San Lorenzo High School

San Lorenzo Unified
Alameda County
2001 API Base Report

Project Name
Overcoming Obstacles: Success for All Students in Urban Schools

Project Partners
Edendale Middle School
Stanford University
WestEd

Project Director
Carlos Cabana
Math Department Co-Chair
San Lorenzo High School
50 E. Lewelling Blvd.
San Lorenzo, CA 94580
Tel: (510) 317-3200
Email: ccabana@pacbell.net

Summary

As in most urban schools, Edendale Middle School and San Lorenzo High School students struggle to demonstrate academic achievement on a par with their more alluent peers, often failing to overcome barriers such as the High School Exit Exam. To address these issues, Edendale and San Lorenzo propose a model project designed to support student learning and thereby improve student performance on standardized tests. Our model seeks to address fundamental and typical obstacles to academic success among urban, working-class students.

Central to our work is a school-wide focus on reading and literacy. To support this focus, teachers will (a) receive training and support from WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative, and (b) develop school-wide structures to improve reading, including redesigned courses to support reading across disciplines and school-wide silent sustained reading program.

In conjunction, we propose targeting three critical areas; cross-curricular standards-based instruction with emphasis on the standards addressed on the HSEE, increasing the overall level of college-preparedness of our students, and community outreach to help families support their student's academic achievement. To target standards-based instruction, teachers will (a) expand on existing standards-based efforts beginning in summer Literacy and Algebra Institutes and continuing in weekly collaborative planning meetings, (b) receive intensive curricular, pedagogical, and mentoring support from a Literacy Coordinator, and (c) work with Professor Jo Boaler and Standford University in a major long-term study of teaching practices that improve student learning. College preparedness will be targeted by an intensive focus on instructional strategies that address the issues of equity. Teachers will: (a) work with Stanford's Program for Complex Instruction to learn techniques designed for a heterogeneous classes such as ours;(b) reinvigorate and expand the Advance Placement Program, and (c) support students with an expanded bilingual Tutoring Center and the creation of a course to help students prepare for specific exams such as the HSEE. To target community outreach, a full-time Student Support Liaison will be hired, and teachers will engage in an action research project centered on student's attitudes about and barriers to homework completion.

CAHSEE Report and Evaluation:
San Lorenzo High School (.pdf 246K)