The CEPA Building BLOC Network

OVERVIEW

The Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) at Stanford University is working to develop a network of district leaders and Stanford faculty to support small-to-midsize California districts as they create and assess their Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs). The network will be called CEPA’s Building BLOC Network (short for “Building Better Local Organizational Capacity”). We plan to bring together representatives of a small number of districts to help these districts assess their progress toward their LCAP goals, learn of promising practices from other districts and empirical research, and then reevaluate and revise their LCAP goals as the process continues. In doing so, we hope to engage both district office leaders and school board members. We believe this process of setting locally appropriate goals, assessing progress toward fulfilling those goals, and then designing district programs and policies accordingly lies at the heart of a district’s work and at the intersection of district office and school board responsibilities.

Planning for the Building BLOC Network remains in its preliminary stages, and our work is contingent upon securing the necessary funding. Below, we outline a possible calendar for the three-year project, though we do so knowing that this calendar will change as the planning process continues and we learn more from participating districts about what would be most productive. En güncel ve yüksek deneme bonusu veren siteler 2023 listesi üzerinden deneme bonusunuzu alın. Bonus veren bahis siteleri için lapalmroyalbeachhotel.com adresimizi ziyaret edin.

TENTATIVE CALENDAR

Year 1
Summer 2014 – Summer 2015

In the first year, our top priority will helping districts to assess their progress toward meeting their initial LCAP goals – and exploring what both local research (using district data) and generalized research (using broader research literatures) suggest are promising strategies for reaching these goals. We expect to convene the full group twice at Stanford: in the fall of 2014 and again in the spring/summer of 2015. The fall meeting could focus on building plans for collecting and analyzing data, in addition to hearing from Stanford faculty on their relevant areas of expertise. The spring meeting could focus on examining early indicators of districts’ progress toward meeting their LCAP goals and thinking about desirable changes to LCAPs and school programs or policies for the subsequent year.

Year 2
Summer 2015 – Summer 2016

Our second year will feature another meeting at Stanford as well as site visits from Stanford partners to the participating districts. Our focus will be on continuing to support districts in their efforts to set good, achievable goals, carefully examine evidence related to the pursuit of these goals, and then use this (and other) evidence to create school programs and policies that help districts achieve these goals. We will also focus on cross-district sharing, looking into where we see evidence of success and what seems to be accounting for these successes.

Year 3
Summer 2016 – Summer 2017

In the third year, we will transition our focus to ensuring that participating districts are prepared to continue their evidence-based pursuit of goals without Stanford’s direct, regular support. Here, too, we expect to gather at Stanford, with the likely focus being on institutionalizing processes for continued success. This could include ensuring that districts are collecting the data that will be required for assembling credible evidence, along with ensuring that districts are well equipped to conduct internal research (using these data) and access relevant external research (from broader research communities). We will also focus on strengthening network ties to ensure that members from participating districts are willing and able to collaborate in subsequent years when those collaborations are helpful.