Whether you’ve attended a Long Beach Unified School District board meeting in person or watched the YouTube livestream or browsed a meeting agenda on BoardDocs, you have probably come across the term “Student Outcomes Focused.”
This hot button phrase is meant to lead LBUSD in its decisions. A superintendent advisory group focuses on “student outcome focused governance,” while board members mention the importance of being student outcomes focused, but what does this term mean?
Defining a Student Outcome Focus
Student Outcomes Focused Governance is an educational research-based framework that aims to shift from a focus on adult inputs to a focus on student impact instead.
This approach focuses on specific student achievement goals and consistently assesses progress towards them by holding boards accountable to different community engagement strategies. This can look like board-hosted community forums, surveys and needs assessments to make sure goals are not only made with students in mind, but in direct collaboration with them.
The Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) is a national nonprofit organization made up of the largest urban school districts in the country, and provides different services to its members on topics ranging from leading schools and running school systems to data, instruction and finance.
According to the CGCS handbook, the goal of the Student Outcomes Focused Governance framework is to provide a set of tools that boards can use to track their progress toward improving student outcomes.
The LBUSD board and superintendent have been working to implement the Student Outcome Focused Governance approach since Fall 2020. Throughout this transition, the district has received coaching from the CGCS.
The Road to Student Outcomes Focused
The early shift to Student Outcome Focused Governance in LBUSD included transitioning to a consent calendar for standing business items instead of approving all items individually, the development of Board Goals and Guardrails and a quarterly board self-evaluation.
In October 2023, the board selected its five-year goals to achieve student success, which identified objectives of reading proficiency, reading acceleration, algebra proficiency and college and career readiness.
However, despite these efforts to become more student outcomes focused, a self-evaluation of their progress in December 2024 found they are not on track. The rubric contains six evaluation areas, in which the board received a score of zero:
- Vision and Goals
- Values and Guardrails
- Monitoring and Accountability
- Communication and Collaboration
- Unity and Trust
- Continuous Improvement
To ensure the board is on track to becoming student outcomes focused, the CGCS created a goal monitoring calendar for the board that provided a timeline from March 2025 to December 2026 with different training and community events.
The board passed the monitoring calendar at its March 5 meeting with three yes votes, an absence from board member Erik Miller, and no vote from board member Maria Isabel Lopez.
Lopez said her no vote was based on wanting to first change some of the language used in the document to avoid perceptions of the board endorsing candidates.
The outcomes monitoring calendar will be used as a road map that supports the LBUSD board and staff in implementing Student Outcome Focused Governance.
The calendar was approved with the understanding that the board can reassess and make changes. These potential changes include an extension of the current board goal monitoring calendar, further development of the monitoring report acceptance process, development of interim guardrails, monitoring of board meeting time and further developing and updating board bylaws and communication structures with supporting staff.
The LBUSD board is supposed to self-evaluate their progress every three months at a public meeting. The next evaluation should take place in March, according to the approved monitoring calendar, but the board has not posted its upcoming agenda at the time of publication.
