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County education office outlines supports for district improvement and differentiated assistance
Summary
Associate Superintendent Ellen Barger told the Santa Barbara County Board of Education the county office provides coaching, technical review and tiered (universal, targeted, intensive) differentiated assistance to help districts implement LCAP and address persistent student-group gaps; she highlighted that historical dashboard volatility inflated counts of qualifying LEAs.
Associate Superintendent Ellen Barger presented an overview of how the Santa Barbara County Office of Education supports local education agencies in implementing the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) and related accountability requirements. She told the board the COE plays a dual role: coaching districts through professional learning and consultation while performing a technical review to ensure plans meet Education Code criteria.
Barger said differentiated assistance is intended to address underlying causes of low student outcomes rather than serving as a punitive label. "We often say it's about getting better at getting better," she told trustees, describing three support levels — universal, targeted and more intensive assistance tied to the state dashboard. She said roughly 752 districts and county offices have qualified for some level of assistance since 2017–18, which she described as roughly 70–75 percent of LEAs when accounting for year-to-year changes in district counts.
Barger listed examples of universal supports the COE provides: customized data preparation, a curriculum council and an inclusion network, implementation-science training and assistance with state initiatives such as new graduation requirements and reading screeners. She said targeted assistance is a two‑year, tailored process and noted the State Board of Education is revising differentiated‑assistance criteria to reduce what staff describe as over‑identification on the dashboard.
Trustees pressed staff on whether the high number of qualifying LEAs represented systemic problems or statistical artifacts. Barger pointed to pandemic‑era chronic absenteeism, small sample volatility in small districts and dashboard indicators that flag student groups across multiple priorities as drivers of the large counts. The superintendent and trustees agreed the COE should continue to emphasize systems‑level supports and clarify the public narrative about what differentiated assistance means.
