20 Years of Reengagement Success: Seattle’s Partnership for Connecting At-Promise Students to College
Strand:Support Reengagement and Dropout Prevention Presenters:Curt Peterson, Anissa Sharratt, Mike Sita, and Molly Ward, South Seattle College and Highline Public Schools Supporting reengagement students from high school to college is not a distant dream. It’s happening every day in Seattle through a 20-year partnership between Highline Public Schools and South Seattle College. Serving one of the most challenging parts of the city, a partnership built on trust, flexibility, and total commitment to student success is seeing students earn diplomas and transition to college. This presentation will explain the partnership, how it works, and its successes.
Building Bridges to College for California Opportunity Youth: The Role of CBOs and Pathways in Community College Relationships
Strands:Support Reengagement and Dropout Prevention, Teaching Strategies Presenters:Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ed Trust-West; Linda Dawson and Laurie Pianka, SIATech; and Breeanna Decker and Joe Herrity, Opportunity Youth Partnership This session will highlight how the Oakland-Alameda County Opportunity Youth Initiative (OACOYI), Santa Clara County Opportunity Youth Partnership (SCCOYP), and SIATech, a nonprofit charter high school focused on dropout recovery, are all leading efforts to create pathways to college for opportunity youth and young people in alternative high schools. We will showcase tools the collaboratives have used to bring together community based organizations to partner with their local colleges and their progress in these collaboratives.
Continuous Improvement of Alternative Education in Kentucky: Support, Recognition and Accountability
This presentation will provide attendees a holistic picture of the Kentucky Alternative Educational System and the state level efforts to ensure a meaningful accountability process that promotes reflection, student voice, strengths, and continuous improvements. Data visuals, protocols, and example reports will be shared. Interaction with attendees will be infused throughout including and the use of plickers (i.e., paper clickers) that allows live polling and immediate display of audience input as well as intermittent discussions. Kentucky assesses the extent of student progress toward proficiency and strives for accurate, understandable reporting so that all Kentucky education stakeholders have the data they need, including Career Technical Education measures.
Stand: Presenters:Amy Lansing, University of California San Diego
Join frequent RAPSA contributor, Amy Lansing, as she discusses how her work with juvenile court schools, dropout recovery schools, and other programs serving at-promise youth has informed her practice. Amy is an expert at graciously translating complex neurocognitive science into practical approaches for addressing the trauma that at-promise students live with. Hear about the work that she does with incarcerated and other trauma infused youth as well as her strategies for empowering staff to support them. Amy will be returning for her fourth AAPF and is among our highest rated presenters. We are pleased to have her back for this new session.
District-Wide Social Emotional Learning: Cultivating Champions to Build Capacity and Sustainability
Studies show that when Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is implemented district-wide and the focus starts with adults first, the outcomes for success and sustainability are much more likely. Last year, Collaborative Learning Solutions and Kern High School District partnered in a new Professional Learning/Internal Champion Coaching model called "Social Emotional Learning 2.0." A team from each of the 23 high schools in the district gathered together monthly. In these monthly meetings, they participated in a full day of highly interactive and engaging Professional Learning with the expectation that they would take this new learning back to their classrooms and sites and come back with stories of best practices and challenges to overcome. These SEL Internal Champions also participated in an online Professional Learning network supporting each other with ideas, questions, resources, and inspiration. Learn how to use SEL and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports to become catalysts for positive change!
Education and Workforce Development in the 115th Congressional Session
Strand: Presenters: Mandy Schaumburg, Education Deputy Director and Senior Counsel, House Education and Workforce Committee; Jacqueline Chevalier, Education Policy Director, Democratic Staff; Moderator:Ernie Silva, Executive Director Reaching At-Promise Students Association
The November 2016 election brought changes in Congressional direction. Hear from House Education and Workforce Committee staff about what those changes mean for education and workforce development at the federal level. Changes in education and accountability resulted under the Congressional Review Act. Significant bipartisan changes in workforce development are being debated in the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (H.R. 5587) and other opportunities for at promise students will result from the passage of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2017. Learn from congressional staff about how these laws evolved and what they mean for opportunity youth in the coming years. This is an unprecedented opportunity to gain an inside view of national policy development and to begin your analysis of how to position your schools, programs and students to take advantage of emerging trends and policies.
