Bob Mange, Director
When the highly anticipated California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) goes into effect, many administrators may be scratching their heads as they grapple with the new system. Bob Mange will know just how to help them. Mange served as an educational consultant to IBM as it developed CALPADS, advising the company on what kinds of reports and data would be most helpful to school districts. “CALPADS will enable us to track every student’s progress, wherever they go,” explains Mange, “that, in turn, will help us improve our teaching.” Improvement of teaching has always been the prime motivator for Mange.
Mange was selected to advise on CALPADS because of his stellar track record as a teacher, principal, and administrator in the Folsom Cordova Unified School District.
As a high school science teacher, he was named California State Teacher of the Year. As a middle school principal, he was tapped to serve on the Little Hoover Commission Committee on Quality Education. Already possessing a keen appreciation of assessment, Mange forged teacher collaboration groups to figure out how to use state tests to improve the learning process.
Mange became an administrator the same year that No Child Left Behind was enacted; that law, he asserts, made educators more accountable for students’ learning. In charge of comprehensive training for more than 900 certificated instructional staff, Mange visited every school in the district, reviewing scores with teachers, helping them identify their strengths and weaknesses and hone their pedagogic strategies. Within months, the compliance rate went up to 90 percent.
Mange believes that assessment is a valuable tool for learning. “Tests should serve as a benchmark throughout the year so we can improve our teaching every day.”
In 20 years it is estimated there will be 16.7 million students in the California public school system. The tools that Bob Mange helped develop today will enable schools to continue to grow and effectively teach students.
