Summer 2019 Newsletter

As summer kicks off, we are thrilled to release a report that represents a five-year research-practice partnership on the power of self-assessment. We are also excited to share news of the Next Generation Coalition of Community Schools as well as two presentations on our work to advance research, teaching, and service.

The Power of Self-Assessment: Using Community-based Measures to Advance Biliteracy

The Power of Self-Assessment: Using Community-Based Measures to Advance Biliteracy Brief cover

This report chronicles how practitioners and a researcher piloted and designed a community-based self-assessment system for second- to twelfth- grade students over a five-year span. This report illustrates how self-assessment instruments and classroom routines, together, provided students with opportunities to take ownership of their assessment data, and evaluate their disciplinary-content knowledge and passions as multilingual community members. This report also explores how the design cycle and pilot helped teachers become more cognizant of the connection between local language ideologies, social justice, and multilingual language development and literacy. This report is an interactive roadmap. Each section includes hyperlinks and thumbnails to tables, figures, and real-life examples of the self-assessment instruments in practice in order to document instrument development.

Next Generation Youth Coalition

From June 6-8th, UCLA Community School sophomore Nyslai Bolanos and alumna Wendy Garcia-Torres represented the UCLA Center for Community Schooling at the State of Young People, a youth led and designed gathering held in Northern California. The conference brought together young people with the nation’s leading adult advocates for youth, as well as business and community leaders. The event was organized by America’s Promise Alliance in partnership with Facebook Education. At the conference, Nyslai and Wendy were part of the Next Generation Coalition of Community Schools (pictured to the right) organized by Jose Muñoz to elevate and support youth leadership in the community schools movement. This group will be helping to plan the National Community Schools Forum in Los Angeles in May 2020.

Sharing our Research-Practice Partnerships

This month, researchers and students were honored to share how the UCLA Community Schools advance research in ways that inform practice, ensure accountability, and create knowledge on topics that are important to our communities. For example, PhD student Symone Gyles shared her partnership work to develop and promote community-based science at Mann UCLA Community School with the National Network of University-Assisted Community Schools. Click on the images above for more information.

Next Month: Community Schools: Empowering Students, Families, and Educators

We’ll be sharing the work of the UCLA Community Schools in partnership with the Learning Policy Institute on July 30th at 8:15am as part of the California Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) Professional Learning Institute at the Long Beach Convention Center.