Education is the great equalizer it eliminates the gaps between opportunities and advancement its fully intended to place students hopefully on an equal path towards prosperity and growth. However, in America there is sadly still more work to do to make sure American kids can participate in competing on a global stage.
According to statistics from Research.com Overall, American students placed 24th in reading, 38th in mathematics, and 25th in science. The total average of the students' performance was 470. The OECD average was 490, putting the U.S. students' academic achievement way below many of the high academic achievement of their OECD peers.
Matt J. Navo serves as the Executive Director for the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE). Navo’s knowledge and expertise in systems improvement comes from over three decades of experience as a K-12 educator and leader. Navo served as the Superintendent of Sanger Unified School District. Before assuming the role of Superintendent, he was a special education teacher, secondary instructor, counselor, resource teacher, junior high learning director, high school assistant principal, elementary and alternative education principal, director of special education, and area administrator.
Prior to his current role, Navo served as the Director of Systems Transformation with the Special Education Policy and Practice Division (SEPPD) at WestEd. He has experience working with districts and schools to guide systems transformation by developing strategies, structures, policies, and practices, aligned with the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) at the state, county, and local levels, to close the achievement gap for all students.
Navo’s expertise lies in aligning systems, building capacity for continuous improvement, fostering collaborative cultures and collective efficacy among teams, and establishing coherent and efficient models for districts and schools. Navo has sat on various state-level committees, boards, and work groups. Navo has been a Governor appointee to the California State Board of Education (SBE) since 2019 and has served on the CCEE Governing Board, first as the Governor appointee from 2015 to 2017, and later as the Governing Board Chair from 2019 to 2021, appointed by the president of the State Board of Education. He also served on the California Practitioners Advisory Group (CPAG) and the Advisory Commission for Special Education, in which he served as committee chair for the California Special Education Task Force (Evidence-Based Practices).
Navo has been a keynote speaker and trainer for systems improvement across the state, and has presented at over 100 different conferences on special education and school reform. He is the author of Collective Efficacy in a PLC at Work (2021) and Demystifying MTSS, A school and District Framework for meeting students’ academic and social-emotional needs. Navo has contributed to various articles on school reform, systems improvement, Response to Intervention (RTI), Professional Learning Communities (PLC), and Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), including ONE SYSTEM: Reforming Education to Serve All Students, Report of California’s Statewide Task Force on Special Education (2015).
He joined me this week to tell me more.
For more information: https://ccee-ca.org/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices