There are SO MANY special things about the Los Altos School District!  I say this having seen a great many places of learning over the years. One factor that contributes to the greatness of this organization is the staff.  This includes our certificated teaching staff, our classified staff that help us run our schools, and the administrative team that provides leadership across the district.

Over the past month, many of our teachers have partaken in a “Crowdsourcing of LASD Learning Principles” challenge via Twitter.  If you follow Almond, or any schools in LASD, you’ve probably seen the flurry of activity with various hashtags.  LASD Learning Principles?  What are those?  They are our guideposts in regards to HOW we design learning and include the following:  Connect Experiences, Personalize Learning, Nurture a Growth Mindset, Process & Outcome, Empower Students, Leverage Technology, and Act Now.

I highlight these Learning Principles for two very specific reasons today; to share with you some great news about the Almond and LASD Teacher of the Year (TOY), and to frame our thinking around the upcoming Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) standardized test.

Each school in LASD just underwent a process to nominate and select a site Teacher of the Year (TOY).  The purpose is to recognize, honor and celebrate the excellence in teaching taking place in the classrooms throughout the Los Altos School District.  

Our Almond TOY for this year is SAMANTHA NGUYEN.  She was selected by her peers and truly exemplifies each and every LASD Learning Principle above.  She grounds student learning in real life application, tailors learning to the needs and interests of her students, encourages them to put forward their best effort in growing their brains and developing various talents, focuses on how things are done and not just the end product, follows the lead of her students by honoring their voices, integrates technology as a tool to enhance learning, and is making all of this happen right now, each and every day.

Mrs. Nguyen, we are so proud of you, and honored that in addition to being the Almond TOY you are also this year’s LASD Teacher of the Year!!!!

Now...onto a different topic, yet one that still connects back to our Learning Principles.

About a week and a half after returning from Spring Break, students in grades 3-6 will participate in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium California state testing (SBAC).  

What does SBAC have to do with our Learning Principles.  In LASD, we believe there to be equal value in PROCESS & OUTCOME.  The outcome, or results, of the forthcoming SBAC will be one single indicator of a student’s (and also our school’s) academic achievement.  To have a more comprehensive picture of what a child does know and what a child still needs to master, multiple measures are critical.  Furthermore, while data does paint a picture, to have a crystal clear image, more needs to be considered.  How does a child problem solve?  How does a child cooperate with others?  How does a child lead his or her peers through a project?  How does a child persevere in difficult situations?  These HOW questions have as much, or more value, than any one score.   Insight into process is critical and in the coming months you will be hearing more about LASD’s efforts to communicate this growth in learning.

*Here are some specifics about the SBAC:

• The SBAC replaces the STAR test and is completely online for English-Language Arts and Math.
• The California Standards Test (CST) in Science will still be administered in paper/pencil format to 5th and 8th graders across the state, including here in Los Altos. 
• Our students in grades 3-6 last year took the pilot version of this test. We did not receive any results from that test; rather, it was to help us understand how the online test environment would function and what infrastructure we would need to support online testing. 
• This year both parents and the school/district will receive test results. Since the testing format is very different from the previous STAR test, it will take time to analyze and understand the information we receive.
• This test has extensive open response questions, writing, math problem-solving (not choosing answers from a list), and performance tasks that build off a classroom activity prior to the test. In short, it is a much better test — though not perfect by any means. 
• Teachers have begun providing practice for students in how to access the test online and operate within the online testing environment. However, our job as educators (and yours as parents) is NOT to prep students for this test. Our job is to provide practice within the testing environment, while also delivering 180 days of quality, robust instruction that will allow our students to demonstrate their knowledge, competence and passion in a variety of ways — including this assessment tool. 
• Our active testing window for ELA and Math will be 4/20 - 5/1.  Testing for science will take place between 5/11-5/15.  We will publish specific dates when we return from Spring Break.

*This section adapted with permission from Katie Kinneman at Gardner Bullis.

Parents, please support your children and our school in living one of the specific initials in the SBAC acronym - BALANCED!  We have been teaching to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) which is what the tests will measure regarding progress.  We want students exposed to the testing environment and will be thoughtful in not being overzealous with test preparation.  This is one single opportunity for our students to show what they know. We will maintain a balanced approach that maintains a focus on what is best for our students and we will constantly strive to look at the whole child through a wide viewfinder that considers many angles.

In closing, I wish you all a wonderful spring break and will see you again on Monday, April 13th!