Scaling Student Success…
Is a California partnership working to nurture the innate potential of each and every student by redefining student success to encompass the competencies and skills needed to thrive in our modern world. We act as both a partner and convener, bringing together educational leaders at all levels to broaden our state’s perspective, unify the field, and create equitable opportunities for youth while strengthening the California economy.
Why We Exist
Each and every one of California’s young people deserves an education that fully prepares them for the challenges and opportunities ahead. But too many California students – especially those from historically marginalized communities – are not getting the education they need and deserve.
California’s current success measures paint an incomplete picture of career and college readiness, as vital career and life skills like critical thinking, collaboration, civic engagement, and self management are left out of our state’s current indicators for student success. Getting California’s students ready to compete in today’s world and workforce will require redefining success to promote academic, career, and life skills side by side. Over the past decade, California communities have done groundbreaking work to pilot efforts that better prepare youth for success. These efforts have led to progress, but the improvements have been implemented in an uneven, fragmented way that benefits only pockets of students.
California is lagging behind other states in our adoption of new success measures:
- At least 35 states have defined college and career readiness (American Institutes of Research).
- At least a dozen states (including Virginia, South Carolina, Utah, and New Mexico) have developed a statewide Graduate Profile articulating the skills and competencies they intentionally foster among their graduates.
- The Aurora Institute recently published a policy brief that recommended defining “student success through a Profile of a Graduate” as the #1 recommendation to address in state policy for transforming K-12 education.
California has not yet taken any of these steps.
Why We Exist
Each and every one of California’s young people deserves an education that fully prepares them for the challenges and opportunities ahead. But too many California students – especially those from historically marginalized communities – are not getting the education they need and deserve.
California’s current success measures paint an incomplete picture of career and college readiness, as vital career and life skills like critical thinking, collaboration, civic engagement, and self management are left out of our state’s current vision for student success. Getting California’s students ready to compete in today’s world and workforce will require redefining success to promote academic, career, and life skills side by side. Over the past decade, California communities have done groundbreaking work to pilot efforts that better prepare youth for success. These efforts have led to progress, but the improvements have been implemented in an uneven, fragmented way that benefits only pockets of students.
California is lagging behind other states in our adoption of new success measures:
- At least 35 states have defined college and career readiness (American Institutes of Research).
- At least a dozen states (including Virginia, South Carolina, Utah, and New Mexico) have developed a statewide Graduate Profile articulating the skills and competencies they intentionally foster among their graduates.
- The Aurora Institute recently published a policy brief that recommended defining “student success through a Profile of a Graduate” as the #1 recommendation to address in state policy for transforming K-12 education.
California has not yet taken any of these steps.
Graduate Profiles across California
Dozens of communities across California have engaged local community members to collaboratively design a new vision of student success through the creation of a Graduate Profile.
Graduate Profiles have the power and potential to transform education. Realizing whole child outcomes for each and every student requires hard work and takes years. And our kids deserve it. Our goal is to help ensure all districts have the support, knowledge, connections, and resources they need to successfully bring their Graduate Profiles from “poster to practice.”
Click on the map…
to be able to access Graduate Profiles across the state. Once in the map pdf, you can click on each county with a pin to see specific schools’ graduate profiles.
WestEd recently completed an analysis of 50+ graduate profiles across the state, along with recommendations for developing a graduate profile based on interviews with 9 districts in the Scaling Student Success network. That report is now available!
Graduate Profiles Across California
Dozens of communities across California have engaged local community members to collaboratively design a new vision of student success through the creation of a Graduate Profile.
Graduate Profiles have the power and potential to transform education. Realizing whole child outcomes for each and every student requires hard work and takes years. And our kids deserve it. Our goal is to help ensure all districts have the support, knowledge, connections, and resources they need to successfully bring their Graduate Profiles from “poster to practice.”
Click on the map to be able to access Graduate Profiles across the state. Once in the map pdf, you can click on each county with a pin to see specific schools’ graduate profiles.
California has a unique opportunity…
To weave together the current fragments to benefit students across all California communities. At Scaling Student Success, we seek to build on the progress made and grow the number of communities promoting competencies beyond the narrow lens of standardized tests. Through this shift, we give students a voice and a choice to pursue their interests, and affirm and validate their linguistic and cultural identities as assets, promoting equity across our entire public education system.
