Analyzing District Literacy Achievement from a School Board Member Lens

This podcast episode was sponsored by Heggerty Phonemic Awareness.

What’s inside: Palo Alto Unified is widely recognized as the one of best school districts in California, but a dive into district literacy data reveals a different story.

In this episode we chat with Todd Collins, school board member at Palo Alto Unified School District, about his journey investigating how his district was supporting their “most challenged and least resourced students”.

His exploration led to an understanding of how all districts should look at their district data with an eye to equity and how doing so can reveal important opportunities for school improvement. Todd’s data dive also prompted him not only to learn more about literacy instruction best practices to help guide decisions he may make in Palo Alto related to his board duties, but also motivated him to create the California Reading Coalition, an initiative founded with the vision of bringing reading experts and change makers together to collaborate on issues regarding literacy improvement and equity specifically related to California.

Links: See links mentioned in this podcast listed below -

• Palo Alto Unified: https://www.pausd.org/

• California Reading Coalition: https://www.careads.org/