Grass Valley SD’s work improving literacy highlighted in new brief

Over a three-year period beginning in 2020, Grass Valley School District, located in Nevada County, was able to implement strategies that improved literacy instruction and outcomes for students.

Policy Analysis for California Education’s (PACE) brief “Building Momentum One Step at a Time Grass Valley School District’s Progress Towards P–3 Coherence in Literacy,” published in December, covers the district’s engagement in California Education Partners’ Preschool through Third Grade Coherence Collaboration (P3CC).

The district team, “implemented new literacy assessments and instructional practices, particularly in phonics instruction,” according to the brief. “The collaboration’s approach emphasized teacher leadership, internal accountability, and the strategic use of data, which shifted the district’s culture towards one more conducive to continuous improvement.”

About the district

Grass Valley SD consists of two elementary schools, a middle school, a charter school and a preschool center with a total student population of roughly 1,600. Sixty-nine percent of students are unduplicated, 19 percent receive special education services and 5 percent are English learners.

Though it had a stable pool of educators and close-knit community, the district received differentiated assistance services prior to the initiative due to poor California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) scores. The district partnered with P3CC to address the issue.

At the beginning of the partnership, the district lacked “formal systems or norms to support coherent instruction, and teachers had become accustomed to a revolving door of new initiatives,” the brief states. “Work started slowly in the first year as teachers felt overwhelmed, but over time the team landed on an idea to customize an assessment of phonics instruction.” They used the Basic Phonics Skills Test (BPST) as a base and adopted grade-level curriculum accordingly, adding other measures as needed. They landed on the Grass Valley Basic Phonics Skills Test (GVBPST) which was piloted and expanded over the second year of the partnership and included supplementary instructional materials.

Discussions around how to leverage data pointing to improving outcomes and change district practices and culture also took place.

In year three, “the team continued to spread and deepen their work on literacy instruction … increasing the rigor, and getting ready to expand into another element of comprehensive literacy instruction,” the brief states.

Findings

Third graders saw one of the largest gains over time. In 2020–21, 26.7 percent of third graders met or exceeded CAASPP standards compared to 57.3 percent in 2023–24.

Some key takeaways from PACE include:

  • How California Education Partners’ approach to continuous improvement, which was different from team members’ prior experiences, built internal accountability.
  • Through the P3CC process, the LEA expanded upon its pre-existing tight-knit community to make a culture conducive to ongoing improvement and incorporate an improvement process that wasn’t applied to other problems of practice.
  • Although the district had success with P3CC, it must continue to build its system for instructional improvement to sustain the gains and seek other improvements.

Read the brief to learn more.