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RECENT HEADLINES
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Grant's Resource Teachers, PartnersSI
staff and State Superintendent Jack O'Connell.
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State Superintendent Visits Grant
Academy
On February 8, 2007, California Superintendent of Public Instruction
Jack O'Connell visited Grant Academy to commend the school's recent
student success and gap-closing results. The event was attended
by civic and education leaders, including Mayor Chuck Reed, Lynda
Greene from Applied Materials and SJUSD Superintendent Don Iglesias,
who acknowledged Grant as a school that does "all the right things
for the right reasons" and thanked Partners in School Innovation
for bringing best practices and continuous improvement to Grant.
Since PartnersSI first began working at Grant four
years ago, the school has made steady progress improving the learning
of students of color and English learners, but last year the school
achieved its most impressive gains. On the 2006 California Standards
Test, the school met all of its Annual Yearly Progress goals and
increased its Academic Performance Index by 60 points. Said Principal
Cecilia Barrie on this accelerated progress, "We set our vision.
And we made [increasing student learning] our moral imperative."
Principal Barrie was applauded as a leader with
a laser-like focus on the achievement of kids. But perhaps the
most memorable line of the morning, and one others built on, was
expressed by Jennifer Wu, PartnersSI's School Partnership Director
at Grant. "For Grant, school improvement is not about improving
school programs," she said. "It's about improving student learning.
When the challenge is focused on student learning, it becomes
very concrete and something teachers can attack systematically.
They know where students are and where they need to go."
Welcome Jennifer Hammett Sanchez
PartnersSI welcomes Jennifer Hammett Sanchez as the English Language
Development Program Director. She has 15 years of bilingual education
experience, first as a Spanish Bilingual and ELD Multiple Subjects
teacher with five years of experience in elementary education
and, for the past nine years, as San Francisco Unified School
District's Content Specialist in Bilingual, ELD and SDAIE. Jennifer
holds a M.A. in International and Multicultural Education from
the University of San Francisco and is a national board certified
teacher. We are thrilled to have Jennifer's expertise and vision
to lead our English Language Development Initiative.
Articles in this issue (March 2007):
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