What's at stake?
The Fresno Unified Board of Education set baseline numbers and targets for literacy improvement for vulnerable students
Fresno Unified has established new literacy performance objectives for two of its interim guardrails, aiming to improve performance in vulnerable student populations.
The district’s goals and guardrails were adopted in January of this year and before the district officially chose Misty Her as superintendent. Her was serving as interim superintendent at the time.
The new performance improvement roadmap include targets for student achievement through 2030 and the guardrails serve to outline the district’s governance practices to improve staff performance and community involvement.
The two interim guardrails are part of the district’s “equitable access” policy, which states that the district’s goals cannot be met by denying or leaving out vulnerable student groups. These student groups include African American students, English learners, foster youth, homeless youth and students with disabilities.
Wednesday’s board meeting established the following baseline levels and targets:
- From Aug 2025 to June 2027, the percentage of K-6th grade students who meet or exceed the district average on iReady’s reading diagnostic will increase +4.4% from 17.5% to 21.9%.
- From Aug 2025 to June 2027, the percentage of 7th-11th grade students who meet or exceed the district average on the ELA secondary district assessment will increase +9.1% from 26.5% to 35.6%.
“This work was done in close collaboration with staff from the A4 office, English learner services, prevention and intervention and special education departments; their expertise was essential in setting meaningful and equitable goals,” said Superintendent Her.
The new targets are a combination of all of the identified student groups, however, each student group has its own 2025 baseline level and 2027 target for both interim guardrails.
So, while the first guardrail seeks to make a 4.4% increase, the baseline for African American students sits at 25.2% in 2025 and has a target of 31.2% in 2027, an increase of 6%. For comparison, students with disabilities have a baseline of 14.1% and a target of 18.1%, an increase of 4%.
“The baseline shows that 25.2% of African American students are meeting or exceeding the district’s average. Based on historical trends showing a 1.5% annual increase, we added an additional 1.5% per year to set a goal that is both ambitious and attainable,” explained Her, adding, “the same methodology was applied to the other four student groups with adjustments based on their unique data trends.”
Click here to access Wednesday’s school board agenda to view a complete table listing all baseline levels and 2027 targets for each student group.
For future goal monitoring sessions, board members Andy Levine and Susan Wittrup asked for the number of students within each group and for more specificity regarding students with disabilities, respectively.
“There are 13 eligibility areas for students with disabilities who have IEPs (individualized education programs); it’s hard to just clump them together as one group, because their learning can be very different and I want to make sure that we capture that,” said Wittrup.
Board approves interim guardrail regarding staff evaluations
At the same meeting, the district approved an interim guardrail which aims to increase the percentage of hires, promotions, laterals and extra pay contracts where evaluations are used in the decision-making process from 0% to 100%.
The interim guardrail is part of the district’s guardrail outlining effective staff, which states that the superintendent cannot hire, promote or laterally move staff who are designated as “does not meet standard” as defined by state teaching standards.
“This directly relates to improving student outcomes because we want the best teachers, the best staff to be in positions to achieve the best student outcomes,” said board clerk Veva Islas.
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