SPRING 2020
UCLA Ed&IS
MAGAZINE OF THE UCLA GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION STUDIES
UCLA ED&IS ADDRESSES THE CHALLENGES OF THE COVID-19 CRISIS PAGE 4
Beyond the Books
Q&A with Virginia Walter UCLA emerita professor and former children’s librarian shares her hopes for the future of libraries. PA G E 2 0
Outreach has been an issue at least as long as I’ve been in the field. The war on poverty in the 1960s really pushed it and libraries got behind that. I love this city so much, and the library is such an important part of communities—it often is the central place in a community where everybody can go.
UCLA ED&IS Addresses the Challenges of the COVID-19 Crisis Our faculty have been at the forefront of working with local, state and national education officials throughout the COVID-19 crisis. PA G E 4
SPRING 2020
Ed&IS MAGAZINE OF THE UCLA GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION STUDIES
Embodying the principles of individual responsibility and social justice, an ethic of caring, and commitment to the communities we serve. 3 Message from the Dean 4 UCLA ED&IS Addresses the Challenges of the COVID-19 Crisis 6 Information Fields and the Pandemic: Q&A with Professor Johanna Drucker Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies shares ways that archivists, librarians, and other professionals can utilize skills to support learning and information literacy in the pandemic’s online environment 10 Honoring the Mathematical Thinking of Students UCLA Education Professor Megan L. Franke and colleagues mobilize educators to strengthen teaching and learning in mathematics through Cognitively Guided Instruction 16 New Research Probes California College Promise Program UCLA Education Professor Cecilia Rios-Aguilar Seeks to Make the Promise of College Come True for All Students 20 Virginia Walter: Beyond the Books UCLA emerita professor and former children’s librarian shares her hopes for the future of libraries 26 Data for Democracy: A UCLA Centennial Initiative A project for K–12 students to analyze and gather data on critical issues such as access to parks, jobs, and housing in Los Angeles 32 A Community-Based Approach to Studying Climate Change at Mann UCLA Community School
cover: UCLA Lab School student working on artwork for the Rainbow Art Project. The students were inspired by the movement in Italy to display banners with rainbow art and positive words.
Ed&IS MAGAZINE OF THE UCLA GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND INFORMATION STUDIES
SPRING 2020
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Ph.D. UCLA Wasserman Dean & Distinguished Professor of Education, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies Laura Lindberg Executive Director External Relations, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies EDITOR
Leigh Leveen Director, Annual Fund and Donor Communications, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies lleveen@support.ucla.edu CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Joanie Harmon Director, Campaign & Development Communications, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies harmon@gseis.ucla.edu John McDonald Director, Sudikoff Family Institute jmcdonald@gseis.ucla.edu
DESIGN
Robin Weisz Design © 2020, by The Regents of the University of California
gseis.ucla.edu
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
T
he great Argentinian literary figure Jorge Luis Borges, in his 1975 short story, The Book of Sand, once wrote, “Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.” I have given considerable thought to that phrase of late as the end of my Deanship at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies draws near. I came to UCLA as Dean in the fall of 2012. Since then, I have measured time by the challenges we have faced, the learning we have done, and our accomplishments together. And also, by the friendships we have forged. The experience has made a profound mark upon my life, and going forward, while I am not with you, the future will be shaped and measured by the time we have spent together. I was drawn to our school because of its international reputation for excellence and commitment to addressing the most critical issues facing our society—education and information. And I am tremendously proud of our work together in my time here. There are too many noteworthy achievements by our talented students, faculty and staff at UCLA Ed&IS to list, but there are a few things I would like to mention. First is our commitment to our students, to the development of new scholars and researchers, librarians and archivists, information experts, teachers and school leaders. A key element of this effort is our commitment to excellence through diversity. In my time at UCLA Ed&IS, we have grown to become a majority minority student body, faculty and staff. Our school looks like our Los Angeles community and represents the future of our nation. I also marvel at our steady focus on social justice across both the departments of education and information studies. From the preparation of scholars Photo: Jennifer Young
in archival work and library science, to the development of new teachers and schools to better serve urban communities, this equity lens adds tremendous value and significance to our work. There is also the quality and content of our research and scholarship. From groundbreaking efforts in assessment to plumbing the impact of social media practice, the work we do matters. Together, our students and faculty are exploring the issues of immigration, the status of civil rights and the impact of poverty on learning—and forging strategies to address them. Our scholars are documenting violations of human rights through groundbreaking archival work and analyzing the implications of the Internet on information practices across the globe. Together we are shaping new practices in teaching and learning, forging new efforts in mind and brain research, and expanding the use of data science and information and more. The future is bright. We have also made important strides in building connections with our communities. From creating UCLA K–12 community schools in Pico-Union/ Koreatown and South Los Angeles, to forging partnerships across our campus and Greater Los Angeles, we are working together to eliminate barriers to learning, spark innovation and foster success for all. When I first arrived at UCLA Ed&IS I was hopeful about the assemblage of people coming together to try and reshape the world for the next generation. And the past years have seen my hopes become a reality. Our faculty, our students, our researchers, our staff, our alumni, our families at the Lab School, and our donors make up a community that cares deeply. I am very proud to be part of all that we have created together. This ethos and the work and community we enjoy are reflected here in this new issue of Ed&IS magazine. From
looking at how we have come together to address the COVID-19 pandemic, to the implementation of communitybased approaches to learning about climate change, the quality of our work and the potential of our future are on display. I’m a product of the University of California. As a student, professor and leader in five different UC campuses, the lessons I have learned have formed my scholarly persona, my sense of identity as a scholar and public intellectual, my deep commitment to public service, and above all, my thinking about education as a tool for a more democratic, inclusive, and just world. The experience has prepared me for the work I will take on as chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. While I will miss UCLA tremendously, I know that the person who follows me as UCLA Wasserman Dean of Education and Information Studies will use the successful foundation that all of us have built together to take the school to the next level of impact and excellence. As we emerge from these pandemic times, there will be tremendous challenges, but also tremendous opportunities. I thank you all for the friendships we have built and I look forward to hearing about the impact all of you will have over the school’s next decade of excellence and innovation. Enjoy— Marcelo
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
Wasserman Dean & Distinguished Professor of Education UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 3
UCLA Ed&IS ADDRESSES THE CHALLEGES OF THE
COVID-19 CRISIS Our faculty have been at the forefront of working with local, state and national education officials throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Our work centers on helping the most disenfranchised student populations in our state. UCLA Distinguished Professor of Education Pedro Noguera and Tyrone Howard, professor of education, UCLA Pritzker Family Endowed Chair in Education and Director, Black Male Institute, are serving as experts to policy and education leaders in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. They are working with policymakers around the effects of nationwide school closures and the impact of the loss of access to education and wraparound services, which proves an expensive lesson to communities, local and state governments. Dr. Sarah Roberts, assistant professor of Information Studies, and Dr. Safiya Noble, associate professor at UCLA in the departments of Information Studies and African American Studies, are serving as experts for issues around technology and society during the COVID-19 crisis. Dr. Roberts recently wrote an op-ed for Slate pointing out “the shortcomings of replacing human workforce with artificial intelligence in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.” Dr. Noble has been in the news supporting the importance of safe educational spaces to foster a learning environment. Dr. John Rogers, professor of Education and director of IDEA, is studying the effects on K–12 students’ ability to navigate and succeed in the pandemic’s remote learning environment.
The UCLA Department of Information Studies COVID-19 Emergent Information Needs Initiative—Leaders in the UCLA Department of Information Studies are developing a digital initiative to address the emergent information needs of a public now working, learning, and connecting almost exclusively online and from home. 4 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
Center X, the home of UCLA’s Teacher Education Programs, is at the forefront of working with teachers and institutions on remote learning strategies, struggles and solutions. Home to multiple state-level projects that focus on instructing and supporting public school teachers, whose professional development programs now need to be reorganized to go online, many of these projects are also revising their resources for parents hungry for tips and for reassurance, which may be in greater demand.
Our alumni are uniquely positioned to support students in need. As highlighted in the Los Angeles Times, Keara Williams, 2017 Teacher Education Program (TEP) alumna, who teaches at Hawkins High School in the VermontSlauson neighborhood of South Los Angeles, has overcome her students’ lack of participation. The AP English teacher has taken the extra steps to reach out to her students one by one to get them back on track and assure them they would not be penalized for missing out on remote learning due to the digital divide or familial responsibilities.
The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools (UCLA CTS) is stepping up to assist schools across California as they respond to the challenges of the COVID‑19 pandemic. UCLA CTS serves as co-lead for California Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (CA MTSS). MTSS aligns academic, behavioral, and socialemotional learning in a fully integrated system of support for the benefit of all students. Through MTSS, the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools is working with fourteen school sites, seven school districts and seven county offices of education in support of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. UCLA CTS is also working with California Governor Gavin Newsom’s education team and the California Department of Education on a response to students who are being significantly impacted by COVID-19—those youth experiencing homelessness.
