years who are scared for their jobs (because of this),” Crowell said. “If the administration fires me, it will send a chilling message to the other teachers and create an environment of fear.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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Hayward Unified School District/Courtesy

Donald Evans, superintendent of Hayward Unified School District, has been named the sole finalist candidate for the Berkeley Unified School District superintendent position.

The selection process for a new superintendent, which began in December 2011, reopened in February this year when previous finalist Edmond Heatley dropped his candidacy following the rise of controversy surrounding his stance against gay marriage. Evans was chosen after the district evaluated more than 70 possible candidates, according to a district press release Friday.

Evans was a favored candidate due to his extensive experience in dealing with a diverse set of students from different income levels and ethnicities, according to Karen Hemphill, president of the school board.

“Dr. Evans really encompasses the experiences, skills, and values that our community has stressed as being important in our new superintendent,” Hemphill said in an email.

Evans began his career nearly 26 years ago, working as a teacher and administrator in school districts in San Diego, East Palo Alto, Oakland and Compton before becoming superintendent of Hayward Unified School District, according to the Hayward Education Foundation website.

“I’ve had a very positive experience working with Superintendent Evans,” said Principal Ariel Dolowich of Anthony Ochoa Middle School in Hayward. “He has brought a level of accountability and reorganization to the district.”

During Evans’ tenure, Dolowich and Anthony Ochoa staff, with support from the district, saw an increase in the school’s Academic Performance Index by 86 points — a record for the school, Dolowich said.

With an emphasis on rigor, responsibility and results, Evans is noted for his achievements in developing a community-based, data-driven academic achievement plan for African American students. The school board hopes that with his experience, Evans will be able to help Berkeley with similar achievement gap issues, Hemphill said. The 2020 Vision project is one of the most visible Berkeley efforts to address the issue.

Nevertheless, some members of the community are cautious about Evans’ candidacy but are eager to see what he might bring to the superintendent position.

“I am cautiously optimistic about his selection,” said Berkeley PTA Council President Tom Killilea in an email. “The important point will be how he approaches the Berkeley community, which can be a challenge on its own.”

Board members, teachers, union representatives, staff and community members will all attend a site visit Friday, according to Hemphill, to observe Evans in his current position in Hayward.
“It’s an opportunity for the board to bring in the various stakeholders in our district to do final vetting of the candidate,” Hemphill said.

After the site visit, the board will continue the finalization process. It will create an employment agreement and vote on a final contract for Evans. If all goes well, Evans will be hired and assume the superintendent position on July 1.

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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On Wednesday, the board will release and then vote on the names of finalists for the position, which was vacated by Leah Wilson, former board president. Wilson resigned on March 31 after taking a position with the Alameda County Superior Court, the first time a school board member has resigned since 1909.

The applicants include two campus professors, the campus director of local government and community relations, and a scientist and former deputy director of the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, among others.

The candidates are Ty Alper, Peter Bloomsburgh, Michael Bolgatz, Meleah Hall, Spencer Klein, Dan Lindheim, Satish Rao, Margit Roos-Collins, Julie Sinai and Mark Zoidis.

Because the new board member will serve a partial term — until Nov. 30, 2014 — he or she needs to be able to “hit the ground running” and “immediately be an integral and contributing member of the board,” said board president Karen Hemphill.

In the coming months, the board will be learning to work with a new superintendent, “all while focusing on bridging the opportunity gap that exists along racial lines in our district,” Hemphill said in an email, referencing the city’s 2020 Vision program, which aims to close the city’s achievement gap by the year 2020.

Alper, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, has seen this gap himself, as both he and his wife went through Berkeley public schools as children.

“I know firsthand how important it is for all children in this city to get the educational opportunities that will enable them to thrive,” Alper said, echoing many of the sentiments of his fellow candidates.

Many candidates who come from analytical backgrounds, such as computer science and financial advising, plan to bring their analytical minds to the job to address the numbers of the achievement gap in Berkeley public schools as well as those of the district’s budget.

Other applicants stressed the importance of maintaining solid and open relationships with the community.

“We need to be meeting the needs of our kids and families in relation to a positive education outcome,” Sinai, campus director of local government and community relations, said. “We as a community need to come together to provide coordinated support.”

The board has 60 days from the time Wilson’s resignation was submitted to fill the vacancy, according to the Berkeley city charter. It plans to fill the seat nine days before the deadline at its May 8 board meeting at the latest.

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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