District Leader

Conduct a focus group of front-runner local education agency (LEA) leaders, and ask the following questions:

• Which districts have promising strategies for addressing inequitable access to great teachers and leaders?
• What state policies, regulations, and practices hinder or support attracting, developing, or retaining effective teachers?
• How does an LEA work with the local teachers association to support equity work? Can this partnership be strengthened to better support equity work? 

Review equity data from districts across the state, and consider the following questions:

• Which district is the furthest behind in terms of its equitable access to great teachers?
• Which district seems to be a front-runner, from which other districts can learn? When making connections, be sure to consider how district context (i.e., demographics, poverty level) might impact strategies used to address inequitable access to great teachers and leaders.
• Where are your identified high-need schools in terms of equitable access? 

To ensure full public access, make certain that reporting is technically accurate and complete and includes a user-friendly executive summary for lay people. 

Work with local education agencies and state educator effectiveness advisory bodies to analyze, compare, and use data from identified high-quality educator evaluation systems to determine root causes of equity gaps in access to excellent teachers and leaders between and within districts. 

Develop partnerships with key stakeholders (e.g., in an equity workgroup) to determine what metrics to use to continuously measure long-term access to excellent teachers and leaders. 

Regional comprehensive center staff can assist state education agency and educator preparation program staff to develop a framework for analyzing data. 

To ensure consistency in data collection, work with local education agencies and state educator effectiveness advisory bodies to implement high-quality educator evaluation systems that are approximately comparable across local education agencies.

Develop protocols for sharing data across stakeholder groups to broaden understanding of the state context of student access to excellent teachers and leaders.

Develop partnerships with key stakeholders (e.g., in an equity workgroup) to determine what metrics should be used to measure student access to excellent teachers and leaders.

Access to important educational resources in California’s middle and high schools is not equal among schools that serve different student populations. Overall, the most disadvantaged populations of middle and high school students are likely to have the least access to the resources necessary for learning.