Giving All Students the Keys to College and Skilled Careers: One District's Approach

Abstract

THIS IS the story of how the Garden Grove Unified School District in California is taking the challenge of preparing students for and skilled careers. Though every student may not plan to attend college, the district has decided that the opportunities made available to students should not depend solely the foresight of teenagers or the prejudgments of adults. The curriculum that gives each student the ability to succeed in college, should he or she choose to attend, also provides the key that unlocks the door to skilled for the non-college-bound. Though many definitions of college and career readiness are possible, Garden Grove's operational definition is that students are deemed if they complete California's full A-G college-readiness course sequence and demonstrate mastery of the content of each course through an end-of-course exam. Checking for students' learning of course content is important because Garden Grove wishes to guarantee to students, parents, colleges, and employers that course labels accurately advertise what the student has learned. (1) Taking as great a challenge as seeing that all students are ready for and skilled careers has required, first, an unflinching recognition of how far the district has to go. On arriving at the lowest base camp at Mount Everest after an arduous climb, one doesn't conclude that the mountain has already been conquered. While Garden Grove's graduation rate has been higher than those of many of the district's counterparts, this number decreases greatly when you count only those students who are college ready. (2) Substantial short-term gains can be made by making sure that students who are well prepared academically enroll in challenging high school courses, but extending that success depends how well the district prepares students between preschool and eighth grade to succeed in those courses. Quick fixes are no more likely than shortcuts to the summit of Mount Everest. BACKGROUND Garden Grove is one of the growing number of urban suburban districts in the U.S. It serves 50,000 students in parts of seven municipalities in the Los Angeles area. The district's demographics are essentially urban: of the district's roughly 50,000 students, 60% receive subsidized lunches; 53% are Hispanic; 31%, Asian; 15%, white; and 1%, African American. The district is heavily populated by families who immigrated recently to the United States. English is the second language for roughly 80% of the district's students, who speak 68 different languages. Garden Grove has a number of advantages that have put it in a better position to take the challenge of educating its students to high levels. In particular, Garden Grove has been relatively free of many of the afflictions that have made it difficult to improve districts, such as unstable leadership, politics arising from issues peripheral to student learning, and the endless churning or layering on of multiple programs, practices, and new initiatives, so that the hapless school system never gets to do a good job of implementing any one thing. (3) Garden Grove strives to do an excellent job of implementing a small number of programs and strategies, and thus the district has been careful not to undertake any activity, even one attached to a large grant award, unless it ties directly to the district's goals. The implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has complemented Garden Grove's own growing focus the use of data to inform teaching and learning. California had already begun testing in more grades than NCLB requires, and Garden Grove has found the NCLB-required disaggregation of data by income and ethnic group highly useful. The goal-setting focus of the law matches well with Garden Grove's approach, and the district has developed two specific and measurable internal goals that, if met, will address the requirements of the state's accountability system and NCLB. …