SEAN vice-presidents Lucas and Al Brooks, along with myself, participated in a PAUSD meeting on 2/24/09 on minority achievement, as part of the district's Increasing Academic Achievement for Students of Color Committee (IAASC).  The meeting included staff, parents and students, along with Superintendent Skelly.  The meeting was facilitated by Ruth Whalen from the district, and Marvina White from the Parent Network for Students of Color led off comments from the parent perspective.  I gave an update on SEAN activities, and Lucas and Al participated in the break-out sessions, which led to a list of consensus ideas on possible improvements to pursue.  Also there from Paly were Unity Club president Kevin Ward, Unity Club faculty advisor Letitia Burton, among others.  The next follow-up meeting will be on April 23rd.

        

On January 22nd, SEAN vice-president Lucas Brooks participated on a panel at Paly on the subject of Facebook usage.  Lucas spoke about how to use Facebook constructively, and how he has organized a Facebook group for SEAN.  Also on the panel were representatives from Facebook and other students.  The event was noted by Palo Alto online here.  While students may use Facebook for general social purposes, the SEAN group reflects that Facebook can be a powerful and constructive organizing tool.

        

SEAN's CORE Study Group Program, which was launched in January, focuses on formation of small study groups that meet twice weekly to study as well as discuss college plans.  These are student-led groups that are designed to maintain a strong and positive peer group focused on achievement.  We have created resource documents for CORE, including a program description here, and a college plan template, here.  CORE stands for College Opportunity/Readiness/Excellence.   We are also reaching out to incoming ninth graders to get them involved in order to have a good start to high school.

        

At the December 9th school board meeting, we addressed the board on the agenda item regarding our high school graduation requirements. Dr. Skelly proposed, and the board approved, a change to align our English and arts requirements with those of the UC/CSU system. The plan includes review of the math and world language requirements in 18 months. We applaud this progress and we will continue to work on this issue. On a related note, the San Francisco school board considered a proposal the same night, to fully align their graduation requirements. 

        

On November 19, I participated on a panel at an event called "Is Your Child on the Road to College." The event was co-sponsored by the PNSC, PAUSD, and the Palo Alto Council of PTA's. My role was to give the "student perspective." The event agenda is here. I discussed potential success factors and challenges as well as our advocacy work to align our high school graduation requirements with the UC/CSU requirements. My slides are here. I also led a breakout/discussion group about high school  achievement with SEAN Co-VP's Lucas and Al Brooks, and Treasurer Morris Mouton.

        

We have prepared a Briefing Paper on PAUSD's high school graduation requirements. We have identified where the graduation requirements are not aligned with the requirements for admission to the UC system. We have also noted various requirements that are independent of both the UC standards and the State of California standards. Finally, we have compared this to a national effort called the American Diploma Project, which is seeking to align graduation requirements with state college admission standards. Our superintendent in Palo Alto, Dr. Kevin Skelly, is beginning to address better aligning our graduation requirements. We are hopeful that this will be a first step towards becoming a fully aligned school district.

        

Recent PAUSD school board meetings have included presentation of scholastic assessment reports. The three reports are here, here, and here. We have reviewed these reports, along with relevant SARC data, to create a briefing paper, on college readiness indicators for students of color in PAUSD. The briefing paper summarizes relevant data relating to college readiness, and compares statistics for Black and Latino students with statistics for white and Asian students. It reflects that most Black and Latino are not achieving along the path to college readiness.

        

At the August 26th school board meeting, we addressed the board in open forum, on the subject of high school graduation requirements. We asked the board to focus on aligning the graduation requirements with those of the UC and Cal State systems. In outlining his "focus goals" for the year, Dr. Skelly said he intends to examine and update the graduation requirements. He said he would come back in November with more on this subject. Here's a link to the school district's strategic plan for the year. It calls for the district to "better align graduation requirements with college entry requirements." We believe that they should be fully aligned in every subject, in order to ensure college readiness for all.

        

Yesterday I spoke at the PNSC welcome back event to introduce the launch of SEAN in our community. Here’s an overview of my remarks.
    SEAN is a new grassroots student organization dedicated to promoting college readiness for all and closing the achievement gap in our community.
    SEAN plans to collaborate with our BSU and the local NAACP. We are also focused on spreading awareness throughout the community, through this blog, our website, through public advocacy, as well as performing outreach to other minority students and families.
    SEAN is an impact organization, and here’s what we will be focusing on this year:
    First, SEAN will lobby to change the high school graduation requirements so they match what it takes to get into college.  Many people are held back by outdated graduation requirements that don’t prepare them for college, in English, math and foreign language.
    Second, SEAN will work with students on their college plans, with a focus on the freshman class, and reaching back to 8th graders for next year.  And we will help people to execute on their plan.  Many don’t know how to go about this, while others in our community hire expensive consultants.  We will work on this with the school guidance department so college planning is a reality for all of us.
    Third, SEAN will work on math achievement.  According to the statistics, many don’t get very far in algebra, and algebra is today’s civil rights issue. To address this we are promoting a program known as Stanford EPGY. EPGY stands for Education Program for Gifted Youth.  It is an accelerated learning program that offers math courses from levels of kindergarten math to college level math courses, but also has other courses available, including English, physics, music, and computer science at the high school and college levels.
    So that’s what SEAN is all about – students working on equity in education, graduation requirements aimed at college, and college readiness college planning, and algebra for all.

        

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