EdPolicy Hub Launch Program 2023 : simplebooklet.com

EDPOLICY HUB LAUNCH EVENTChallenges and Opportunities for Education in Southern CaliforniaWELCOME Jon Fullerton Executive Director, USC EdPolicy HubPANEL DISCUSSION Moderator: Pedro A. Noguera Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, USC Rossier School of Education Panelists: Alysia Bell President, Unite LA Gabriela Maﬁ Superintendent, Garden Grove Uniﬁed School District Morgan Polikoﬀ Associate Professor, USC Rossier School of Education Francisco Rodriguez Chancellor, Los Angeles Community College District AUDIENCE Q & ACLOSING REMARKS Jon FullertonRECEPTION

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Letter from Jon Fullerton, Executive Director of the USC EdPolicy HubWelcome to the launch of the USC EdPolicy Hub! The “Hub,” as we call it, based at the USC Rossier School of Education, is a core part of Dean Pedro Noguera’s Educational Equity Initiative. The Hub is collaborating with Southern Californian schools, education systems, and community colleges to co-design and conduct relevant research that will help partners navigate challenges and improve outcomes and equity for students across the region. Hub research is based upon input from schools, families, education systems, community-based organizations, and civic leaders, with the intent of delivering practical, actionable solutions to these same stakeholders. While we hope the results of our work will be widely relevant outside of the region, the needs and questions of our Southern California partners are our focus.The Hub leverages USC Rossier’s unparalleled network of graduates across Southern California working as leaders in schools, districts, and higher education systems. In fact, 75% of sitting California Superintendents are graduates of the school. From our USC Rossier base, we bring in expertise from both inside the university (e.g., the USC Price School of Public Policy, the Center for Applied Research in Education) and outside, ensuring we match the appropriate knowledge and methods to problems at hand.The panel today includes voices from across the multiple systems impacting Southern Californian students’ long-term success. Dr. Gabriela Maﬁ, Superintendent of Garden Grove Uniﬁed School District, must respond day-to-day to longstanding challenges the last few years have

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exacerbated and take advantage of new opportunities that are emerging. Dr. Francisco Rodriguez, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD)—the largest in the nation—leads this critical source of regional opportunity. Alicia Bell is the Executive Director of UNITE LA, a boundary spanning organization that connects school systems, community colleges, the business community, and community non-proﬁts to focus on the success of our students in the workforce and as citizens. Dr. Morgan Polikoﬀ, Associate Professor of Education at USC Rossier, brings the lens of rigorous research and evaluation to the discussion of how we can improve outcomes at all levels, with students’ opportunities and successes as the ultimate goals. Dean Noguera is moderating the discussion, drawing from his extensive background and expertise as a scholar and as an active education leader nationwide and in the region. This breadth of perspectives and action across multiple institutions is critical to guiding the Hub’s work. We encourage you to stay connected with the Hub (https://rossier.usc.edu/usc-edpolicy-hub). In addition to hosting conversations such as today’s, we will regularly share ﬁndings from the results of our research collaborations and continuously seek evidence-driven research partners from throughout Southern California. Together we will harness the strengths of our broader community of practitioners, researchers, and community members to make sustained progress for our children.

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Dr. Jon Fullerton is a research professor and executive director of the USC Education Policy Hub. He has extensive experience working with education policy makers and executives in using data to guide system improvement and the eﬀective use of ﬁnancial resources. Before coming to USC, Fullerton was executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. While at CEPR, Fullerton founded the Strategic Data Project. SDP places and trains analytic data fellows across the PK12 and Higher Education sectors to use data and evidence to guide strategy and decision making to transform student outcomes. Thus far, SDP has placed or trained over 500 fellows across at over 240 partner agencies and non-proﬁts. Fullerton has also served as the Board of Education’s Director of Budget and Financial Policy for the Los Angeles Uniﬁed School District. In this capacity, he provided independent evaluations of District reforms and helped to ensure that the District’s budget was aligned with Board priorities. From 2002 to 2005 he was Vice-President of Strategy, Evaluation, Research, and Policy at the Urban Education Partnership in Los Angeles, where he worked with policy makers to ensure that they focused on high impact educational strategies. Prior to this, he worked at McKinsey & Company as a strategy consultant. Dr. Fullerton has a PhD in government and AB in religion and social studies, both from Harvard. Jon FullertonEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, USC EDUCATION POLICY HUB