Flip the Script San Diego: 53,000 Reasons to Change the Story of San Diego’s Opportunity Youth
San Diego Workforce Partnership and community partner panelists will present findings from the 2017 study Flip the Script: 53,000 Reasons to Change the Story of San Diego’s Opportunity Youth. Panelists will share details of early efforts to address the San Diego County youth disconnection crisis, data analysis gleaned from the 2017 study commissioned by the San Diego Workforce Partnership, and present a vision for how San Diego can flip the script for opportunity youth.
Implementing Mentoring Programs with At-Promise Teens
Strand:Support Reengagement and Dropout Prevention Presenters:Sara Asmussenand Lisa DiGaudio, New Dawn Charter High School Research shows that students who have strong personal connections at the school setting have a greater chance of achieving academic success. New Dawn leaders will outline how to develop a mentoring program that connects all adults in the school building with every student in the school, including sharing the results at New Dawn, a transfer high school in Brooklyn, NY. Presenters will share how New Dawn outperforms in persistence and other areas on the NYC School Survey and Quality Snapshot by developing and implementing a mentoring program. In this hands on session, participants will work in small groups according to their mentoring experience to explore one of three relevant questions: How can a small scale mentoring program be adopted at your school? What would be necessary to develop a successful proposal and implement it? And, troubleshooting current practices: what is working and what isn’t?
Leveraging Social Supports for At-Promise Students
Dr. Jon Zaff the prime researcher for America’s Promise Alliance and Dr. Shannon Varga will provide a social support mapping app for understanding the social supports available to at-promise youth and levers for optimizing their academic (and life) success. Participants will use provided tablets to work through an exercise using a social support mapping app that practitioners can use with youth to understand the youth’s web of supports. The session includes a discussion about how to use that information to optimize the supports that youth are and could be receiving. The session is relevant both for practitioners who work with at-promise youth as well as for policy advocates who are looking to design better policies to support at-promise youth.
The Life-Changing Power of Abundant Reading
Strand: Teaching Students Presenter:Jan Bryan, Renaissance Learning Dr. Jan Bryan, former professor and current education officer for Renaissance, will lead a session focused on differentiated and individualized instruction for reading and the use of multiple metrics to quantify reading growth. Attendees will explore practices proven to yield achievement and growth gains. Further, they will explore reading’s impact on vocabulary acquisition and how that impacts job advancement outside of school to understand why wide abundant reading is the surest route out of poverty.
Measuring Effectiveness of Student Reengagement Programs
Strand:Education Policy and Data Presenters:Judith Martinez, Colorado Department of Education plus three Colorado Student Reengagement Grantees from Urban Suburban and Rural School Districts; Maurice Henrigues, Boulder Valley Schools; David Kollar, Jeffco School District; Sheila Pottorff, Poudre School District; and James Steward, Westminster Public Schools. The Colorado Student Reengagement Grant was launched in 2016 to assist local education providers in providing academic and support services to increase student reengagement at the secondary level. Attend this workshop and hear from Colorado districts that received this first-time funding to pilot innovations linked to student reengagement and implement effective research-based strategies. Discussion will include a review of key program components, lessons learned in tracking results, evaluation findings, and communicating results to policy makers.
Now What? Developing Post-Secondary Options for Reengaged Youth
What are the latest ideas for creating relevant options beyond high school for youth with significant barriers to employment? Learn about work in Washington, DC; San Diego, CA and San Francisco, CA that is helping reengaged youth overcome barriers and increase college attainment rates and career success.