UCLA Community School, UCLA’s K–12 partner school in Pico Union/ Koreatown is serving as a “Grab and Go” site for the Los Angeles Unified School District to hand out food to children and families from low income families during the COVID‑19 school closures. As of April 27, the district, the American Red Cross Los Angeles Region, and Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management have teamed up to provide more than 13 million meals at 64 Grab and Go sites across the Los Angeles school district.
The UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families is bringing campus and community experts together to help vulnerable children and families. From its inception, the UCLA Pritzker Center has aimed to enhance collaboration across disciplines at UCLA. One of the key elements built into the organization’s DNA was to break down the walls between UCLA schools and departments and to connect them with the larger Los Angeles community. The UCLA Pritzker Center launched COVID-19 Community Speaker Series, a series of webinars and discussions on the most vulnerable youth populations in the county and how UCLA can support their needs.
The UCLA Lab School Rainbow Art Project—UCLA Lab School Upper II class was inspired by the movement in Italy to display banners with rainbow art and positive words. The image on this issue’s cover is a part of that collaborative, remote project by the students.
UCLA Wasserman Dean of Education & Information Studies Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is one of the signers of a statement released on March 20 by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The document states the appreciation of Pope Francis, PAS, and PASS for health workers, medical professionals, and others who are responding to the global needs of the pandemic and outlines five priorities in dealing with COVID-19 and any future pandemics going forward: strengthening early action and early responses; expanding support of science and actions by scientific communities; protecting the poor and vulnerable; shaping global interdependencies and help across and within nations; and strengthening solidarity and compassion. UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 5
Johanna Drucker
Information Fields and the Pandemic Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies shares ways that archivists, librarians, and other professionals can utilize skills to support learning and information literacy in the pandemic’s online environment.
O
BY JOANIE HARMON
n March 7, 2020, Johanna Drucker, the UCLA Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies, and Anna Chen, head librarian of UCLA’s William Andrews Clark L ibrary, presented a daylong conference on “Sustaining Visions and Legacies: The Future of Special Collections Libraries.” Speakers including Professor Ellen Pearlstein, UCLA Information Studies students and alumni including Jesse Erickson of the University of Maryland, and library deans, archivists, and librarians from across the nation, shared their expertise in addressing sustainability, not only of physical materials and methods but from a perspective of site specificity and community needs and culture. And then the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, indefinitely shutting down in-person access to special collections for scholars, students, practitioners, and the public. Along with meeting the challenges of providing even greater access to virtual repositories so that scholarship, research, and enrichment can continue for these audiences, Professor Drucker delineates ways that information professionals can use their skills to support and enhance the new normal of a virtual environment that now exists for interactions in libraries, museums and archives, education, medicine, and the media.
6 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
Another service that information professionals can provide is data production and tracking, contact tracking, and other areas of applied expertise to assist in information gathering in and for your community.
UCLA Ed&IS: How does sustainability include planning for a catastrophic event like the COVID-19 pandemic? JOHANNA DRUCKER: Several things
come to mind in terms of the ways that information professionals can serve in a crisis like the one we are in and which could be built into planning. One essential service would be to provide emergency services and information updates. Consider the role of information professionals in a time of shutdown. What are the information resources most essential for your community? What kinds of resources can be packaged effectively in communication strategies that make them more useful? Accurate information linked to expertise within medical and public health communities is also essential. Another service that information professionals can provide is data production and tracking, contact tracking, and other areas of applied expertise to assist in information gathering in and for your community.
Questions about data and how it is modeled accurately are pressing. We are well aware that the lack of testing has hampered our ability to get a full picture of the rates of infection and death from COVID-19. Creating a way to communicate effectively about the scale of absent information or misinformation is important as a contribution to public education. Since underreporting is more likely in disadvantaged communities, the ethical issues that are part of the patterns of treatment and care are also ones that need attention. Other kinds of professional expertise that can be used in a pandemic— specialized equipment and/or knowledge can be of value, such as the UCLA Library’s use of 3-D printers to help provide personal protective equipment (PPE) in the face of shortages.
UCLA Ed&IS: What other types of knowledge or expertise within the information fields can help to support other areas— such as medical or safety equipment, or supply chain information, in a pandemic? DRUCKER: The activities most directly
related to the pandemic include data visualization and contact tracing. The number of charts, graphs, and diagrams used to show statistics, but also to model the spread of an epidemic, is enormous. Work like that being done at the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 site (https://coronavirus. jhu.edu/map.html) includes mapping, data processing, and visualization in a constantly updated environment.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 7
UCLA Ed&IS: How about ways that the information field can augment the measures that education is taking to continue remote instruction, from kindergarten through grad school?
a just and equitable society. People who imagine that proprietary search engines online provide the same service as professional librarians are like people who imagine the junk food industry is run by nutritionists. Bad information, as we have seen dramatically in the last several weeks, can be fatal.
DRUCKER: There can be the design
of educational support packages. It is all very well to say there are resources online for parents to provide activities for children; it is another thing to put together a “Children’s Activity Page” with themes of backyard science, kitchen chemistry, family history and other topics.
UCLA Ed&IS: How does this, more than ever, reinforce the need for better collaboration and exchange between schools and libraries? DRUCKER: Teachers teach, they are ef-
fective classroom professionals. At the elementary and middle-school levels, they put in long contact hours. They do not have the time or resources to locate, filter, and vet primary materials and publications appropriate to different age groups. The absence of school librarians works to the detriment of everyone since the necessary expertise is lacking. Librarians pay attention to trends in publishing for children and young adults. [They are] on the front lines of the process of selection and presentation of materials through which children come to understand the world. They are also advocates to the publishing industry and have pushed diversity in these areas. The partnership of schools and libraries, particularly publicly funded institutions, created opportunities across populations. We lose that at the cost of 8 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
UCLA Ed&IS: How do the unique skills of information professionals and the resources of their organizations have the potential to help the public with the ability to vet the deluge of information, misinformation, and hearsay that results from a global crisis? DRUCKER: [There is] the creation of
workshops on information literacy: programs and workshops on distinguishing vetted expertise from rumor, hearsay, misinformation, and propaganda. What does fact-checking involve and how can you assess online resources for reliability? When we engage students in the task of figuring out how to communicate what is good information, we introduce many of the same criteria as in vetting print materials. Who are the editorial figures behind the information? And what professional processes of vetting (peer review, ethical standards of journalism) are being used in producing the information? Finding out the sponsoring organizations of an online site can be difficult, but legitimate sites are more likely to be transparent. What is the brand—is it an academic, government, private, or secret organization? Who are the authors? What are their credentials? What organizations or institutions have given them awards?
Whatever your values or beliefs, you can apply the same criteria of assessment. Teaching students the fundamentals of fact-checking research techniques is a survival skill. Our job is to help people figure out how to get accurate and trustworthy information by those basic methods—identifying the source, double-checking the facts, and cross-referencing the information. Those are a few things I think we would build into the emergency preparedness planning that are specific to the pandemic. In terms of ongoing sustainability, I would like us to consider the kinds of professional services that might be a revenue-generating consultancy in areas like digital archiving, data analysis, and other professional work that can be done remotely.
ď ˝
The partnership of schools and libraries, particularly publicly funded institutions, created opportunities across populations. We lose that at the cost of a just and equitable society. People who imagine that proprietary search engines online provide the same service as professional librarians are like people who imagine the junk food industry is run by nutritionists. Bad information, as we have seen dramatically in the last several weeks, can be fatal.ď ž
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 9
HONORING THE
Mathematical Thinking BY JOHN MCDONALD
OF STUDENTS
UCLA Education Professor Megan L. Franke and colleagues mobilize educators to strengthen teaching and learning in mathematics through
COGNITIVELY GUIDED INSTRUCTION
My ultimate goal is to listen to the kids, to really listen, to find out what they know, what are they doing. They will tell you where to go.
10 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
They all know what a cookie is and what it means to share by breaking it in half. They have seen a burrito cut in half to share—or seen a cake or pie cut into pieces. They know what is whole and what is half. I want to know what they know, and to build on that.