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Alysia Bell has been with UNITE-LA for 12 years, serving as President since September 1, 2022. Bell joined the organization in 2011 to launch UNITE-LA’s national work in partnership with the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE), which now has staﬀ in both LA and DC, raised over $15 million to date, sub-granted over $700K to chambers of commerce across the country leading promising practices in higher education attainment, graduated nearly 200 business organization leaders from its Fellowship for Education Attainment, and engaged more than 600 chamber professionals in its Education and Talent Development Division.At the state level, Bell has staﬀed the Education and Workforce Development Committee of the Regional Association of Economic Leaders (R.E.A.L.) Coalition of California, which advanced collaborative advocacy along the full cradle through career spectrum. Bell now serves as the Co-Vice Chair of the California Stewardship Network’s Executive Committee, which is focused on a triple bottom line including economy, equity, and environment.Regionally, Bell enjoys working alongside the sixty plus member of UNITE-LA’s staﬀ and board to implement the organization’s new strategic plan centered on equitable economic mobility. Major areas of growth include the following: As the proud convener of the K-16 Regional Collaborative, UNITE-LA’s Systems Change team collaborates with dozens of partners countywide to co-create streamlined pathways for students from historically marginalized communities in healthcare, computing and engineering. Before joining UNITE-LA, Bell served as an executive for the Greater-Irving Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce, held positions with LAUSD’s Personnel Selection Branch and Southern California Edison’s Performance Assessment Services Division, and served as an Adjunct Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Pepperdine University. Bell graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California and earned her master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Cal State Long Beach.Alysia BellPRESIDENT, UNITE LA

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Dr. Gabriela Maﬁ is in her 11th year as Superintendent of Garden Grove Uniﬁed School District, a high-performing, diverse, urban California district serving 39,000 students. Dr. Maﬁ has served the district for 22 years as Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Director of 7-12 Instruction and Principal. She also spent over a decade as adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California, where she earned her doctorate in 2002, and worked as Executive Director of the EdD Program in 2005-2006. Prior to joining GGUSD, Dr. Maﬁ held positions as an assistant principal, district coordinator, and curriculum writer, as well as a teacher at various levels. Dr. Maﬁ is proud of “The Garden Grove Way”, the district’s strategic plan which she spearheaded in 2013-2014 through a collaborative process involving parents, staﬀ, and students. The Strategic Plan includes three primary goals: academic skills, personal skills, and lifelong success. The roadmap has paved the way for real results, including improved scores across all grade levels on the state’s SBAC test; high survey rankings from students about their school’s climate and culture, and a higher pass rate on Advanced Placement exams than the state, national and world average. “The Garden Grove Way” also refers to the warm and approachable manner in which district and school staﬀs interact with all stakeholders. Dr. Maﬁ takes pride in Garden Grove’s family feel and takes time to meet and talk to staﬀ, parents, and students. The ﬁfth of six children whose mother, Ada, immigrated from Mexico in her 20s, Gabriela grew up in a high-poverty area of South Los Angeles. As a Latina, ﬁrst-generation college student, Dr. Maﬁ is passionate about ensuring that all students are equipped with the academic and personal skills needed for lifelong success. She has worked tirelessly to ensure district coherence and improve student learning outcomes, resulting in a doubling of the district’s a-g rate, and equipping all students with scholarly habits and challenging and supportive instruction. She launched the district’s Latinos Unidos student club in 2012 to address inequitable outcomes and enhance student self-eﬃcacy. She and her husband, Eugene, are proud parents of three children, two adults and a 2nd grader who has Trisomy 18/Edwards Syndrome, resulting in profound disabilities. Calling on her skills as a parent and educator, Dr. Maﬁ personally mentors students from GGUSD’s highest-poverty communities, working with her mentees and their families regularly from sixth grade and into their university life. Based on her mentoring program, Dr. Maﬁ established the district’s award-winning College and Career Mentoring Program, in which hundreds of GGUSD alumni university students return to their elementary schools to provide extended-day lessons to sixth graders on how to be successful in secondary school.Gabriela MaﬁSUPERINTENDENT, GARDEN GROVE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

