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Professional Learning Councils
Cal-PASS Professional Learning Councils illustrate the Cal-PASS Core Values in action. These regional councils, made up of teams of discipline-based faculty from elementary, middle school, high school, community college and university segments collaborate to discuss curriculum, exemplar teaching practices, instructional materials, and performance measures which are shared and reviewed in light of transition data. When faculty members work together with their intersegmental colleagues to understand the barriers to successful student transition, solutions to these barriers are proposed and implemented in the form of a more seamless curriculum and improved instructional strategies.

Currently, ongoing Professional Learning Councils meet in various locations in San Diego, San Bernardino, Sacramento, Placer-Nevada and Riverside Counties in the following disciplines:
  • Language Arts
  • Math
  • English Language Learners (ELL)
  • Career Preparation
  • Science
Professional Learning Councils have initiated innovations in teaching at all educational levels. See the sample projects below for more details.

For more information about existing councils or to initiate a council in your area or discipline, please contact Shelly Valdez at svaldez@calpass.org.

Cal-PASS Council Initiated Projects
Cal-PASS funded the first set of mini-grants to Cal-PASS PLCs this spring. The resulting innovations are well underway, all focused on better student outcomes by using innovative methods to support student learning. The new mini-grant projects as well as ongoing Cal-PASS innovations include:

English:
  • Regional intersegmental rubric development to assess, more appropriately, student writing to (1) establish a better process for determining proper English course placement using a more ecologically valid measure; (2) provide intersegmental professional development opportunities among ELA teachers; and (3) explore the possible use of the rubric across disciplines.
  • Creation of common vocabulary and strategies to use across segments (middle school, high school, community college and university) with both fiction and non-fiction texts to further define how critical thinking can be taught across segments. Teachers will look at differences among students in each grade level in terms of developmental and skills-based issues, continuity in the academic vocabulary used in teaching, and methods to prepare students for the next level.
  • Mentoring of a high school English department by CSU faculty focusing on giving high school faculty instruction and professional development on the proficiencies required of students entering higher education, including the use of expository texts. This two-year project has now completed work on incorporating college-level proficiencies into the 11th and 12th grade English classrooms while developing aligned curriculum for the 9th and 10th grades.
  • Collaboration by high school and college faculty to develop, administer and assess a quarterly writing prompt for ninth and tenth grade students in persuasive, analytical, and expository genres to improve student writing and decrease the need for remedial coursework in college. After reviewing the results, high school and college instructors will collaborate in articulation sessions to develop strategies that address identified needs in student writing. Articulation sessions focused on rubric development and scoring, data review, and strategies development will follow the administration of each prompt.
  • The alignment of an articulated community college-university level English course to ensure that students had similar skill sets at the conclusion of the course and would thus be better prepared to handle the rigors of writing demanded by other college courses. Intersegmental faculty have developed a common instructional plan, with assessments, that contained the use of a common assignment targeting critical reading and research.

Math:
  • A year long elective Algebra II Support Course to be taught this summer at 2 high schools for students who scored Below Basic or Far Below Basic on the CST. Students will be pre-tested with the MDTP test in Algebra II Readiness and individualized programs will be developed for each student. Cal-PASS Algebra Deconstruction Project is being used as a guide for consistency and alignment.
  • A 6-week fast track intersegmental geometry course bridge at a community college (open to high school and college students) and co-taught by a high school teacher and community college instructor. The high school teacher will also run an additional “lab” section specifically for the high school students to provide extended learning time in a nurturing environment.
  • A 20-hour summer math-for-chemistry bridge course designed to give students a review of the mathematical formulas, applications, and manipulations they must know to be successful in chemistry. This will be taught at a community college and will target otherwise successful high school and college students (GPA~> 2.5) who will be enrolling in chemistry, but who have struggled in math (GPA ~2.0).
  • A state-wide math collaboration of Professional Learning Councils in the north state, mid-state, and southern state and incorporating input from two CMC3 conferences working to articulate common strands found in the Algebra I and II deconstructed standards between the high school and community colleges to ensure that there is continuity across topics and across segments and to address the community college’s perspective.
  • Algebra Readiness materials are being created and piloted in support of the new Algebra Readiness content framework. This regional intersegmental work will develop curriculum (scope & sequence, assessments, materials, possible delivery modalities, evaluation studies, etc.) and recommend regional adoption among P-16/Cal-PASS partners.
  • An intersegmental math conference designed to facilitate math articulation in a region among faculty, counselors, and administrators in all of the segments – K-12, community college and four year schools. Workshop sessions included discussions of mathematics curriculum in the high schools and colleges, student course schedules, the new minimum math requirement for an AA degree and more.
  • Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry deconstruction projects involving in-depth looks at the California Content standards with participation from intersegmental faculty from across the state with a goals of gaining a fuller understanding of both scope and depth of the standards, the development of assessment items associated with each standard at the computational/procedural, conceptual, and application levels, and the initiation of discussions of exemplar practices regarding teaching the standards. The resulting Deconstructed Standards Documents include a breakdown of each standard into its component parts, a list of prerequisite skills as well as new skills needed to master each standard, the level of conception used in teaching the new knowledge (using Bloom’s Taxonomy), assessable results of the standard.
  • The backwards mapping of Algebra from the college level through high school and into middle school. Intersegmental faculty have met to discern the elements common to college-level Algebra, deconstruct those elements into their component parts and the knowledge necessary to master those components, and will now use the Cal-PASS Algebra deconstruction projects for high school standards to map those elements down through the segments.

English Language Learners:
  • A year-long program for EDL IV or reclassified English Learners that will include semester-long courses in College Success Strategies and Introduction to College Writing for Non-Native Speakers to be taught by college faculty at two high school sites with support from five high school teachers from each school who will work with the students to monitor their progress in the program and provide support for their coursework and will meet with the college instructors to discuss the progress of individual students. In addition, the high school teachers will share course outlines and compare course content with the college instructors in order to provide a transition between the high school and college English courses.
  • A summer bridge course for high school EL students co-taught by a community college instructor and high school teacher. This project was funded as a pilot by Cal-PASS in 2005 and has proven so successful the respective institutions have continued and grown the project for the past 2 years.

Science:
  • The development of a synthesized summary packet of Cal-PASS data and intersegmental conversations, observations, and professional experiences of science faculty to be distributed to school counselors to assist them in providing advisement information to students as they navigate through the science pathways.