“M
y ultimate goal is to listen to the kids, to really listen, to find out what they know, what are they doing,” says Liz Romero, a third-grade teacher at Euclid Avenue Elementary in Boyle Heights. “They will tell you where to go.” “They all know what a cookie is and what it means to share by breaking it in half. They have seen a burrito cut in half to share—or seen a cake or pie cut into pieces. They know what is whole and what is half. I want to know what they know, and to build on that,” Romero said. Romero is talking about teaching mathematics using an approach called Cognitively Guided Instruction or CGI. The approach honors and builds on the robust mathematical understandings each child brings to school. In CGI, teachers gather information about the details of children’s mathematical thinking and use the information to guide the development of student mathematical thinking and understanding. In CGI, teachers invite students to solve problems in ways that make sense to them and to communicate their ideas. Teachers don’t
just tell students the answer or formula and expect them to memorize it. Instead, they use their awareness of children’s mathematical thinking to help them develop a deeper level of understanding. “The first time I saw CGI, I was like, no way, not with my kids. I think that’s the reaction with a lot of teachers,” Romero said. “Too often our mindset seems to be ‘our kids can’t.’ CGI has helped to change that. We can learn to really listen to our kids, to notice what they are doing, and to respond to what they are saying. We can shift to that admiring lens, to focus on what a student knows and can do well, not use a deficit lens. Once you start using CGI, there is no going back.” Romero’s teaching and that of other teachers using Cognitively Guided Instruction draws greatly on the research and leadership of UCLA Education Professor Megan L. Franke, whose career has explored the mathematical thinking of children and how teachers can support and further student learning through cognitively guided instruction. Franke began her educational journey as a third-grade teacher at a Catholic school in Venice, California where she soon grew frustrated with her efforts at teaching, especially in mathematics. “When I was teaching I realized that I spent the year finding every way I could to show my students how to use the standard algorithm for addition and subtraction and that at the end of the year, a
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 11
What’s so powerful about CGI is it puts children and their math ideas at the center of teaching and redefines math teaching as truly student-led.
number of them still could not remember it consistently,” Franke said. “I realized I was not at all meeting their needs.” “My teaching years also helped me to understand the complexity and nuance of teaching and I began to understand that there were going to be no simple answers to my questions about teaching. I also went to some pretty terrible professional development where it was not about our learning, but talking at us about nothing new.” Motivated by that experience, she became a doctoral student and an associate researcher for the Cognitively Guided Instruction project at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. At Wisconsin, she had the good luck and opportunity to work with noted professor Tom Carpenter, an expert in children’s mathematics who is considered by many to be the father of Cognitively Guided Instruction. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, F ranke joined with Carpenter, University of Wisconsin professor Elizabeth Fennema and other colleagues to conduct a series of research projects that today serve as a research base for Cognitively Guided Instruction. Among other findings, in a series of studies (Carpenter et al., 1989; Fennema et al., 1993; Fennema et al., 1996) the researchers found that learning to understand the development of children’s mathematical thinking could lead to fundamental changes in teachers’ beliefs and practices and that these changes were reflected in students’ learning. These and other research findings have helped to inform and shape professional development and instruction in Cognitively Guided Instruction. After moving to UCLA in 1993, Franke continued her research, seeking to understand and support teacher learning for pre-service and in-service teachers. She has studied how teachers make use of research-based information about the development of children’s 12 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
mathematical thinking (Cognitively Guided Instruction) and how CGI supports student learning in mathematics. She is especially interested in how paying attention to students and their mathematical thinking can better leverage the resources of low-income students of color and support learning for all students. “I’ve seen that CGI can empower teachers and students to see themselves as capable and confident in teaching and learning mathematics,” Franke says. “It’s an approach that respects teachers for the expertise they bring to the work and offers the opportunity to learn together. Teachers can take the research-based information about the development of children’s mathematical thinking as a base for hearing and seeing how their own students are
thinking and use that to build their mathematical thinking and confidence.” Twenty-five years ago, Franke and colleagues at UCLA began a professional development program with the Lennox School District to help educators learn about Cognitively Guided Instruction and provide support for its use in elementary school classrooms. Today, that effort has grown into an extensive collaborative professional development program led by the UCLA Mathematics Project at UCLA Center X offering educators across Los Angeles County the opportunity to learn about CGI through partnerships with schools and districts as well as weekend workshops and summer institutes. The project engages educators in offerings that range from introduction to CGI, to more in-depth sessions focused on the use of CGI to further algebraic reasoning or learning about specific math topics like fractions. Four years ago, the UCLA Mathematics Project entered into collaboration with the Los Angeles Unified School District to further the use of Cognitively
Guided Instruction in schools across the district. Beginning with ten schools, the LAUSD/UCLA CGI Action Research Project has grown to support 210 elementary schools and early education centers in the LAUSD. Building on an integrated program of research focused on the development of students’ mathematical thinking and instruction that influences that development, the project engages teachers in ongoing learning opportunities at participating school sites and in professional development sessions and workshops throughout the year. The project has engaged more than 5,000 LAUSD educators in CGI professional development, helping tens of thousands of students to develop positive math identities as they reason and learn about mathematics in ways that make sense to them and matter in their lives. “What’s so powerful about CGI is it puts children and their math ideas at the center of teaching and redefines math teaching as truly student-led,” said Angela Chan Turrou, a senior researcher at UCLA who works on the project.
I’ve seen that CGI can empower teachers and students to see themselves as capable and confident in teaching and learning mathematics.
“Through CGI, teachers see children differently—as the bearers of great ideas —and they see their role as teacher differently—as a facilitator of a community that learns with and from each other.” Initial data collected by the LAUSDUCLA CGI Action Research Project on student attitude and content knowledge, and teacher content knowledge, indicates that students’ attitudes towards math have changed positively and shows that students are using more strategies and more complex strategies over time. Teacher attitudes also show positive improvements. “The LA Unified/UCLA Mathematics Project CGI Action Research Project is changing the way that teachers teach and students learn math. All students and teachers are honored for what they bring to the study of math and are capable of being mathematicians, so that math makes sense,” says Lisa Ward, who recently retired as LAUSD math coordinator and has helped to lead the CGI effort with the LAUSD since its inception. In January 2020, more than 1,000 educators from across the LAUSD came to UCLA to celebrate their work with the CGI Action Research Project and develop new knowledge, strategies and skills for using CGI in their classrooms. And this spring and summer, hundreds of LAUSD teachers will take part in professional development opportunities hosted by the UCLA Mathematics Project.
Teachers are learning about their own students’ ideas, the resources they bring, and how much students are capable of when given the opportunity,” Franke said. “I am seeing thousands of teachers and principals who want to continue to participate and learn about CGI. They are asking questions, making connections to their practice and their students, and they are asking for more. Many of the workshops and institutes are taught by classroom teachers like Romero, who have learned about CGI through opportunities with UCLA and their experience in the classroom. They form an invaluable network of 150 teacher leaders who can share what they have learned with other teachers and offer ongoing support. “The work we do depends upon the relationships we have formed and nurture within our community of teacher leaders, as well as the relationships and trust we intentionally build with the teachers we serve,” said Janene Ward, associate director of the UCLA Mathematics Project. Franke and her colleagues at UCLA are excited about the collaboration with the LAUSD and are looking forward to expanding the effort to building a culture of ongoing learning around mathematics. “This has been so impressive. Teachers are learning about their own students’ ideas, the resources they bring,
and how much students are capable of when given the opportunity,” Franke said. “I am seeing thousands of teachers and principals who want to continue to participate and learn about CGI. They are asking questions, making connections to their practice and their students, and they are asking for more.” “CGI is not mine to define and it is constantly evolving. But there is a great deal of consistent research (CGI as well as others) that shows that when teachers have knowledge of children’s mathematical thinking their students learn. And there are a number of studies that positively relate participation in professional development in Cognitively Guided Instruction to teacher and student learning.” “We can build on that. As we move forward it is tremendously important that we take time to think and talk about our work as a community and continue to challenge each other.”
A Lesson in Fractions
I
n Liz Romero’s third-grade classroom at Euclid Avenue Elementary in Boyle Heights, the students are learning about fractions. Romero’s goal for the lesson that day is to see if they understand the concept of wholes, and the equivalence of fractions in relationship to wholes. Having already demonstrated success in building foundational understandings of fractions, the students are stretching into new territory related to equivalence and unit fractions. As she begins, the students are spread out casually on a rug at the front of the classroom. Romero is friendly, almost casual with the students, but her teaching is intentional. She asks them, “Who taught you yesterday?” “Ms. Hernandez!” the students call out. (Ms. Hernandez is a student teacher working in Romero’s class.) “Yes, yesterday was her first full day of teaching. So afterwards we went out to dinner to celebrate. And we got dessert,” Romero says with a grin. “What do you think we got for dessert?” she asks. “Cake!” says one boy excitedly. “No, we got pie, and it was good,” Romero says with relish, and the kids giggle a little. “Your goal for the day is to figure out who ate more pie,” she says. “Who do you think ate more pie,” she asks them, and hands shoot up. She asks them some questions. “How would you know who ate more pie?” she asks. “What do you notice?” “How many pieces were there?” “How many pieces did I eat?” “How many pieces did Ms. Hernan dez eat?” “How much did we have left?” She hands them each a piece of paper that says: Who ate more pie? Ms. Hernandez ate 2/3 of pie. Ms. Romero ate 4/4 of pie. Show how you know.