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Pedro A. Noguera is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. A sociologist, Noguera’s research focuses on the ways in which schools are inﬂuenced by social and economic conditions, as well as by demographic trends in local, regional and global contexts. He is the author, co-author and editor of 13 books. His most recent books are The Crisis of Connection: Roots, Consequences and Solutions with Niobe Way, Carol Gilligan and Alisha Ali (New York University Press, 2018) and Race, Equity and Education: Sixty Years From Brown with Jill Pierce and Roey Ahram (Springer, 2015).He has published over 250 research articles in academic journals, book chapters in edited volumes, research reports and editorials in major newspapers. He serves on the boards of numerous national and local organizations, including the Economic Policy Institute, the National Equity Project and The Nation. Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues on several national media outlets, and his editorials on educational issues have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TheWall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News and Los Angeles Times. Prior to being appointed Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, Noguera served as a Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining the faculty at UCLA he served as a tenured professor and holder of endowed chairs at New York University (2004–2015), Harvard University (2000–2003) and the University of California, Berkeley (1990–2000). Noguera was recently appointed to serve as a special advisor to the governor of New Mexico on education policy. He also advises the state departments of education in Washington, Oregon and Nevada. From 2009–2012 he served as a trustee for the State University of New York as an appointee of the governor. In 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Education and Phi Delta Kappa honor society, and in 2020 Noguera was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Noguera has received seven honorary doctorates from American universities, and he recently received awards from the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, from the National Association of Secondary School Principals and from the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at NYU for his research and advocacy eﬀorts aimed at ﬁghting poverty.Pedro A. NogueraEMERY STOOPS AND JOYCE KING STOOPS DEAN, USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

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Dr. Morgan Polikoﬀ is an Associate Professor of Education at USC Rossier. His areas of expertise include K-12 education policy; curriculum, standards, accountability, and assessment policy; survey research methods; and the impact of COVID-19 on American families’ educational experiences.Dr. Polikoﬀ uses quantitative and mixed methods to study the design, implementation, and eﬀects of curriculum, standards, assessment, and accountability policies. In 2021 he published his ﬁrst book, Beyond Standards: The Fragmentation of Education Governance and the Promise of Curriculum Reform (Harvard Education Press). Recent work has investigated the adoption and use of core and supplemental curriculum materials to align with state standards and the use of surveys to explore voters’ education policy preferences. Ongoing work focuses on the inﬂuence of curriculum materials on the implementation of standards in the classroom and the impact of COVID-19 on families’ educational experiences. He has been Co-Editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Associate Editor of the American Educational Research Journal and is on the editorial boards for Educational Researcher and AERA Open. He has published over 55 peer-reviewed journal articles and received (as PI or co-PI) more than $16 million in grants from federal and foundation sources. For his research achievements he received the AERA Early Career Award in 2017 and the AERA Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award in 2020. For his work with graduate students and postdocs he also received outstanding mentoring awards from USC Rossier and USC in 2018 and 2019, respectively. He chaired the faculty at USC Rossier from 2017 to 2019.Dr. Polikoﬀ received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education in 2010 with a focus on Education Policy and his Bachelors in Mathematics (minor in Secondary Education) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. He lives in Northeast LA with his husband, Joel, and their cattle dog, Indy.Morgan Polikoﬀ ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

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Dr. Francisco C. Rodriguez is the Chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), the largest community college district in the nation with nine, accredited colleges, over 200,000 student enrollments, and an annual budget of $5.8 billion serving nearly 900 square miles of Los Angeles County. Appointed in 2014, Dr. Rodriguez has raised the District’s proﬁle and built its national reputation as an outstanding urban community college district to study and work. Dr. Rodriguez has charted a course that includes well-prepared, diverse and innovative faculty, state-of-the-art facilities and instructional equipment, superbly trained and professional support staﬀ, and enhanced business and community engagement. During his tenure, Chancellor Rodriguez led the eﬀorts for a taxpayer- approved $3.3 billion local facilities bond in 2016 and the hiring of close to 800 full-time, tenure-track faculty. He was a principal architect for the statewide California Promise Program, which was the result of LACCD-sponsored legislation with Assemblymember Miguel Santiago that provides all ﬁrst-time, full-time Californian students with two years of tuition-free education at any of the state’s community colleges. A noted scholar, practitioner and educator-activist, Dr. Rodriguez has 30-plus years of experience as an educator, faculty member, and administrator within California public higher education. Dr. Rodriguez has dedicated his career to high-quality public education and championing equity and inclusion, diversity, and outreach to under-resourced communities. In particular, Dr. Rodriguez has focused his career on educational policies that expand access to higher education and ﬁnancial aid, advocacy for undocumented and low-income students and students with disabilities, and a keen focus on the leadership development of Latino and African American males. He frequently speaks on the importance of higher education, equity and leadership, ethnic studies, student access and success, governance and governing boards, workforce development, fundraising and philanthropy, and civic participation. From 2003 to 2014, Dr. Rodriguez served as the Cosumnes River College President in Sacramento, California, and as the Superintendent/President of the MiraCosta Community College District in San Diego County. His leadership at both institutions was marked by increased student enrollments, racial and gender diversiﬁcation of faculty, students and administration, increased support for student success and institutional equity, increased grants and endowments, and robust university, business and community engagement. Francisco Rodriguez CHANCELLOR, LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT

EdPolicy Hub Launch Program 2023

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