EdSource staff
April 7, 2015

EdSource is conducting a series of interviews featuring educators' experiences with the Common Core State Standards. San Jose Unified is one of six districts that EdSource is following during implementation of the new standards. For more data about the Common Core, check out our guide.

A Bay Area native, Vincent Matthews has been superintendent of the San Jose Unified Schoolhouse District since 2010. Earlier that he was the land-appointed administrator of Oakland Unified, an expanse superintendent of San Diego Unified and an educator in residence for the NewSchools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy house. Before becoming San Jose Unified's assistant superintendent of instruction and director of the district's bilingual education and special programs, Nancy Albarran was director of curriculum, instruction and English language learner services for pre-kindergarten though the simple grades.

The following are edited excerpts from an EdSource interview with Matthews and Albarran about challenges and encouraging signs in their district nether the Common Core.

What do you run across as the very specific difference that is coming with the new standards?

Matthews: It'due south the fashion that information technology looks at boosting a conceptual understanding and disquisitional thinking. This is what we heard from the community and from businesses four years ago when we created our strategic plan – that they're looking for those with the critical thinking and the creative skills to not just encounter what's correct ahead, but also what's around the corner. Previously the flooring was the California State Standards, but now we believe the flooring has been raised with Mutual Cadre. And so it'southward not all the manner where we want to go, but we believe it's admittedly in the correct direction.

Give us a moving picture of what that looks similar in the classroom, what a parent visiting a course would run across differently.

Nancy Albarran

Credit: San Jose Unified School District

Nancy Albarran

Albarran: We see teachers not just asking students to define and remember and match information, but having students infer, predict, estimate. We see a lot more synthesis and investigations – students really having to expect at and challenge complex texts. We see a lot more non-fiction. That'due south a not bad shift, given that eighty percent of what students are going to expect at and read is informational texts in college and post-secondary pedagogy.

Could the demand for higher standards backfire for English learners or poor kids who have always been backside, if you lot don't put in a lot of extra effort? In New York when the commencement results came from the Common Core tests, the minority students and low-income students did worse than they had done earlier compared to white students.

Albarran: We have washed a lot of work with the English Language Development standards and are making sure that our teachers sympathize the divergence between teaching in English language and educational activity English every bit a language. We're actually committed to using that 20 percent supplemental funding (under the Local Control Funding Formula) to create additional opportunities for them to learn English at an accelerated pace.

This will exist a baseline year for the assessments, and the goal will exist growth from year to year. Nosotros take not pushed a prep curriculum. We desire to split up the standards from the assessments. We want to make certain that people understand information technology's virtually going deeply into the standards and really not emphasizing exam results as much.

Matthews: The other piece of that likewise is to be out forepart. Then, as you're designing what yous're doing with Common Core, yous're always having that in mind. We've invested significant money in adaptive learning programs in response to our teachers indicating that they needed additional support with individualizing instruction, especially for English learners and students that take significant gaps. We've leveraged that resources to allow teachers to work with small groups while other students are having their needs met through our adaptive learning programs.

You did not use the interim assessments that Smarter Balance provided. How are your teachers getting a sense of what their students are comprehending?

Albarran: The interim assessments simply recently became available, and our teachers accept access to them. Nosotros started our implementation in 2022 and 2012. We've created more than than 300 units in collaboration with WestEd (a San Francisco-based enquiry organization) and created assessments that went with each of the units. Many of the assessments are performance-based (instead of multiple choice), and that really informed the didactics in the classroom.

How are you preparing them for an online test?

Matthews: Nosotros had already made significant investments in technology earlier Mutual Core. We continued through Common Cadre, but we're non having to spend the lion's share on engineering science, and so we're able to spend much more on professional development for our instructional staff.

Do you have adequate curriculum materials aligned with the Common Core?

Matthews: The loudest complaint that we're hearing, peculiarly from our elementary instructors, is not having all the materials that they wish were in place. With limited resource, when we exercise make the purchase, we desire to make certain it'south loftier quality, it'southward very rigorous. Some publishers say that theirs are at a high level, merely one time we look at the material, nosotros decide that it's not going to give our students what they need.

Where specifically do yous feel that – more than in English language than in math?

Albarran: Mostly at the elementary level in Language Arts. And too in our transitional bilingual. High-quality Spanish materials have ever been a concern, but information technology'south a real business organization at present.

If you lot had meaning coin for Common Core that came your way this year, how would you utilise information technology, and what would your priorities be?

Albarran: Professional development. Particularly at the simple level, we have a lot of teachers that have told u.s., "I need more training for myself in the expanse of math." So I would really create a lot of opportunity for teachers to build their own understanding in the content areas. And then a lot of time for collaboration. Many times people keep looking for the magic program that'south going to change outcome for students notwithstanding it'due south really about how our teachers are refining their instruction. To do that they need time with their peers, time to really dig deep into the standards.

So at this point do you feel like the teachers in the district are pretty well prepared on a scale of 1 to ten to have on this challenge?

Albarran: We are where we need to be in the initial stages of implementation, and nosotros nevertheless have a lot of work ahead of us. But I'm confident that by 2019-twenty, when California expects everybody to exist in full implementation, we will exist at that place.

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