? ore pie m e t a Who ez ate d n a n r Ms. He ie. 2/3 of p ro ate e m o R . Ms ie. 4/4 of p
. u know o y w o Show h
The students quickly move into groups at small round tables. They work individually at first. Some students begin by drawing two circles, others draw two rectangles and divide one into three pieces the other into four pieces. Some label them Ms. H. and Ms. R. They begin to shade in the pieces with their pencils. Romero moves among the students, working individually, asking, “What did you notice?” “Four pieces of pie makes a whole pie,” says one girl, “you ate the whole thing.” “What about Ms. Hernandez, did she eat the whole thing?” The student nods, but is quiet, a little unsure. Romero quickly writes out a number sentence on a pad of paper she carries, 1/3 + 1/3 = 1 and shows it to the girl. “Is this true?” she asks. The girl shakes her head to signal no. “Do you want to revisit your thinking,” Romero asks. The girl nods, her face breaking into a big smile.
At their tables, the students begin to work in groups, talking with each other about what they notice, what they did, who ate more pie and sharing what they know. Shortly, they move back to the carpet, with one girl moving to the front of the room, sitting at an overhead projector. It is her turn to demonstrate and share her work. “First I drew two circles,” she says. “One for Ms. H. One for Ms. R. Then I made pieces. One has three pieces— One has four pieces. I shaded them in. And I noticed that Ms. R. ate more.” Ms. Romero asks the students to turn and talk about what the girl did. She asks them questions, writing them out on the board. “Is this true: ¼ + ¼ + ¼ = 1? How would I make it true?” The students talk about their answers, how they found them, and share their work with each other.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 15
We are sending the wrong message to students. We’re saying, you are not welcome, you don’t belong here.
NEW RESEARCH PROBES
California College Promise Program UCLA Education Professor Cecilia Rios-Aguilar Seeks to Make the Promise of College Come True for All Students. BY JOHN MCDONALD
Cecilia Rios-Aguilar, a professor of education and the Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, is talking about the messages that in her view, the four-year highly selective higher education sector (i.e., the UC system) too often sends to low-income and minority students. For Rios-Aguilar, that message is highly problematic. “The conversation is too often focused on selectivity, and we signal that only a few people can get to the top. I don’t agree with that message,” Rios-Aguilar said. “We act like diversity is a scarce resource when diversity abounds in our educational system. There is so much talent in this state; it’s in our community colleges—diversity abounds in that sector. But we are sending the wrong message that only a few are chosen to excel in this state.” Rios-Aguilar is working to change that. Through her research she is trying to better understand the experiences of community college students, the institutions that serve them and the strategies that can help them to pursue and succeed in higher education.
16 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
“There are so many inequities in the K–12 system and higher education. How do we set up a system to battle those inequities? That is the challenge,” she says. One important resource for community college students that Rios-Aguilar is exploring is The California College Promise program established in 2018 through the passage of California Assembly Bill 19. Similarly to other college promise programs in other states and communities, the idea is to address issues of college affordability and increase college access and attainment, as well as the broader inequities that result in lower rates of college access and attainment among the most vulnerable groups of students. Rios-Aguilar and Austin Like, a graduate student at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, examine the program in new research conducted in collaboration with Policy Analysis for California Education. Their study, “The California College Promise: A Promise to What, for Whom and Where,” identifies important challenges and highlights inequities among those who benefit from the program and where they live.While the California College Promise program is very new, their research identifies important challenges and highlights inequities in whom the program benefits and where.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CALIFORNIA COLLEGE PROMISE PROGRAM
the total cost of attendance is considered, the average cost of attendance at community colleges for low-income students is significantly higher than attending other public universities in the state. Low-income students would need to spend about half of theirs and their families’ income in order to cover the total cost of attendance. “Community college is not free,” Aguilar said. “The state’s most vulnerable college students face the most severe financial burden in pursuit of higher education. It is precisely why AB 19 was created.” Through AB 19, the California College Promise provides districts and colleges with funds to waive some or all tuition and fees to first-time, full-time students who meet eligibility requirements, if the college or district chooses to use the funds for financial aid. The program provides college districts with discretion to “decide what is best for their students,” giving them flexibility to use the funds to waive fees or students or use the funds in other ways. While the program is fairly new and available data is limited, the research by Rios-Aguilar and Lyke reports that 105 colleges received AB 19 funds. The colleges are using the funds in a variety of ways, including for tuition and fees, hiring of staff, and educational costs such as textbooks, transportation assistance and food vouchers.
We act like diversity is a scarce resource when diversity abounds in our educational system. There is so much talent in this state; it’s in our community colleges— diversity abounds in that sector. But we are sending the wrong message that only a few are chosen to excel in this state.
The intent of AB 19 is to provide critical support to California community colleges to improve student preparation and access to college, increase community college degree completion and increase the number of students who transfer to CSU or UC institutions. Importantly, it also aims to reduce and eliminate regional achievement gaps, and the achievement gaps for low- income students, ethnic minorities and other groups who have traditionally been underrepresented at community colleges. It is a small but important part of the complex system of financial aid that colleges use to support students. California’s community colleges play an essential role in the state’s system of higher education, serving more than 2.1 million students. While the tuition for these students is low, when UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 17
A promise to WHAT for WHOM? In the only available report on implementation of AB 19, colleges report significant equity concerns—specifically that the students benefitting from the program are not the ones that need it most. Rios-Aguilar’s new research would appear to support that conclusion. As noted, colleges are given considerable discretion in how they allocate and distribute AB 19 funds. Such discretion has resulted in discrepancies across racial and ethnic subgroups. The research details significant differences in the amount of aid awarded for fee waivers and for other educational costs such as books and transportation. Latino and White students received the most aid from AB 19 funding. The majority of aid to White students went to fees, while the largest share of aid for Latino students went to other costs. White students also received the largest average awards, $459, compared to $281 for Latino students and just $266 for African American Students. The research underscores two important points: AB 19 funding comprises
a relatively small proportion of spending and that it is unevenly distributed across students from racial and ethnic backgrounds. “While a decentralized financial aid system affords districts discretion and flexibility, it is resulting in inequities in the amount and type of aid received by students,” Rios-Aguilar said. “And it is important to remember, that unlike the federal student loan program, AB 19 is explicitly designed to reduce achievement gaps among underrepresented students in the community college system.” Another important and growing equity concern raised by the research is the impact of eligibility criteria that require recipients of the California College Promise program to be full-time students. Many students in community college work to afford the cost of attendance and more than 70 percent of those are enrolled on a part-time basis. These students face a significant barrier to meet full-time enrollment requirements and are unable to benefit from the California College Promise.
Average Awards by Race/Ethnicity
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Charts by: Policy Analysis for California Education
A promise for WHOM and WHERE? “We are greatly concerned that a significant number of part-time students will be completely left out of the benefits of the program,” Rios-Aguilar said. “We hope that California’s community colleges and the state’s policymakers will review the eligibility criteria, especially the full-time student status requirement, to help reduce inequities.” In examining the College Promise program, Rios-Aguilar and Lyke also find that the financial aid awarded through available AB 19 funds is distributed unevenly across the state. More than 40 percent of the $14 million in AB 19 funds allocated in the 2018–19 academic year are concentrated in just four counties in California: Sacramento, Santa Clara, Los Angeles and Orange. Twenty-five counties did not distribute any AB 19 funds. “This is a real problem. AB 19 explicitly states ‘reducing and eliminating regional achievement gaps’ as a primary goal,” Rios-Aguilar said. “We are very concerned because we know that some of the highest levels of food and housing insecurity are occurring in the Central Valley and it is not clear to us what institutions in the region are doing with those funds.” Even within counties the distribution of funds is uneven. For example, in Los Angeles County only five institutions reported awarding financial awards from AB 19 funds to students. The remaining institutions, including the Los Angeles Community College District, did not use AB 19 funds for student financial aid.
Geography of AB 19 Funds Awarded in California
LOOKING FORWARD: A FOCUS ON EQUITY In the research, Rios-Aguilar and Lyke acknowledge that the California College Promise and other promise programs are very new and that much more research is needed. But they believe the findings of their research make clear that the design and implementation of the California College Promise program needs to be carefully and systematically examined. “When we look at this program, colleges are reporting significant equity concerns—they are basically saying that low-income students of color are not benefitting equally from this program,” Rios-Aguilar said. “We need to look closely at the data. If we don’t, we may be reproducing the very inequities we want to address because the aid is going to the students who need it least.” The full research brief including data and recommendations is available online at https://edpolicyinca.org/ publications/california-college-promise
Cecilia Rios-Aguilar is a professor of education and the Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. She also represents UCLA as one of five faculty directors for Policy Analysis for California Education.
