Report 2016-114 Recommendation 7 Responses

Report 2016-114: College Readiness of California's High School Students: The State Can Better Prepare Students for College by Adopting New Strategies and Increasing Oversight (Release Date: February 2017)

Recommendation #7 To: Coachella Valley Unified School District

To increase students' access to and completion rates of college preparatory coursework, districts should create and institute a centralized process for submitting, managing, and tracking college preparatory courses and certification requests. This process should maximize the number of certified courses that the district offers. Further, to ensure that students receive appropriate credit for their college preparatory coursework, this process should match the UC's course listings with each school's master schedule of courses.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2019

One of our LCAP Goals is to increase student achievement and other pupil outcomes to prepare ALL students for College, Career, and Citizenship in the 21st Century. In order to accomplish that goal, CVUSD hired a College and Career Readiness Coordinator at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year. Our mission was to introduce college and career awareness in elementary, explore college and career options in middle school, and prepare for college and career in high school. In elementary, we offer career awareness field trips, VAPA and STEM for 4th -6th grade, Dual Immersion, and all 14 of our elementary's are AVID Schools. Our Middle schools offer career exploration, career electives, field trips to colleges and local industries, Dual Immersion, AVID, and College and Career fairs/presentations. Our schools offer career exploration, career pathways, career academies, certifications, college/industry field trips, dual enrollment, articulated courses, college applications, AVID, PUENTE, honors coursework, A-G coursework, AP courses & exams, ACT/SAT/PSAT, counseling, FASFA/Dream ACT support, and scholarships. At the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, our College and Career coordinator did an A-G coursework audit, implemented a new course submission site guideline, and created a master A-G course list offered at each site and district-wide.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

We reviewed Coachella's A-G coursework audit, its new course submission site guideline, and the master A-G course list for each school site and found that Coachella has fully implemented our recommendation.

1-Year Agency Response

Auditee did not respond to our recommendation.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Pending

6-Month Agency Response

The district is proposing a new position to be included in the LCAP that would designate a district-level college and career counseling coordinator to devise, implement, and monitor a comprehensive, cohesive college and career readiness plan for the district. This position would coordinate all activities related to supporting and coordinating, with an identified assistant principal at each high school, in monitoring site counselors' work in identifying students who fall off track for graduation and A-G eligibility, ensuring documentation of parent notification and placement of students into credit recovery, and ensuring a wide array of credit recovery options to include during the school day, after school, Saturdays and summer school. Additionally, this proposed position would be responsible for developing and monitoring a uniform, district-wide course approval process from origination, alignment with CA standards, UC A-G certification, to curriculum council and school board approval. Finally, this position would hold bi-yearly meetings with a representative committee to update/revise courses and align site master schedules with A-G approved courses.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

Since 2015, CVUSD has been systematically training designated site administrators, to centrally manage site accounts and work with the Director of Secondary Education to audit course lists. Since 2015 mis-registered courses, missing courses, and course update corrections have taken place. As of 2016 each site administration monitors their UC approved course lists and are audited by the Secondary Ed Director. College prep courses that are common between sites have been brought into alignment with each other.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: No Action Taken

The district has not taken any additional steps to create and institute a centralized process for submitting, managing, and tracking college preparatory courses and certification requests since the release of our audit in February 2017.

All Recommendations in 2016-114

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.