James Baxter, Director
“Schools are desperate to get the word out about their students’ achievements,” says James Baxter, “but often do not know the best way to present the material.”
After a lifelong career in education, Baxter does know the best ways, and he is committed to sharing them with others. As a teacher coach specialist, he won the Los Angeles Educational Partnership Award for improving the academic success of students through exemplary teaching practices.
Baxter’s 30 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District included stints as a classroom teacher, assistant principal, and mentor teacher. As the district's urban impact advisor for formative evaluation, he provided special guidance in working with English Learners. After completing his PhD at UCLA,
he returned to the district as a data and research specialist and developed innovative ways to present complex data.
Baxter gives administrators and faculty the tools they need to make decisions about what gets taught in the classroom and how to take their students to the next level. “He has an interesting, probing way of looking at data,” explains a former director of instructional services at the Los Angeles Unified School District.
National and international educational associations have sought out Baxter for his expertise in interpreting test results and measuring student outcomes. A popular presenter at California Educational Research Association conferences, he has also given papers at educational symposiums in Paris, Toronto, Brussels, and Edinburgh.
He is never far from the day-to-day concerns of the classroom, ensuring that teachers and principals understand the value of formative evaluation. Baxter asserts that even students benefit when they get assessment data in a clear, understandable way. In one L.A. school where Baxter shared data with students, they asked for extra assignments in areas where they were falling behind. Their math scores jumped 42 points in one year.