Austin Lyke is a Ph.D. student at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 19
Virginia Walter: BEYOND THE BOOKS Inducted this year to the California Library Association’s Hall of Fame, the UCLA emerita professor and former children’s librarian shares her hopes for the future of libraries.
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BY JOANIE HARMON
W
hen Virginia Walter served as a public librarian in Boyle Heights in the 1970s, she took part in making the neighborhood branch more than just a repository for books. She and her staff worked to create a hub for their largely Latino, Spanish-speaking community, with services and enrichment opportunities for every member of the family. The emerita professor at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies—who created the annual Frances Clarke Sayers Lecture in honor of her late colleague and prominent children’s librarian—continues to teach a course in children’s literature. Professor Walter was inducted into the California Library Association’s Hall of Fame in November.
(Below) Virginia Walter, emerita professor of information studies at UCLA (at right), was inducted into the California Library Association’s Hall of Fame in November. Her daughter, Eva Mitnick, director of the Engagement and Learning Division of the Central Library, Los Angeles Public Library, and a UCLA alumna (’89, MLIS), had the honor of inducting her mother into the CLA Hall of Fame. Courtesy of Eva Mitnick
Walter has worked with California libraries and their communities since 1966, when she received her master’s of library science degree from UC Berkeley. She began her career as a children’s librarian in Sunnyvale before moving on to San Francisco and then to the Los Angeles Public Library, where she ultimately became coordinator of children’s services. Professor Walter joined the faculty of the UCLA Department of Information Studies in 1990 and served as chair of the department in the early 2000s. She has been president of the Association for Library Service to Children (2000–2001); and a representative of the American Library Association to the International Federation of Library Associations’ standing committees on Libraries for Children and Young People (2001–2005) and Reading and Literacy (2007–2011). Throughout her career, Walter has authored and contributed to sixteen monographs, including “Outcomes + Outreach: The California Summer Reading Outcomes Initiative” for Public Libraries (with Natalie Cole and Eva Mitnick); “Sowing the Seeds of Praxis: Incorporating Youth Development Principles in Teen Employment Programs,” for Library Trends; and “Teens and Libraries: Getting It Right” for the American Library Association. Throughout her career, Professor Walter has mentored hundreds of children’s librarians.
Walter took part in making the neighborhood branch more than just a repository for books. She and her staff worked to create a hub for their largely Latino, Spanishspeaking community, with services and enrichment opportunities for every member of the family.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 21
Outreach has been an issue at least as long as I’ve been in the field. The war on poverty in the 1960s really pushed it and libraries got behind that..
She is a renowned expert on children’s literature, youth services, library management, and outcome-based planning and evaluation. Her work has improved the way youth services librarians understand and serve children and teens and how libraries evaluate and demonstrate their impact. Walter currently serves as a consultant for the California State Library, mainly evaluating its Lunch at the Library program for underserved communities.
Professor Walter shared with UCLA Ed&IS her perspectives on the library as both intellectual institution and community builder; its role in expanding diversity in literature, and how graduates of the UCLA Department of Information Studies make libraries better.
UCLA Ed&IS: What have been the greatest changes to public librarianship during your career? VIRGINIA WALTER: When I started, [li-
brarianship] was almost entirely book-focused. And I was a children’s librarian, so that was particularly book-focused. We did storytelling and that kind of thing. The first thing that changed was a big new focus on diverse literature— multicultural literature. In the late 1960s, there was this famous article in the Saturday Review called, “The All-White World of Children’s Books” that called attention to this problem. I was working in the Western Addition in San Francisco and most of my kids were African American and some Japanese. I had two books to give the African American children [that they could identify with culturally]—it was really sad. I was happy to see the “We Need Diverse Books” movement. It took a while, but now there are [more culturally diverse] books. I’m teaching whole courses on multicultural children’s literature. It’s still not perfect, but it’s much better.
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The other thing that changed was a new focus on very young children. When I started, kids had to be three before they could come to a story time [at a library]. They had to prove they could sit without their mothers and listen to a story. And that changed … we went younger and younger with “Toddler Time,” or we’d have whole families come, or even baby “lap-sits.”
UCLA Ed&IS: How else did libraries work to become more relevant to the communities they served? WALTER: Outreach has been an issue
at least as long as I’ve been in the field. The war on poverty in the 1960s really pushed it and libraries got behind that. I love this city so much, and the library is such an important part of communities—it often is the central place in a community where everybody can go. In the 1970s when I came to Los Angeles and started working for LAPL, my job was in Boyle Heights at the Malabar Branch, which was an almost completely Latino community at that time.
Outreach was … to promote library service as relevant to people who, in many cases, weren’t familiar with library service. If they came from Mexico, they didn’t have free library service there. So, we did all kinds of things to try to be relevant to the community. We didn’t charge fines—even though that was not an official policy— we just didn’t. I started a mothers’ club at the Malabar Branch Library. I was the only one on staff who didn’t speak fluent Spanish, so I tried to look for commonalities—things I had in common with the community. I was the adult services librarian as well as the branch manager, so I started the mothers’ club. We met every Friday. I taught them how to make piñatas, which they sold at a local fair. We were able to get a van from the [L.A. City Council] and took field trips to places that they would never have gone otherwise—including Venice Beach one summer, when it was [still] a nude beach. The museum, the L.A. Arboretum, so many places. It opened up Los Angeles to a lot of these women who had never seen it before, and it was really fun. We did anything we could to try to be relevant [to the community]. We got lots of Spanish language books, but one of the most popular books was an ancient Ford truck manual in English that the men would come in to borrow so they could fix their trucks. That was just a wonderful experience. I’ve never felt so welcome in a neighborhood that wasn’t even my own. My kids would come in when I worked on Saturdays, they went to a summer camp with the [neighborhood] girls. My father made this giant “Frankenstein” monster for the summer reading program one year when we had a monster theme. Because family was so important, I tried to integrate my own family into [the community] as much as I could. I loved it. Those were probably the best years in a library I ever had.
UCLA Ed&IS How has the role of libraries evolved from merely being a source of reading material and information? WALTER: [Libraries] have a really import-
ant function, and that has just increased. During the 1980s … there was a big fear that digital resources were going to displace public libraries. It was framed as “books vs. bytes.” And that didn’t happen. What happened is that libraries reinvented themselves as important community places. They discovered that people still wanted to come in, even though they could look things up at home, there were things where a human touch was needed, as well as coming together with other people. I’ve seen family storytimes that were really places to build community—where parents could meet other parents and arrange playdates and talk about where they were going to send their kid to kindergarten.
During the 1980s … there was a big fear that digital resources were going to displace public libraries. It was framed as ‘books vs. bytes.’ And that didn’t happen. What happened is that libraries reinvented themselves as important community places.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 23
The latest innovation that just makes my heart sing is ‘Lunch at the Library.’ It’s completely funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kids get school lunches during the year if they’re in low-income communities— and that’s almost every community in Los Angeles, by the way. How has the digital environment affected or enhanced libraries? WALTER: We’re seeing these studies of
The latest innovation that just makes my heart sing is “Lunch at the Library.” It’s completely funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kids get school lunches during the year if they’re in low-income communities—and that’s almost every community in Los Angeles, by the way. There are a few little pockets where [kids] don’t qualify, but many p laces do. In the summertime when school isn’t in session, there is no free lunch. And so, libraries [throughout California] have taken up the gap and are serving lunch at the library. It started about five years ago and it’s grown tremendously. It started with 17 [branches] and now [the number of libraries participating] is up in the hundreds. Mothers come in with their kids and what they tell me is that maybe they could go to a playground or something, but the library offers enrichment for the kids that the other places don’t. The librarian will often tell stories or have activities set up for the kids—it’s just a better environment.
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what we’ve always suspected: Children and teens like the information sources they can get online, but they would actually prefer a book if they’re going to read. For people who don’t have computers at home—and there are a lot who don’t, who don’t have high-speed Internet, [or have] kids competing for the one computer in the home—the library provides a place for people to come and use [online] resources. For homeless people, it’s an absolute lifeline—it’s enabled [libraries] to provide another service. And I think what we used to call reference service—where people would come in with a question and you would look it up and give them an answer—is much less important than it used to be, which leaves librarians freer to … just help people to find a good book or do some of that community-building [and doing] outreach to other places.
