College- and Career-Ready State Standards Resource Review

All five states in the Southeast Comprehensive Center (SECC) region have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as a vehicle for preparing college- and career-ready students. To assist these states with their implementation of the CCSS, program associates from the SECC do an exhaustive review of the CCSS resources in order to provide the best CCSS resources to the states in the SECC region. These resources are updated twice annually to provide SECC states with guidance in implementing the CCSS.

Latest Work Update

The partial list of suggested resources was reviewed for inclusion/exclusion by SECC staff. RMC and SECC staff met and made final inclusion decisions for the first list of resources. RCC staff continued the research and evaluation of additional prospective resources for inclusion in the winter edition. Distribution expanded to include SEA staff the are participants in the SECC Assessment and Accountability Network. 
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Common Core State Standards for Mathematics Instructional Support Videos

The Common Core State Standards Mathematics (CCSSM) videos are designed to support states, schools, and teachers in the implementation of the CCSS for mathematics. The videos were created in collaboration with the states in the Southeast Comprehensive Center region based on their needs for professional development support for the implementation of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics. Each video is an audiovisual resource that focuses on specific standards and includes examples and illustrations geared to enhancing understanding.

Latest Work Update

Video on standard 7.G.A.2 Part 1 was corrected and captions edited and approved. Transcripts for videos on standard 7.G.A.2 Part 1 and 7.G.A.2 Part 2 were created and forwarded for review and approval. 
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Cross-State Community of Practice (CoP)

SECC staff will initiate an interstate community of practice that focused on sharing knowledge and expertise between state education agencies. The CoP will provide a forum for SEA representatives and stakeholders to interact and collaborate with national experts and staff from other SEAs.

Latest Work Update

The monthly project update will be added as work progresses.
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Ensuring School Readiness Community of Practice

SECC will establish a regional community of practice (CoP) focused on ensuring school readiness and success of preschool-age children in the five states in its region. This CoP will provide a forum in which SEA representatives can interact and collaborate with national experts and staffs from other SEAs to learn about research-based and emerging promising practices in the area of school readiness, analyze their state's use of resources to address this topic, and develop strategies for strengthening connections between services provided through funding sources and K–12 standards and expectations in the state.

Latest Work Update

On October 3, SECC and CEELO held their monthly conference call tocontinue collaboration and discussion of early childhood efforts in SECC’s region and nationally. The SECC early childhood team continued to update the virtual community site with current research-based information and practices as well as early childhood news and events. The site serves as a vehicle for collaboration and knowledge building to strengthen early childhood systems across the region. The SECC early childhood team also disseminated the monthly ECCoP E-Newsletter to sustain collaborative efforts and deepen awareness of early childhood activities and efforts across the southeast region and nationally. In addition, the SECC team shared several E-Alerts with information about upcoming webinars that are important to states’ work with ESSA. The team also sought feedback from CoP members concerning how SECC can better meet their needs and to learn about topics of interest. Presently, 90% of the members have participated in the survey.
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Promoting Equitable Access at the State and Local Levels Regional Institute

Each year, the SECC provides a regional institute in an identified priority area for SEAs. The SECC will support the attendance of a team from each state for the institute. Additional follow up will take place after the institute to aid statewide implementation efforts.

Latest Work Update

Two SECC states, Georgia and Mississippi, were selected to participate in the Talent for Turnaround Leadership Academy’s first cohort, which will allow them to collaborate to design and implement innovative talent management strategies to attract, support, and retain excellent educators in the highest need, lowest performing schools. The states were notified that the first T4TLA national conference will be December 1–2, with the introductory T4TLA webinar for RCC/SEA/LEA teams set for November 1. The two states were asked to work closely with SECC to ensure that they named and confirmed district partners and named a complete team of staff to participate. Submission of completed tables to the Great Teachers and Leaders Center (GTL) at AIR was requested by October 14. In support of the cross-department collaboration encouraged by T4T, states were asked to identify a minimum of two SEA staff and two LEA staff from each participating district, with a focus on staff who are responsible for school improvement and educator effectiveness/equitable access. 
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SC Developing SEA Support for Low-Performing Schools

The Office of School Leadership has been asked to add an additional layer to its Transformational Leaders Academy to support school turnaround from a district level. This project seeks to partner with the Center on School Turnaround and the University of Virginia to work with identified districts in a capacity building framework and to take lessons learned and the same approach with nonparticipating districts.

