Credit: John C. Osborn/EdSource TodayThere is now an Internet site that lets you look up hundreds of districts’ Local Control and Accountability Plans – and to add your district’s LCAP to the mix.
“The state embarked on the LCAP effort and asked everyone to have faith that it would meet the goals of the new funding system,” said Valerie Cuevas, Education Trust-West’s interim executive director. “LCAP Watch is an opportunity to make early observations of whether we are hitting the mark.”
The LCAP is a three-year plan, updated annually, that lays out how a district will meet the conditions for school improvement and goals for student success that the Legislature set out in creating the new school funding formula. It also lays out a process of community engagement that is integral to the shift from state to local control.
LCAP Watch is the creation of Education Trust-West, a nonprofit group that advocates for low-income, minority students, along with three-dozen organizations and groups that have agreed to share information on districts’ newly passed accountability plans and to spread the word about the new repository.
LCAP Watch currently has LCAPs from about 250 districts and charter schools and plans to add hundreds more. It is collecting each district’s LCAP drafts, the version that school boards approved and eventually the final LCAPs that county offices of education have signed off on. There is also a demographic profile of each district. State law also requires that the state Department of Education provide links to districts’ and county offices’ LCAPs on its web site.
Education Trust-West plans to do a first-year LCAP evaluation to see what districts are planning for student improvements. It will include an in-depth analysis of a dozen districts’ LCAPs, said Carrie Hahnel, the organization’s director of research and policy analysis.
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Jack in CA 10 years ago10 years ago
Ed Trust West is an advocacy organization and has done an outstanding job pulling this data together so quickly. It really should be a state responsibility to make the data available to the public, and possibly will at some point. However, anyone who has accessed the CDE data base will discover it is often dated information, sometimes of little use by the time it is made available to the public. ETW should … Read More
Ed Trust West is an advocacy organization and has done an outstanding job pulling this data together so quickly. It really should be a state responsibility to make the data available to the public, and possibly will at some point. However, anyone who has accessed the CDE data base will discover it is often dated information, sometimes of little use by the time it is made available to the public. ETW should be applauded for its willingness to take on this arduous task. “Transparency” seems to a key theme embedded in the LCAP process. By providing this information, Ed Trust is really doing nothing more than cleaning the windows of our schools (I like to refer to it as “windexing”) so we can all see in. If the schools would clean their side of the glass, we might all have a better view!
Virginia Tibbetts 10 years ago10 years ago
Started by Education Trust - West, right? Isn't it great that they will be policing the LCAPs for us poor little citizens who can't do this ourselves? Did you check out who the donors are for Ed Trust - West? You got it, Bill and Melinda Gates, James Irvine, and Walton Foundations. Now exactly why do you think that we should put our trust in this organization, just because they have … Read More
Started by Education Trust – West, right? Isn’t it great that they will be policing the LCAPs for us poor little citizens who can’t do this ourselves? Did you check out who the donors are for Ed Trust – West? You got it, Bill and Melinda Gates, James Irvine, and Walton Foundations. Now exactly why do you think that we should put our trust in this organization, just because they have “trust” in their name? Do some digging, Fensterwald. More corporate control and less local control, that is what we have given up by the confines for the LCAP. One of the 8 criteria is that the CC$$ will be used… Need I say more?