What is the value of an MLIS degree from UCLA? WALTER: I don’t see the master’s degree
going away as the basic requirement for becoming a librarian and working in the public library, and I hope that UCLA can be a leader in that. Many of the leaders in the field have come from UCLA. An online program can produce leaders … but I think the face-to-face network [has value]. People graduate from UCLA with a sense that by going into the public library field, they are supposed to be leaders. We expect it and they’ve lived up to it. One of our recent graduates, Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada, is
not only on the ALA Council, she’s on the executive board of the council. Mario Ascensio was the president of REFORMA, and he’s been very active in ALA. Hillary Theyer is now the county librarian in Monterey. They’ve made an impact and I’m so proud of them. Even the children’s librarians—when I see them in the libraries, you can tell they’re doing something a little different. There’s more commitment, there’s more of a sense of professional obligation to the community that I see [in UCLA graduates]. I’m proud of them, they’re doing wonderful things.
What are your hopes for the field of public librarianship? WALTER: I hope children’s librarianship
continues to attract committed people and I hope that it gets to be increasingly diverse. Look at our kids. It’s so important for them to see a face like their parents and somebody who speaks their parents’ language when they come to the library. I hope more men consider children’s librarianship. There are some, but not many. Roger Kelly, one of my first students, went on to become the children’s library coordinator for Santa Monica. He just retired and he’s teaching for us right now. Another student who went on to become a children’s librarian had a “Guys Read” book club especially for boys. I don’t see reading disappearing— they’re still publishing great books and people of all ages are still reading. I hope that [libraries continue] to be an important civic institution, and I think they will. The days of just being a cultural, book-oriented place are gone. That’s the way of the future—to be a community hub, extending the [library’s] mission as much as it can to be relevant to the community.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 25
DATA DEMOCRACY FOR
A U C L A C E N T E N N I A L I N I T I AT I V E A project for K–12 students to analyze and gather data on critical issues such as access to parks, jobs, and housing in Los Angeles BY JOHN MCDONALD
UCLA Data for Democracy in Los Angeles was launched last fall as one of four UCLA Centennial Initiatives designed to expand public access to UCLA’s scholarly resources and build upon the University’s longstanding commitment of service to the community. “The project aims to develop the interest and capacity of young people to deliberate with data about important social issues affecting their communities,” said John Rogers, a professor of education at UCLA and co-leader of the project. “We aim to tap into the interests and concerns of a broad body of Los Angeles students.” Developed by researchers at UCLA Center X and the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (UCLA IDEA) with research colleagues across campus, the plan for the Data for Democracy initiative was to gather research from schools and departments across the university and share it with K–12 students and teachers in schools across Los Angeles. Examining issues like access to parks, immigration, and housing inequality, the idea is to engage students, teachers and schools in research exploring issues impacting equality, opportunity and social change. 26 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
“The project provides authentic data around issues that are relevant to students’ lives and invites students to explore important mathematical topics using real-world data,” said UCLA Education Professor Megan Franke, who is also a co-leader of the project. “We hope it will increase opportunities for mathematical thinking and quantitative reasoning.” But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Data for Democracy has been playing a bigger role—providing a source of content for teachers and students who find themselves challenged by the closure of schools. “Amid the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, Data for Democracy offers a critical source of content for teachers and students as their classrooms transition to distance learning,” said Rogers. “Given the impact of the pandemic on schools, the project could not be more timely.” Available free online, the Data for Democracy briefs offer K–12 students in the Los Angeles area the opportunity to engage in research, accessing charts, graphs, tables, maps, and interviews about issues that impact the lives of students and their families. Teachers and students can also share their ideas and work using an online tool called Padlet. At the UCLA Lab School, teacher Julie Kern Schwerdtfeger is using the briefs with her sixth-grade class.
“The briefs are beautifully constructed and drawn. That made it easy to put them on a screen in front of children. And there are also multiple places to interact with the content,” Kern said. “After reading the first brief, our students posted questions about the distribution of LA’s parks on Padlet. Students need practice at using data and need a safe place to just try out some conversations. Looking at graphics related to Los Angeles Parks was an elegant and relevant place to start.” “After reading the second brief, which focused on immigration, many of my students looked up their own zip codes to find the percentage of households with an immigrant parent in their neighborhoods.” In late April, Kern was using the newest brief, Housing Inequality in Los Angeles, in a Zoom session math lesson with her class. The students, their images showing on the now all too familiar Zoom screen, were using the charts from the brief to examine data on the homeless. “What do you notice?” Kern asked as she engaged them in a conversation about the data. The students talked about the data, and where it came from. Looking at tables that showed the population of Los Angeles County, and the total number and percentage of homeless over time, they shared ideas
The project provides authentic data around issues that are relevant to students’ lives and invites students to explore important mathematical topics using real-world data. We hope it will increase opportunities for mathematical thinking and quantitative reasoning.
UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 27
The Data for Democracy briefs proved a perfect resource for accessible data that was relevant to our Los Angeles children’s lives. And to be honest, studying social justice issues related to LA Parks, learning about immigration patterns to California, and analyzing information around housing inequality allowed us to step outside the COVID-19 situation.
on what might affect the numbers, suggesting ideas such as health issues, housing policies or service and maybe fires or natural disasters. Linking into video on her phone, Kern used one of the discussion questions about the Homeless data comparing Norway and Los Angeles County to work through math problems that helped the students to visualize what the numbers and percentages of homeless might really look like. When asked, the students excitedly said they really liked working with the charts and graphs, and that the briefs were really interesting to read. One student said, “My mom keeps grabbing it, looking at it whenever I open it up.” They all said that even when schools get back to normal, they want to keep using the briefs. “The Data for Democracy briefs proved a perfect resource for accessible data that was relevant to our Los Angeles children’s lives,” Kern said. “And to be honest, studying social justice issues related to LA Parks, learning about immigration patterns to California, and analyzing information around housing inequality allowed us to step outside the COVID-19 situation.” “We want our young people to know that they can use data to think about and act on the world they live in. This project brings civics and mathematics together and allows students to see themselves as actors in both realms,” she concluded.
HOUSING INEQUALITY IN LOS ANGELES
DATA REPRESENTATION 1
LA in 1979: courtesy of John Humble
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
5
Sample page from a research brief
28 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
UCLA DATA FOR DEMOCRACY PARKS IN LOS ANGELES
T HREE RESEA R C H BR I EFS
DATA REPRESENTATION 2
1 Parks Data for Democracy in Los Angeles partnered with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies in the Luskin School to explore parks in the Los Angeles region. Parks offer places to relax, play and exercise. They help people be healthy. But an examination of parks in Los Angeles also raises important questions of fairness, equity and opportunity. Who has access to parks? Do some people have more access than others? Where are parks and why are they where they are? How much park space does Los Angeles have? Should there be more? Where should they be, what should they be like, and what kind of services should they offer? “Parks are spaces of our everyday life. They are important for everyone, and quite critical for people with no other access to open space,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “Parks fulfill some basic human needs.” There are more than 600 parks in Los Angeles, but about four in ten people lack access to a park in walking distance from where they live. There is an interactive map showing where parks
are, and charts and maps detailing what areas have more park space and what neighborhoods have less. The brief examines park access by median income and explores the kinds of services found in parks in Los Angeles, including charts showing the percentages of specific types of facilities and activities such as baseball fields, playgrounds or pools.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Compare 1. How close is your school to the nearest park? How close is your home? 2. How close should the nearest park be to your home? How long a walk? 3. How much more park space does Santa Monica have per person than East LA (unincorporated)? 5 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 29
UCLA DATA FOR DEMOCRACY WELCOMING NEWCOMERS TO LA
DATA REPRESENTATION 3 How many immigrant families are in Los Angeles?
T
2 Immigration Who are the immigrants in our communities and where do they come from? What assets do they bring, what are the challenges they face and how do we as a community welcome and support them? These and other issues are the topic of the UCLA Data for Democracy brief “Immigration in LA.” The brief examines patterns of migration to California and Los Angeles, highlighting the percentage of foreign-born residents and where they come from, and offers historical perspective on migration to the state. Data representations include an interactive map detailing how many immigrant families are in Los Angeles and where they live. There are also suggestions for student exploration such as comparing migration in different years or charting the proportion of immigrants in the neighborhoods where they live. The brief also includes resources to help students to examine the patterns of migration to California and Los Angeles and the legal issues related to immigration. Students are also invited to narrate their own stories of migration and share insights about the people, places, and practices that can make Los Angeles schools and neighborhoods welcoming for all. “Immigration in LA” offers historical data that allows teachers to have conversations about the trends in the data over time,” said project co-director Megan Franke. “Those trends can be discussed in relation to periods in history and the geography, policies and practices that influenced them.” The brief also includes interviews about immigration with Wasserman Dean Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and UCLA Professor of Education C arola Suárez-Orozco, who, together with Professor Robert Teranishi, serve as co- directors of the Institute for Immigration, 30 UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020
his map displays the percentage of children living in different neighborhoods across Los Angeles County who have at least one parent who is an immigrant. In the areas of the map with the lightest shading, fewer than 25% of children have at least one immigrant parent. In the areas that are dark orange, more than 75% of children have at least one immigrant parent. This map reflects the fact that many children in our region live in immigrant families. Indeed, more than half (57.7%) of all children in Los Angeles County live with an immigrant parent.
