Focus Group Meeting Minutes

Thursday, March 18, 2004

 

 

A.    Rolff Christensen brought the meeting to order at 6:00 PM.

 

Present were: Julie Lackie, Lecia Leige, Marsha Irwin, Carol Dupree-Smith, Randy Hodges, Deanna Keskeys, Rolff Christiansen, David Pinasco, Judy Orr and Shahnaz Shah.

 

Student member: Devin Keskeys was ill and unable to attend meeting.

 

1.     Rolff reread and restated the purpose of our focus group.

 

2.     He continued to present an overall structure of assembled leadership team. He noted that Gary Clark (our database coordinator) and Sherry Nelson (CWCS director) were leadership team leaders, along with a leadership a group of five ES advisors who were responsible to lead focus groups. Catherine Miller and Janet Marsh both are leading focus group discussions as well.

 

Rolff also mentioned that both Gary and Sherry attended WASC meetings at other locations and came away with a better idea as to what to expect and the necessary components of the processes.

 

Rolf asked Marsha Irwin and Randy Hodges to clarify for the group, that in their previous experience, were ESLR's were used as goals? Marsha and Randy both emphasized that, in their previous experience it was determined that ESLR's be general as possible.

 

3.     As our focus group got underway, Rolff asked ES's to read aloud the ESLR 3 page document one ESLR at a time. It was apparent that our ESLR's mirrored CWCS's learning criteria in our seven growth areas.

 

a.      Some suggestions were made with respect to the provided ESLR's:

1.     Some ESLR's seem to have an impact on student choice. For example, ESLR #3 states that students will be technologically skilled by 1) demonstrating competence in use of a computer, and competence with basic software programs and other technology. It was brought up that do we force student to do things to Òdemonstrate' their skill in areas they are not interested in pursuing?

 

2.     Could the term Òcomputer' be changed to Òtechnology' instead so as to be more generalized to allow students to choose their area of interest?

 

3.     Or, could ESLR #2 be combined with ESLR #3, which would place technological skill under the umbrella of being an Effective Citizen life skill?

 

b. Clean up typos in ESLR's in regards to noun-verb agreement. For example, #6 states: ÒScientific thinkers who applies scientific knowledge. . . .' It should read Òapply' rather than Òapplies'.

 

B.    Group members began to analyze student data handouts.

 

  1. As a group we numbered all CST and CaHSEE printouts for easier reference.

 

  1. We broke into two groups. One group focused on CST data; the other CAHSEE data. Each group met for approximately 20 minutes and discussed observations about student data.

 

  1. The two groups reconvened and shared small group observations.

 

a.      CST group: ethnicity and/or gender did not seem to have sizeable discrepancies in results. It was noted that with small samples the results appear 'skewed'. Yet in larger samples the fluctuations were not evident.

b.     CAHSEE group: overall CWCS scored well in Language Arts with 77% of tenth and eleventh grade passing. Far above the statewide standard. In math however, they noted that only 43% passed. This is a concern.

 

  1. Randy Hodges made an observation as to one way to get specific, relevant student data that would shed light on individual student progress. He recommended that:

1.     Obtain data of specific students' previous STAR scores from other schools one-year ago and input this data into computer database.

2.     Input individual student data from most recent STAR test.

3.     By doing this we could chart increases or decreases in test scores and pinpoint areas where students made marked improvements, which is our focus groups purpose.

-        For example, a student who comes to CWCS in 2002 scoring in the 40 %-tile in Math in 2002, could in fact, make a gain of 10 -20 % points on 2003 tests. These results might not show up as a gain on school wide test scores but provide an insight into specific gains for that student. It was noted by all present that this would be an excellent indicator of individual student progress.

 

C.    A brief discussion as to which subject area our focus group wanted to examine was determined to be:

1)     Math or 2) Language Arts.

 

D.    Some questions generated at this meeting:

  1. Concern over ESLR #1 sub-point - "speaking clearly" is not clear. Why is it a criterion and how is it to be measured?

2)     ESLR #3 is not general enough (as previously stated in minutes section A3.a.3) Can it be rolled over into ESLR #2?

3)     Could we create a database of info comparing CST data from new students at their previous school with CST data from their first year with CWCS? (section B4.3)

4)     Can we, as ES's administer STAR tests in student's home?

5)     Clean up typos in ESLR's (section A3.b)

 

E.     It was decided that our last meeting in May would be a BBQ and each ES signed up to bring items to the potluck BBQ.

 

F.     The meeting concluded at 7:15 PM.