The Long Beach Unified school board completed a quarterly self-evaluation of their progress in prioritizing student outcomes and found they are not on track.
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.
The self-evaluation was facilitated by members of the Council of Great City Schools. This education reform coalition has been counseling the district as it moves towards an outcomes-focused agenda. The board began by discussing the importance of self-evaluation.
“We need to be transparent, whether we’re in a good place or not in a place we want to be,” Board member Maria Isabel Lopez said. “I think transparency is critical in the work that we’re doing.”
The self-evaluation rubric contains six evaluation areas:
- Vision and goals
- Values and guardrails
- Monitoring and accountability
- Communication andCollaboration
- Unity and trust
- Continuous improvement
The rubric evaluates if the district is “not” student outcomes-focused, “approaching” student outcomes focus, “meeting” student outcomes focus or “mastering” student outcomes focus. Each benchmark represents 0, 10, 25 or 35 points respectively, and has a list of criteria that must be fully met to qualify.
The “not student outcomes-focused” benchmark lists statements that, if true, signify the board has not accomplished the foundational actions to move forward. If the statements are not true, then the board can move forward to the next category.
However, while the district might have met some or a majority of the criteria in the “approaching” category, they can not qualify for that denomination unless every single one is met. Because of this, even in areas where the board was able to move past the “not” category, they ultimately received a zero score because one or more criteria in “approaching” hadn’t been accomplished.
The board scored zero in each evaluation area. Throughout the self-evaluation process, the Council of Great City Schools consultants made notes of what specific strategies the district can implement moving forward to meet the student outcomes focus criteria and eventually master it.
Some of these improvement strategies include:
- Creating an analysis process for individual board meetings where board members can assess what portions of the meeting involved student outcomes and inputs.
- Board-hosted community events that encourage community input.
- Having board members go out into the community to hear from people both in and outside their district.
- Following through on the creation of superintendent interim guardrails that will build upon the board’s goals.
The board will reevaluate itself in three months and aims to elevate its score by incorporating these changes. The full self-evaluation rubric can be found here.