PARKS IN LO
S ANGELES
Activity
WELCOMIN G NEWCOME RS to LOS AN GELES Studying
Click on this link to see a “live” version of this same map. At the top right, type in the address of your school or your home. What color is the shading of the map in this area? What proportion of children in your community live in an immigrant family?
immig
ration in L. amilies from A. all around the to Los Ange les. This is no world move “Migration thing new. is as old as Ho mo Sapiens, is an ancient it and shared condition of humanity,” says UCLA Dean Marce our Orozco. Lo lo Suárezs Angeles att racts immigra many reason nts s— the site of job it is the home of relati for ve op place with lov portunities, and a be s, autiful ely weather. come to Lo s Angeles du But many also e to circums beyond the tan ir control— economic co ces war, climate llapse, change. Families tha t arr best to make ive in Los Angeles do their this new cit y they experi ence a warm home. Sometimes we times the co nditions are lcome, and other more challe The nationa nging. l political en vironment in last few yea the rs ha immigrant fam s created new strains for ilies.
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Yet immigra tion has ma de Los Ange global city it les the is today, and im response to it—will shape migration—and our our collective future. There are sev eral importa ask about im nt question s to migration:
1
Globalization and Education at UCLA. “Migration is our history. It’s a story of how Los Angeles came to be in its present form,” said Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Wasserman Dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. “We need to normalize immigration, and we need to acknowledge the enormous resources that immigrants bring to our society.” There is an important conversation with Nina Rabin, the director of the
• How are yo parts of the ung people born in ot world welco he med in LA? r • Has this ch it differ acro anged over time? Do es ss commun ities? • What actio that immigr ns can be taken to en experience ant youth and familie sure s this city as their home ? Photo: Defend DAC
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Immigrant Family Legal Clinic at UCLA Law School, exploring legal issues related to immigration and providing information on topics such as DACA, Sanctuary Cities and Asylum. Exploring the fear and uncertainty over immigration felt by many students, the brief highlights national research by UCLA Professor of Education John Rogers, examining the impact of national political rhetoric and immigration policy on students and schools.
UCLA DATA FOR DEMOCRACY
3Housing Inequality
HOUSING INEQUALITY IN LOS ANGELES
DATA REPRESENTATION 4
The Housing Inequality in Los Angeles brief examines the issues that affect housing insecurity and housing justice in the Los Angeles region. Produced in collaboration with the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, in partnership with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, the brief explores data about who owns and who rents homes in Los Angeles, the cost of housing, eviction, homelessness, and movements to address housing justice. Home prices are out of reach for many Los Angeles residents and the median monthly cost of rent is more than one third higher than the rest of the United States ($1,390 compared to $1,023). The majority of renters in Los Angeles County are considered rent burdened—meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, leaving less money to spend on other basic needs like food, transportation, and healthcare. Nearly three in ten renter households in Los Angeles County spend more than half of their income on rent and are severely rent-burdened. Fifty-five percent of residents of Los Angeles County are renters, a much higher rate than the 30 percent of renters in communities across the nation. The share of renters has increased over time, and Black and Latino households are more likely to be renters than other racial-ethnic groups. Professor Ananya Roy, UCLA Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography, explains how the legacies of discrimination in the housing market, redlining, subprime lending, and subsequent foreclosures, have made it hard for these communities to achieve and retain home ownership. Less than half of African American and Latino families in Los Angeles County live in homes that they own. More than 60 percent of these families are renters. Evictions are also on the rise and the brief examines the impact of the Ellis Act, a California State Law intended to limit evictions in rental properties. Research
in the brief by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project shows that in many cases, after tenants were evicted, the landlords redeveloped their buildings or converted them into condominiums, making huge profits. Homelessness, or as the brief focuses on, “Houselessness,” is an urgent and growing challenge. The research looks at the number of homeless residents in Los Angeles, the changes that have occurred over time, and an analysis of how homelessness differs by race and ethnicity. Nearly 59,000 people were homeless in LA County in 2019. The document also examines responses to homelessness, including strategies such as providing shelter, permanent housing and policing. The Data for Democracy brief on housing inequality also offers a broader set of ideas about how to promote greatSource: LAHSA, “Greater Los Angeles er housing security, including tenant Homeless Count, 2019 Results” protections and public and subsidized housing. It includes an interview by HOUSING INEQUALITY IN LOS ANGELES co-director John Rogers with Professor Roy, exploring the ideas and sharing exOwning, and the HighmoveCost of Housing in Los Angeles amples from Renting, the housing justice The struggle ment, and inviting students to envision a he United States prides itself on being What an examplejustice of a housing for ishousing a nation of homeowners. not Angeles. different housing future inButLos discrimination legacy? is not just for a roof everyone can afford for to own a home. In “The struggle housing justice is fact, homeownership is increasingly out over one’s head, not of just fornotaonly roof one’s head, alreach for over poor and workingA first legacy is redlining, although thatthrough is which though is vitally Roy said. class that communities, butimportant,” also for middlethe practice ones. Today, over one justice in three is the Black, Latino, and “Theclass struggle forjust housing vitally important.many households across the United States rent ANANYA ROY other racial/ethnic groups unfinished work of freedom.” The struggle rather than own the apartments and were deniedfor access to
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omelessness is described as a p not only of income i but also of racial dis While we need to un the numbers, it is als to remember that e numbers represents with hopes, dreams families, and friends following circle grap the racial-ethnic rep of the total populati County and then the ethnic representatio homeless populatio
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houses in which they live.
housing finance that was guaranteed housing justice is by the federal government.
the unfinished work
55%
of Los Angeles County households are renters
30%
of U.S. households are renters
In Los Angeles County, 55% of households are renters and the share of renters has been increasing over the past few decades. Black and Latinx households are more likely to be renters than other racial-
Redlining emerged in the 1930s when the of freedom. federal government created maps rating certain neighborhoods too risky for banks to provide loans to potential homebuyers. These neighborhoods tended to be African American communities or other communities of color. For decades, “Immigration LA” wasbanks created in partgovernment agenciesinand private used these color-coded to makefor Immigration, nership with Themaps Institute decisions about who would receive loans Globalization and Education at UCLA; The or housing insurance. This practice, David J. Epstein along with other forms ofProgram housing in Public Interest discrimination, it difficult for people Law and made Policy at UCLA; UCLA’s Institute of color to purchase homes—contributing for Democracy, Education, and Access; to unequal patterns of homeownership Civil inequality. Rights Project/Proyecto DereandUCLA’s greater wealth
chos Civiles; and the UCLA Alan Leve Center for Jewish Studies.
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A Community-Based Approach to Studying Climate Change AT Mann UCLA Community School BY JOHN MCDONALD
D
arlene Tieu does not yet know it, but in two days the school she is teaching in, the Mann UCLA Community School in South Los Angeles, will close due to the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe. But she can sense it coming, and so can her kids— the students in her afternoon climate science class. As the class gets ready to start, they are milling around, laughing, joking, talking. But amid the laughter, there is a level of nervous tension in the air, like an ozone layer across the classroom Darlene Tieu’s 10th grade Chemistry class at Mann UCLA Community School has spent the year exploring climate change and its impact on their South Los Angeles community. She is getting ready to work with the students on a greenhouse gas effects simulation, but first she has to deal with a more pressing matter—finding out if the students have access to a computer at home and Internet service. She hands out a survey page, in English and Spanish, and gives the students instruction on how to fill it out. As they write their answers, she moves quietly among them, leaning in with some, almost in a hug, whispering, asking, “Do you have my cell phone number? Do you have my email? Do you know how to reach me? Call me. I will help you,” she says. Tieu will be the first to tell you that these are “great kids,” and she and the other teachers at Mann, many from the UCLA Teacher Education Program, are devoted to them. But they are also students without much in the way of financial means, almost all from low-income backgrounds. About a third live in foster care, some may be homeless. She knows that for many of them, any contact information they may have provided at the beginning of the school year about where they live, how they can be reached, has changed. She is worried about losing track of them. And she knows that for many, the school is the only place they can get a decent meal and a little encouragement.