Opportunity Measures – Validating Unique Student Outcomes and School Success
Stand: Presenters:Jim Griffin, Momentum Strategy and Research; Jody Ernst, Momentum Strategy and Research; MIke Epke, Principal at The New America School-Thornton; and Jennifer Turnbull Together, Momentum Strategy & Research and a consortium of Colorado alternative education campuses are leading the way on a project demonstrating how the types of unique student outcomes central to alternative schools can be validated and used for accountability purposes. Using an external validation model developed by Momentum, each participating school submits unique mission specific measures for external review, including ultimate rating by a panel of reviewers. Reviewers assess the outcomes of the measures on a rubric, providing immediately useable information to the schools about the strength of their outcomes. Documentation of the process and the combined outcomes of all participating schools will be used to show how the evaluation of unique measures can be part of a robust and meaningful accountability system. Attendees will hear a detailed account from a participating alternative school about the measures they are using in the Opportunity Measure Pilot Project and how the review process has helped validate data on measures that speak to their unique mission and the plan to incorporate this data into how the school is held accountable.
Equity in Education: Reengagement Advocacy
Strand: Presenter:Tony Simmons, High School For Recording Arts; Alana Trout, California Select Committee for Boys and Men of Color; and Jeannette Zanapatin, Mexican American Legal and Educational Fund
A session on reengagement in the struggle for educational equity will be hosted by Tony Simmons, Executive Director of High School For Recording Arts and RAPSA Board Member. Simmons will moderate a conversation with Alana Trout, the Staff Director of the California Select Committee for Boys and Men of Color and Jeannette Zanapatin, attorney for the Mexican American Legal and Educational Fund. The conversation will focus on how education leaders can impact policy development that supports reengaging youth of color. High School for Recording Arts is dedicated to providing all young people a chance to realize their full potential, despite any previous setbacks through music and the exploration and operation of the music business. More than just earning a high school diploma, HSRA prepares students for a positive post-secondary education and life. Schools serving at-promise youth are ground zero for providing educational equity. Learn what you need to secure your seat at the table.
Reengaging Students with a Student Engagement Department
Strand: Support Reengagement and Dropout Prevention Presenters:Isabel Galvez Lara Director of the Student Engagement Services , Phil Matero, CEO; Derrick Ayson, Student Engagement Services; YouthBuild Charter Schools of California; Reengaging out-of-school youth can be difficult and demanding work despite quality programs and high ideals. Learn how YouthBuild Charter Schools of California is meeting the challenge by empowering their most engaging teachers to take on the task. Learn about the creation of their Student Engagement Department and its amazing results. This session provides an opportunity to be on the cutting-edge of emerging best practices in student engagement and dropout prevention.
Resources and Strategies for Alternative School Accountability
As state plans for school accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act come forth, education leaders around the country are grappling with the best ways to ensure high-quality alternative schools while also allowing them flexibility to successfully fulfill their missions. Panelists in this session will preview two forthcoming resources related to accountability for alternative education settings: (1) a policy brief designed to help education leaders better understand the framework of accountability for alternative education, and (2) a toolkit outlining the systems and processes states can use to ensure robust and relevant accountability for alternative schools. The policy brief examines state definitions of alternative schools, how states are approaching the overall design of alternative accountability systems, specific measures that are responsive to alternative education settings, and mechanisms for continuous improvement. The toolkit discusses the various intricacies of developing a comprehensive system of alternative education, including processes, stakeholder engagement, and guidance for quantitative and qualitative analysis. All panelists will reflect on the general purpose off accountability systems in alternative education and their role in ensuring the quality and continuous improvement of alternative education institutions.
Retention and Other Measures to Demonstrate Successful Outcomes for At-Promise Students
Strand:Education Policy and Data Presenters:Janice Delagrammatikas and Diana Walsh-Reuss, Come Back Kids, Riverside County Office of Education Join the conversation of meaningful outcome measures for at-promise students with leaders from the Come Back Kids program in Riverside County. This timely session provides opportuniSupport Reengagement and Dropout Preventionties to share strategies and seek consensus. Bring your approaches and questions about how dropout recovery schools are measuring retention and save rates, and any other measures they are using to demonstrate successful outcomes for students. The conversation will cover how schools are disaggregating data by student subgroups as well as by age and credit accrual. This session is geared at experienced education leaders and data nerds serving at-promise students from all states.
