California Council for the Social Studies Spotlights the Legislative Breakfast

As Chair of the Governmental Relations Committee of the California Council for the Social Studies, I am pleased to invite you continue our conversations about the next steps we can take together to advance social studies education in California. Many social studies organizations will participate.

The next California Council for the Social Studies state conference in Los Angeles at the LAX Sheraton will include our annual Legislative Breakfast on Saturday, March 8 at 7:00 a.m.  Professor Joseph Kahne will receive the CCSS Civic Action Award for his extensive research and publications on civic education and the impact of civic education on students. Professor Kahne will update us on the latest developments in the world of civic education. We will have updates on state and national efforts supporting social studies education.

If you have not yet registered for the CCSS Conference, you can do so online at CCSS.org; you can also register for the Breakfast (an extra $15) when you register for the Conference. If you have already registered for the conference and not the Breakfast, emailMarie@ccss.org to register for the Breakfast.

Immediately following the breakfast, the CCSS Governmental Relations Committee will host a meeting among social studies organizations, continuing past conversations about working together to advance the cause of social studies education in California. The rapid changes in the assessment/accountability picture in California are creating major changes in how learning is evaluated and measured. We as social studies leaders need to discuss ways we can both participate in forming the new assessments, and in how we can work together to ensure these improvements are implemented.

Coalitions can be very powerful. Recently, CCSS, the English Language Learner community, and the state science teacher association working together convinced the Instructional Quality Commission to unanimously agree to make substantial changes to requirements for EL materials the IQC would send on to the State Board for adoption. The EL community wants EL students to receive the academic content and substance of the whole curriculum, and CCSS certainly agrees with that goal. Working together got it done.

The agenda for our conversations will include state and local considerations:

1) CCSS Legislative Analyst Fred Jones' updates on the latest developments in Sacramento, especially the new just introduced Senate Bill 897 (Steinberg)  that calls for CDE to consider inclusion of History social science and also the social studies C3 Framework in state grant requirements and as part of some career pathway consortium funding.

2) Conversation about the possible ways social studies can play a part in the accountability provisions of the new Local Control Funding Formula, and in providing assistance to local districts as they create their local assessment/accountability plans.

Districts will be required to make a yearly report on how they are using their new state funding to 'advance' learning for low SES, EL and foster care students, and also for all students; said reports will need to be in addition to state accountability and Academic Performance Index (API) that has been suspended but that is slated to return. These individual district reports can be 'qualitative' as well as 'quantitative', so will not have to be limited to numerical reporting. Thus a host of performance types of student learning activities including project and problem based learning and academic competitions in all social science content areas could be used by districts for part of this annual report. Some of these activities could meet Common Core ELA requirements. The State Board of Education will be adopting specific criteria and definitions for the local accountability measures. Its January 2014 meeting will see some of the criteria put in place. We will know by March wh
at the SBE decides at its January meeting. The requirements are outlined in the SBE Agenda for January 2014, Item 21, Document 3, which references measuring progress toward 'state priority areas' detailed in Ed Code Sections 52060 and 52066. These repeatedly state the need for students to receive instruction in all core content areas.

How can we best connect with districts and county offices to help with these new local assessments?

3)  Conversation about ways to support the inclusion of performance assessment in social studies in the yet-to-be-designed 'next generation' California state assessments, which will be in addition to the ones for the common core English Language Arts and math standards that will be field tested around the state this spring (by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC).

The additional state assessments, to start sometime after 2016, will include History social science as part of 'the whole curriculum' as defined in last year's AB 484 (Bonilla), now chaptered into law. The Superintendent's Report to the State Board of last January said that higher level thinking based assessments were necessary as a replacement for the 'outdated' California Standards Tests. Educational Testing Service reported to the State Board in May that performance assessment was both desirable and possible in large scale statewide assessments. For ETS to say that means it can be done!

What channels exist, or can be leveraged, for social studies organizations to participate in designing statewide assessments? What ideas can be suggested for quantifying results of large scale assessments, for inclusion in the API calculation formula?

4) Show and Tell: What have social studies organizations been doing that advances the cause of social studies, and/or of assessment of social studies, or that could be used in local or statewide assessment programs? What current problem or project based learning activities could be used, or modified for use, in local or stateside assessment programs? Which of these might also meet ELA and/or Fine Arts standards?

5) Conversation about next steps.

I am looking forward to hearing your ideas as we continue our conversations about advancing the cause of social studies education in California.

Jim Hill

Chair, Governmental Relations Committee
California Council for the Social Studies