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“A lot of what drives me as a teacher in the classroom, but also as a person, is that I get to have a relationship with the students. I want to be able to care for the whole student,” Tieu says. “Sometimes I feel like their parent. When I say goodbye to them at the end of the day, the last thing I tell them is, ‘I love you and be safe.’” As a graduate of the UCLA Teacher Education Program, Tieu intentionally chose to teach at the Mann UCLA Community School. She wanted to be part of the community. And that emphasis carries over into her class on climate change. “I am not ignorant of the struggles they go through. I know they’re worried about what is happening around their home, what’s happening in the streets, what’s happening with their health, what’s happening with the health of their families. And so, by doing community-based climate change science that is tied in with who I am as a teacher and who they are as students, it becomes more than just the science; it’s who’s behind the science and why we are learning the science.” Tieu is part of a growing effort to expand teaching about climate change in California. She was a featured speaker at the Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Project and Summit at UCLA in December, part of an ambitious strategy to dramatically expand opportunities for students to learn about climate change and take part in effective solutions. But
Tieu’s climate change class at Mann UCLA is not focused on melting ice caps, polar bears or ocean acidification in the Bay of Alaska. Instead, the class explores climate change through the lens of the students’ South Los Angeles community. The idea is to make clear that climate change has a real impact on their neighborhood, on the lives of the students and their families, on their futures. “I want to make sure that what I’m teaching our students is useful to them,” Tieu said. “When we’re talking about the greenhouse effect, it’s about what’s happening in our community. For example, we can’t talk about the greenhouse effect in LA without talking about the impact of our freeways. I want my students to understand what climate change is and what its impacts are, and to be the ones making the decisions about what to do about it for the community.” To develop the community-based climate change approach, Tieu has been collaborating with Heather Clark, a doctoral student at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Together they have shaped a science-based curriculum that relates to the lives of students and explores the impact on the community.
We can’t talk about the greenhouse effect in LA without talking about the impact of our freeways. I want my students to understand what climate change is and what its impacts are, and to be the ones making the decisions about what to do about it for the community.
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The class closely follows the Next Generation Science Standards and the kids are learning the canon of science, but Los Angeles also provides students with an incredible opportunity to study climate change first-hand.
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The course teaches concepts required by the state, such as the conservation of energy and matter, as tools students can use to address climate change. They explore key topics such as photosynthesis, combustion, heat, and greenhouse gases. “The class closely follows the Next Generation Science Standards and the kids are learning the canon of science,” Clark says. “But Los Angeles also provides students with an incredible opportunity to study climate change first-hand.” In the climate change class on this day, the students will use local temperatures and conditions for a simulation on greenhouse gases. By inputting local data, they can see the potential impact on their community. And by using other data, they can see how things can change. In the previous weeks, the students have also done drawings of how the greenhouse effect or carbon levels work their way through South Los Angeles. “The students are very honest. They see the deficiencies,” Tieu said. “They’re like, ‘Can I draw graffiti? I see graffiti.’ ‘Can I draw that there is an oil rig pulling oil 100 feet from my house?’ These are the kinds of things that they bring into the classroom.” In another project the students examined the “heat island effect.” Urban areas such as Los Angeles have many people living in close proximity, with large amounts of asphalt and very little green space. Local conditions such as these, combined with rising global temperatures, cause Los Angeles and other urban areas to heat up quickly. Using familiar areas in their neighborhoods, the students created models to demonstrate the effects.
“When students see these effects in their own communities, they find the topics more engaging,” Clark said. Tieu and Clark are really trying to build on the knowledge the students bring to the classroom and the relationships they have with them to build interest in exploring important topics in climate science. “We have really taken the time to get to know the students and been able to leverage those relationships to build better lessons that use other parts of our students’ lives as assets for learning science,” Tieu said. “Not necessarily seeing gaps of what they don’t know about photosynthesis or other topics, but instead saying, ‘I know that you guys spent a lot of time in parks. I know that you notice what happens on smoggy days. I know you know what happens when we have to cancel sports practice because there’s too much smoke in the air.’” To learn about photosynthesis the class has explored local parks and used the UCLA Data for Democracy research brief on parks in Los Angeles. The class has used parks as a local resource and examined the impact of parks distribution across Los Angeles. “Parks are a place where photosynthesis should be happening if we have trees,” Clark said. “And an area with fewer parks is going to be doing less photosynthesis. It’s a way for our students to move between a global scale level of science and a local example.” Tieu hopes the community-based approach is not only helping her students to learn about the science of climate change, but to understand the implications and build the vocabulary and knowledge to do something about it. The class
reaches beyond the science to explore the political, social and economic context and institutions that fuel climate change and impact their community. “You can’t have this climate change conversation, an honest conversation, without talking about the racial and economic inequities that are at play here,” Tieu said. “In our science class we talk a lot about how we feel a lot about these things. It’s important to acknowledge that you can feel powerless and hopeless and frustrated at what we’re experiencing. But the frustration that our students feel here is rooted in their identity and their community and that causes them to engage in the science in a different way.” In the next weeks, Tieu has been looking forward to the students investigating the impact of greenhouse gases on Los Angeles and creating a model for the effect on the future of the city. The plan is to detail what they see in their community, such as the traffic, the freeways, pollution, and the population, and analyze the impact on the greenhouse effect. They will make a prediction and will talk about the potential of technology solutions and discuss what can be done politically, economically and socially to change the trajectory of the future. Students can choose to create models that predict a climate nightmare or models that build a positive future. But either way they have to use science to show why their predictions are accurate. With the COVID-19 crisis looming, the plans for instruction are on hold, but Tieu and Clark’s connections to the kids and their community will be helpful. “Everyone here is so passionate about these kids and right now all of our focus is on these kids in the classroom right now,” Tieu said. “It really just feels like a small family. All of this rigorous science and really being in tune with the community is what makes this unit of climate change in the community work specifically for our students. I think every student in under-invested communities deserves to learn science like this.”
You can’t have this climate change conversation, an honest conversation, without talking about the racial and economic inequities that are at play here… the frustration that our students feel here is rooted in their identity and their community and that causes them to engage in the science in a different way. UCLA Ed&IS SPRING 2020 35
UCLA Ph.D. Student Heather Clark’s Participatory Research Aims to Advance Student Learning about Climate Change Heather Clark is working toward her Ph.D. in the Urban Schooling program at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. For the last two years she has been taking part in a research-practice partnership at Mann UCLA Community School in South Los Angeles to develop a model for a community-based approach to the study of climate change. A former high school chemistry teacher with a master’s in science from Yale, Clark is exploring how teacher learning in research-practice partnerships can support youth in reimagining a climate future for Los Angeles that is more just and sustainable. Working with teacher Darlene Tieu and the students in her chemistry class at the Mann UCLA Community School, the effort draws on the physical and social environment of the neighborhood surrounding the school to develop a model of climate change that makes clear the social and political mechanisms that drive scientific climate processes and make climate science meaningful and useful to students. “Our approach anchors instruction in community-based experiences around the causes and consequences of climate change and frames instruction around the systems and structures that create and sustain climate inequalities,” Clark says. “We hope to study student participation in this designed environment to understand how critical awareness of community-based climate change supports learning.” Clark’s background in science has helped to elevate the level of science content and she works closely with Tieu and the students in the classroom to shape the curriculum and day-to-day instructional activities. “She is in so many ways directly and indirectly supporting me to create this high-level activity that I think my students deserve to do high rigor science despite the zip code that they live in,” Tieu said. “She is not just some mysterious researcher taking notes in the back of the classroom. She is part of our community. Our students know her, our students genuinely care about her.” Clark is part of an emerging group of scholars at UCLA and across the country that view research as a partnership and her design-based participatory research is directly situated and centered in the classroom. Along the way she is helping to create a model of teaching and learning to help students understand local climate factors and connect them with larger climate science and political and social issues. “I’m not trying to control anything. I am trying to document really richly the interactions and participation that is happening,” Clark said. “I’m here to see how the learning and interaction was implemented. I aim to produce a meaningful dissertation next year that documents the how of learning.”
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Our approach anchors instruction in community-based experiences around the causes and consequences of climate change and frames instruction around the systems and structures that create and sustain climate inequalities.ď ž
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A Message from UCLA Ed&IS Leadership We here and now reassert an education and information studies agenda animated by an ethic of care and solidarity, an ethic of dignity and human rights, an ethic of engagement and service to others. Racism, hatred, police brutality stand in complete opposition to a humanist civilization and to the elemental requirements for the practice of democratic citizenship. As scholars of education and information studies who are committed to social justice, we commit to reflecting on our privileges and act in all that we do against the systemic racism that impacts the lives and opportunities of the communities, families, and children that we serve. We affirm the power of dialogue, exchange, and reflection in driving the cultural, social and institutional changes needed to bring about equality for all. Marcelo Suรกrez-Orozco Wasserman Dean
Tina Christie Department Chair, Education
Jean-Franรงois Blanchette Department Chair, Information Studies
Anne Gilliland Associate Dean for Information Studies
Jody Priselac Associate Dean for Community Programs
Cecilia Rios-Aguilar Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion