In October 2005, a team of teachers from Our Community School (OCS), a small charter elementary school in the north San Fernando Valley, attended a five-day UCLA School Management Program (UCLA SMP) Critical Friends Groups (CFG) Coaches Institute. When the team returned to the school site, their feedback was so positive and enthusiasm so contagious that all teachers and administrators agreed to attend a future institute.

The school had just reopened as a new charter. The previous school – North Valley Community Charter – had not met its goals and lacked a cohesive program, forcing the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) Charter Schools Office to not renew the school’s charter. The school reorganized, and under the new charter and a new principal – Chris Ferris – OCS invited UCLA SMP faculty – Bobby Blatt and Janet Howard – to coach and support them in their rebuilding efforts. The school desperately needed a common language and new strategies to talk to each other and to rebuild trust and a sense of community.

With the support of UCLA SMP, peer collaboration and ongoing staff development became essential ingredients to the school’s success. OCS teachers now administer trimester benchmark assessments aligned with state standards while engaging in regular data analysis to inform instruction and student learning. Understanding by Design (Grant Wiggins) and backwards planning are employed to create thematic inquiry units of instruction with performance demonstrations. Staff members support one another in a Professional Learning Community using CFG strategies — sharing lessons, engaging in UCLA SMP classroom walk-throughs, looking at student work collaboratively, and giving/receiving feedback using various protocols. The protocols ensured that valuable time was used efficiently and the conversations remained focused, professional, and productive.

So what was the result of their hard work? In just two years, the school moved from an Academic Performance Index (API) score of 714 to 833 – a gain of 119 points (714 in 2006, 769 in 2007, and 833 in 2008)! Only 36.7 percent of California elementary schools score above 800 on the API. All OCS students in third grade or higher scored above Far Below Basic in both Language Arts and Math. Ninety-two percent of the school’s 4th and 5th grade students scored at Proficient or Advanced in Mathematics. After just three years, the school’s Latino population has scored at 823 and their socio-economically disadvantaged students have scored at 810!

OCS is committed to providing a rigorous and exciting curriculum to students of many backgrounds and cultures. 44 percent of their students are Latino, 34 percent white, 8 percent African American, 6 percent Native American and 5 percent Asian. Fifty-one percent qualify for free or reduced lunch.

In recognition of the school’s outstanding efforts, the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) recently presented OCS with the Hart Vision Award for Best Charter School of the Year. Established in 1995, the Hart Vision Awards were created in honor of retired California Senator and former California Secretary of Education Gary Hart. This award is made to charter educators and schools for their contributions to educational reform and improved student achievement. The presentation was made at CCSA’s 16th Annual Convention in Long Beach, California, on March 10, 2009.

Read an article from UCLA SMP’s EdNews publication describing CFG protocols and how they are regularly used at Our Community Charter School to improve academic achievement and build community.

Watch the California Charter School Association’s video about Our Community Charter School, shown during the award presentation at the 16th Annual Charter School Association Conference (March 2009).