Latest Work Update

For the month of October, SECC continued working with the Director of School Transformation, Dr. Latoya Dixon, and the RMC partner staff on reviewing the state's school improvement framework and the transformational coaches handbook. Outcomes of the work session highlighted the current status of the state's school improvement model and coaches handbook, noting that the current versions are working drafts and are planned to be finalized in the future. In the meantime, SECC will continue to partner with RMC for reviewing the draft documents: school improvement framework (due December 2016) and coaches handbook (due March 2017) for content and format. To better support the work with the transformational coaches, both parties agreed that the director will link the SECC liaison and the SCDE transformational coaches project leader for SECC to work directly with the person responsible for making the work materialize. The SCDE sought support from SECC to establish an evidenced-based database to post on the state's website.  The work session also focused on building the evidenced-based strategies catalog that the director envisioned. The director shared her initial ideas of which she had started to craft. SECC staff will collaborate with RMC staff to flesh out ideas for further development of the catalog for feedback before making the catalog available for the state's website.
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SC Strengthening SC Charter Schools and School Choice Innovation

SCDE seeks to strengthen sponsors and expand choice options. This project seeks to offer choice for parents while bolstering the creativity, flexibility, and innovative nature of charter schools. State-level support for district (LEA) and IHEs as authorizers will also be a focus for this project in addition to strengthening the capacity of charter school sponsors and expanding choice options.

Latest Work Update

SECC staff hosted several meetings at the SECC office in addition to providing meeting space for the charter school team. SECC staff are preparing to work with the charter school team on additional revisions to the application and planning and implementation rubric. Additional TA for IHE authorizers will also be a focus for upcoming support for this team.
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SCDE Internal Evaluation Support

SECC staff will continue to support SCDE staff with implementing a state-wide system of support.

Latest Work Update

The monthly update will be added as work progresses.
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South Carolina Educator Evaluation Systems

SCDE has developed and continues to administer, maintain, and make ongoing refinements to the ADEPT and PADEPP systems. These evaluation and support systems provide effective and consistent methods for evaluating and supporting all teachers and principals across the state’s school districts. This project will develop a system to measure student growth and incorporate that measure into the current evaluation systems.

Latest Work Update

As a follow up to an August 30 meeting with Karla Hawkins, deputy state superintendent for the Division of Federal, State, and Community Resources, SECC staff began working with Tria Grant and Rachel Burns, SCDE staff from the Office of Educator Effectiveness, on Strategy 1, Substrategy 2 of the equity plan. The request involved the development of a survey to be used with institutions of higher education to elicit their input regarding their practices for preparing teacher candidates and supporting new teachers for work in diverse contexts, particularly rural, high-poverty and high-minority contexts. After revisiting the SC Educator Preparation Program Focus Group Protocol (June 2016) for its relevance to Strategy 1, Substrategy 2, SCDE provided key ideas to be conveyed and information to be gleaned from the survey. SECC staff provided a first and second draft of the survey for review by SCDE staff. SECC is awaiting feedback from the SEA.
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Support For Implementing South Carolina State Standards

South Carolina has begun a revision process for math and ELA to transition from CCSS to South Carolina Standards for math and ELA. South Carolina is also introducing a new assessment to replace Smarter Balanced. Included with the new assessment work will be a focus on revising the statewide uniform grading policy. These changes will occur over the course of this academic year.

Latest Work Update

SECC participated with staff from the South Carolina Department of Education in the Center on Innovations and Learning’s conference centered around personalized learning. Participants, both researchers and practitioners, engaged in meaningful dialogue and activities in which they shared their relative discoveries and experiences. Ultimately, this convergence is hoped to be a start to something far greater, resulting in the notion of personalized learning experiences being offered to each and every child. 
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