To weave together the current fragments to benefit students across all California communities. At Scaling Student Success, we seek to build on the progress made and grow the number of communities promoting competencies beyond the narrow lens of standardized tests. Through this shift, we give students a voice and a choice to pursue their interests, and affirm and validate their linguistic and cultural identities as assets, promoting equity across our entire public education system.
PAST & PRESENT MEMBERS
Scaling Student Success offers support and guidance to districts, schools, and county offices of education eager to bring their Graduate Profiles to life. Participating in our Community of Practice allows them to close knowledge gaps, challenge biases and assumptions, break down silos, and create efficiencies across our education system. We eagerly support their efforts, embrace their lessons learned, and build on their successes. See their respective Graduate Profiles by clicking on the district names.
ACTIVE MEMBERS
Our community of practice continues to grow. These districts participate in strand convenings and other opportunities to advance their Graduate Profiles. We eagerly support their efforts, embrace their lessons learned, and build on their success.
See their respective Graduate Profiles by clicking on the district names.
Practice Partners
We have established partnerships with more than a dozen organizations with demonstrated success in helping districts operationalize their Graduate Profiles.
Our current partners include:
Hover over each box to flip for more information.
ConnectED: The National Center for College and Career
Over the past decade, ConnectED has led the field by supporting dozens of school districts to create a Graduate Profile as a student-centered, outcome-based, and locally-derived definition of college and career readiness. ConnectED supports district implementation of Linked Learning to inspire and better equip students to succeed in college, career, and civic life.
Crescendo Education Group
Crescendo Education Group supports schools and districts by implementing grading and assessment practices that are more equitable, accurate, bias-resistant, and intrinsically motivating. Which ultimately leverages educational improvements systemwide. Grading for equity serves as an effective gateway for shifting student, parent, and teacher mindsets toward a competency-based approach to learning.
Envision Learning Partners
In California and nationally, Envision Learning Partners leads in supporting schools and districts to establish systems of performance assessment (i.e., portfolio defenses, senior projects), the most popular research-based strategy for measuring student progress on Graduate Profile skills, like collaboration and teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving, creativity and innovation, and communication.
Inflexion
Inflexion equips principals and district administrators with the professional tools, knowledge and community they need to lead. We help create the conditions necessary for school improvement:
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Shared purpose and school identity
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Common vision of student readiness
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Commitment to equity in education
Learner-Centered Collaborative
Recognizing the promise of learner-centered education and driven by the urgency to improve outcomes for today’s learners, education leaders and practitioners have teamed up as the Learner-Centered Collaborative, a professional learning organization with decades of experience supporting schools, districts, and states in their shift to learner-centered models of education — necessary for realizing a Grad Profile.
Partnership for Children and Youth
The outcomes articulated on a Graduate Profile cannot realistically be achieved in 180 days per year, from 8:00am to 3:00pm. The Partnership for Children & Youth (PCY) is an advocacy and capacity-building organization championing high-quality learning opportunities for underserved youth in California, with an emphasis on after school, summer learning, and community schools.
PBL Works (formerly Buck Instutute for Education)
Students have an opportunity to practice and demonstrate Graduate Profile outcomes (i.e., collaboration, communication, problem-solving, initiative, etc.) when they are engaged in varied forms of experiential learning. PBL Works builds teacher capacity so that all students have access to high quality Project Based Learning to deepen their learning and achieve success in college, career, and life.
Prospect Studio
Prospect Studio expertly guides districts and communities through a visioning process that results not only in a Graduate Profile for students, but also the adult/educator competencies necessary to foster the articulated outcomes in young people, and the system conditions and organizational culture that enables expected teacher and leader capacity and student progress toward Graduate Profile skills, competencies, and mindsets.
Sonoma County Office of Education
In 2019, in collaboration with the CTE Foundation, Sonoma COE engaged regional stakeholders, including representatives from each of 40 school districts to create a countywide Portrait of a Graduate. As a partner, SCOE supports other County Offices of Education interested either in developing a countywide Graduate Profile or supporting districts in their county to create and operationalize their own Graduate Profiles.
Turnaround for Children
Turnaround for Children equips teachers to cultivate calm, engaging learning environments that foster healthy student development and academic achievement. TfC knows that educating the whole child requires positive relationships, safe environments, and integrated supports that enable the intentional development of critical skills, mindsets and habits articulated on Graduate Profiles.
World Savvy
For two decades, World Savvy has worked with schools to transform K-12 learning through teacher PD, leadership coaching, and useful resources. World Savvy helps educators embed Global Competence into all aspects of their school community, which in turn helps students prepare for a rapidly changing workforce, participate in a multi-ethnic democracy, and solve complex problems locally and globally.
YouthTruth
Through their validated survey instruments and tailored advisory services, YouthTruth partners with schools and districts to enhance learning for all students. By knowing what students are experiencing in their school and classroom, YouthTruth helps link student perceptions to academic outcomes. Surveys are a viable way to assess student progress on hard-to-measure Graduate Profile outcomes.
Data, Policy, and Research Partners
Hover over each box to flip for more information.
eKadence Learning
Working initially with Anaheim UHSD, eKadence built the first and only Learning Management Solution to marry academics with Graduate Profile outcomes. The collision of the two is where eKadence thrives. Now available to any interested district, eKadence is on a mission to help educators unlock true student potential and to empower students to find their purpose — because purpose truly is a powerful thing.
GENup
GENup is a California-based, nationwide student-led social justice organization and student-activist coalition that strives to advocate for education through the power of youth voices! GENup supports many important causes, including active student engagement and student agency typically found in districts working to realize the whole child outcomes articulated in a Graduate Profile.
Parsec Education
Parsec Education improves and transforms K-12 education and student outcomes through modernizing, evaluating, improving, and standardizing the way schools view, interpret, and respond to data. As a partner, Parsec is helping districts re-imagine how to display student progress on Graduate Profile outcomes and considering alternative Dashboard displays that equate the importance of state and local indicators.
WestEd
With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, WestEd’s REL serves as a research partner, conducting an analysis of Graduate Profiles in CA, coaching districts on assessment and accountability, surveying the policy landscape to support expansion of a whole child vision, and developing an evaluation plan for the Reimagining CA Schools Innovation Pilot.
Advisory Board
Scaling Student Success’ volunteer Advisory Board is made up of innovative and bold educational leaders, executives from our practice partner organizations, and other experts who offer valued perspectives and professional connections. Together, our advisory board members help keep us focused and efficient as we work toward our mission.
Superintendents
or cabinet-level designees from each of the Participating Districts
Executive Directors
or designees from each of our Practice Partners
At-large members
who offer unique perspectives, needed expertise, and professional relationships
Staff
Roman Stearns
FOUNDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Professional Summary
Roman operates from a deep conviction that each and every child deserves an education that fosters the qualities and skills needed to advance us toward a sustainable future. Yet, he knows that getting there is a humbling, collaborative process that involves dismantling structural inequities, valuing local experimentation, building trusting relationships, shifting hearts and minds, making strategic decisions, and ultimately adopting or adapting sustainable systems. Together, these create the right conditions for organizational change.
After 10 years serving as a public school teacher, Roman Stearns has spent the past 20+ years successfully directing large-scale projects and partnerships focused on systemic educational transformation in California, designed to make real-world learning the norm for the vast majority of students.
As a father of two mixed-race sons who have experienced the impact of a system that reinforces racist and oppressive policies coupled with implicit bias, this work is highly personal (see personal equity statement).
Social Links
Rory Brown
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR & SENIOR ADVISOR
Rory Brown believes we each have a part to play in creating a community where we all flourish – we are stronger together. Her career and expertise is focused on creating a more equitable world where everyone has the opportunity to live their best selves now. Rory brings over 20 years of fundraising experience as both a consultant and director to her role at Scaling Student Success. She has partnered with organizations such as Beyond Emancipation and Youth UpRising to support systems-involved youth ages 14-24 as they imagine and create their own lives. A native of California, Rory is dedicated to building a loving community. She enjoys creating textile art, spending time outdoors and finding any excuse to dance–there are many!
Transform education to bolster student success
Raise the aspirations of our education system and the expectations and capacity of local communities to prepare each and every young person for future success.
Looking for help? Get in touch with us
Scaling Student Success is a project of Community Partners, a nonprofit charity exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code. Checks should be made payable to: Community Partners for Scaling Student Success. Your donation is only tax deductible if made to Community Partners, our fiscal sponsor and the tax-exempt entity.