The Role of Authorizers and School Boards in Schools Serving At-Promise Youth
Strand:Support Reengagement and Dropout Prevention Presenters:Leslie Talbot, Talbot Consulting; Vanessa Threatte, SUNY Charter Schools Institute; and Darren Woodruff, Public charter school board in Washington DC Hear from school board members and charter school authorizers about how they view their role in supporting the reengagement of at promise youth. This interesting panel includes leaders from coast to coast and will be informed by surveys of frequent AAPF attendees. Session attendees will have time to ask questions and comment on the interviews and perspectives. If you’re trying to find out what school boards are thinking about their responsibilities to out of school youth and about reengagement, this is the session for you.
High-Stake Stories: How to Break Through Fake News with Real Lives
Strand: Presenter:Matthew LaPlante, Utah State University What stories are you telling about your students and your work? Often, the narrative we want to deliver and the one we actually send are vastly different. That's in no small part because we are all-too-often deathly afraid of "bad news." But journalist, professor, and equity-in-education advocate Matthew LaPlante says it's time to stop being afraid of the real, gritty, uncomfortable and heart-breaking realities of working with students facing poverty, family instability, physical ailments, untreated mental illness, and abuse. At the first Alternative Accountability Policy Forum, LaPlante challenged attendees to not only embrace their failures, but to openly share those experiences with the world. This year, LaPlante will present some strategies for breaking past the media cacophony so that stakeholders and policy makers alike can better understand the fight in which we are engaged.
States are getting more sophisticated in how they tell the story of student achievement and school performance; but many in the alternative-education community think that even the latest accountability systems fail to take into account the situations and background of “our kids.” This session will brainstorm the pros and cons of current systems, look at the barriers to thinking differently, and envision new approaches that meet public accountability needs but truly start with students. This session will be highly interactive and challenge our assumptions about who we serve and why.
A Synthesis of Academic Interventions for Students in Alternative High Schools
Dr. Nicole Pyle, an Associate Professor in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University, and Sally Brown, who is conducting her dissertation about youth with reading difficulties in an alternative high school, will provide a systematic review of the academic interventions implemented in alternative high schools from 1970 to 2016. Limited, high quality research studies are available to inform researchers and educators of effective academic interventions to improve academic outcomes with youth who attend alternative high schools. The presenters will review the limited research base, highlight the most effective instructional strategies implemented in academic interventions, and suggest possible future research and implications for practice.
Trends and Opportunities in Statewide Accountability for Youth in Alternative Schools under ESSA
This session will feature a panel of experts focused on understanding how states across the country are considering the unique characteristics of alternative options schools in the state school accountability plans. The implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to articulate how they are incorporating alternative options schools in the over-arching design of state school accountability systems. This process is opening the door for education leaders to reexamine the role that alternative options schools play in ensuring that all students have an effective pathway to college- and career-readiness. Panelists will examine how states are defining alternative schools, how states are approaching the overall design of alternative accountability systems, and specific indicators of continuous improvement. In addition, panelists will discuss how some states are building policy consensus on accountability approaches that balance the need for common measures, with the need for customization and innovative program design.
Using “Students at the Center” Resources to Strengthen Instruction
Strand:Teaching Students Presenters:Terry Grobe and Krista Sabados, Jobs For the Future In this session participants will explore the principles of student-centered learning drawn from research and identify states where “Students at the Center” policies are being promoted. The session will connect participants to a range of resources that can guide and inform student-centered instructional work. A writing to learn strategy will be employed to assist participants in determining how to use the resources to strengthen or support practice in their particular contexts.
