Educational Services Newsletter
June 2019
Accountability, Equity & School Support
The English Learner Team is visiting sites to reflect on English Language Learner progress at the close of the school year and to set goals for the new school year in the area of EL teaching and learning support. We are anticipating ELPAC scores to be posted in AERIES very soon and are updating final reclassification numbers. Summer plans for our department include; continuing to coordinate with the Orange County Department of Education pilot for GLAD at the secondary level, developing ideas for progress monitoring our English Learners and collaborating on professional development topics for the 2019-2020 school year. We welcome any input for our professional development topics, please send your ideas to Amber Tatch, Coordinator of English Learner Services atatch@orangeusd.org
Math Curriculum has had an exciting and productive school year. In secondary, we were able to continue professional development through Math Solutions with a second cohort of teachers. This program gives teachers the opportunity to explore inquiry based collaborative strategies that increase student academic discourse, while having the opportunity to work with their peers. We’re excited to be able to offer this type of professional development next school year! At the elementary level, we were able to offer PD’s integrating AVID into math, working on Performance Tasks, and drawing connections between curriculum and SBAC practice assessments. In order to offer additional access to math curriculum, content, and lessons, the Curriculum team has created a Youtube channel (https://tinyurl.com/OUSDMathChannel). The channel offers exemplar math lessons (from OUSD teachers), Pearson tutorials, inspiring lectures and fun math problems. Curriculum has also been working with technology to create activities for teachers that combine the use of devices like robots and drones with cross content curriculum.
We received Early Education Excellence awards for attaining the highest quality (5 stars) on the county-wide QRIS (Quality Rating and Improvement System). It was a great event and a wonderful opportunity to recognize and applaud the hard work our Early Learning department is doing!!
Focus on Trainings: In May, the Special Education Department completed the third training for General Education 4th grade teachers and their site Education Specialist on the topic of Special Education & Inclusive Schooling. This month, we also collaborated with Curriculum & Instruction to offer a Wonders curriculum digital resources review and online demonstration during the bi-monthly Education Specialist "Open House" meeting. Materials from both of these trainings are available on the Special Education Website for future reference: https://sites.google.com/orangeusd.org/ousd-special-education/professional-development
Educational Technology
OrangeUSD for the last three years has conducted a technology survey at end of each year to determine implementation successes and growth opportunities. The survey continues this year. As you are looking at completing this process we wanted to take a moment to show you how these results are read and what they mean for the success of our district.
The district has had three distinct collection periods that occurred over the following dates:
- Aug 8, 2016 - Nov 4, 2016
- May 1, 2017 - May 31, 2017
- Apr 25, 2018 - June 4, 2018
In June of 2018 the following numbers of participants filled out the survey:
- 6,885 Students (Grades 3 and up)
- 758 Teacher/Admin
This has given the district a large sampling of what is happening within the district and how the areas of Classroom, Access to devices, Skills in using those devices, and the Environment for learning with technology have impacted implementations across the district. The following are a few facts:
Looking at the data collected in November 2016 and May of 2017 you can see a definite increase across all the domains.
The following numbers show how the district in these areas.
- Overall district CASE score increased 14 points with positive gains across all four domains.
- Largest overall point gain (14) occurred in the Classroom Domain.
- All sites have similar access levels, scoring in the Advanced or Exemplary range.
- 31 of 40 schools’ scores saw growth over the three collection periods.
- One school remained the same.
- Seven schools’ CASE scores shifted from Proficient to Advanced.
Teachers have reported the following in the development of the infrastructure to supporting technology instruction in the classroom.
Teachers’ and students’ access to technology at school is a prerequisite for 21st Century Learning. According to NCES, the ratio of students to computers in the classroom every day is 5.3 to 1. However, this is often not sufficient for transformative instruction to occur.
Only 60% of all Clarity teachers in the nation report that it is always easy to get access to computers when needed for class. Further only 14% of Clarity teachers across the nation rate the quality of computers and internet access at their school as excellent. Teachers who have difficulty getting access to high quality computers for students when needed are much less likely to plan and implement classroom activities that include digital communication, digital collaboration, digital creativity, and critical thinking.
According to what is being said here as educators of OrangeUSD the devices are getting to the students and being used for instruction.
These are phenomenal results based on what has been reported by our students, educators and parents. The district will continue to work on the opportunities that were mentioned that included creating online critical thinking opportunities, focus on digital citizenship instruction, and continuing to support the implementation of the 4C’s within the classroom.
At this time we are trying to finish up or final survey for this year. Please take a moment to fill out the technology survey so we can continue to build upon this great momentum. https://bbyt.es/8M7NC
Student Assessment
This year the Smarter Balanced summative assessment, California Alternate Assessment, and the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California results will be shared with parents through electronic score reports. The parents will be able to access their child’s scores on the English language arts, math, science (5th, 8th, 11th, and 12th graders only), and English language proficiency assessments through the Aeries parent portal. Along with the enhanced score reports, parents will also have access to new websites. Using these websites, families can become involved in their child’s progress and:
- Learn more about the performance areas in each subject and grade.
- See sample test questions.
- Prepare for parent-teacher conferences with a useful downloadable guide.
- Access high-quality resources to support learning at home.
Starting Smarter for the CAASPP can be found at https://ca.startingsmarter.org/, and Starting Smarter for the ELPAC at https://elpac.startingsmarter.org/
Technology Services
The District is looking into requiring password resets for students to mitigate the increasing number of student account compromised and cyber-bullying over the years. Most students are unaware that unauthorized use of another person's credentials is a federal offense. Students can currently reset their password from the MyOUSD Dashboard, password.orangeusd.org, or teachers can reset passwords for students in their own class from the MyOUSD Dashboard. Staff and students can also set up their own password reset security questions at password.orangeusd.org, and the helpdesk can be contacted by a teacher to reset student passwords at any time. The district is currently discussing password resets for students 3rd to 12th grade and will follow up with details.
Archive
Orange Unified School District Educational Services Department
Email: ousd@orangeusd.org
Website: https://www.orangeusd.org/departments/educational-services
Location: 1401 North Handy Street, Orange, CA, USA
Phone: 714-628-4466
Facebook: www.facebook.com/OrangeUnifiedSchoolDistrictCA/
Twitter: @OrangeUnifiedCA