2.6.2023 FRSC Instructional Subcommittee

ready uh the meeting of the instructional subcommittee on February 3rd is called to order pursuant to open meeting or any person may make an audio video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings are Transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible

uh roll call dip here so look to the flag please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right

so citizens input oh there okay there is none so first discussion uh 3.01 discussion and vote to reform refer to full committee Durfee program of studies Mr Damaris good evening everyone thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight to present to you the 2023-24 program of studies for BMC Durfee High School you'll see a number of changes throughout the document they're all highlighted on the executive

summary we organize the executive summary for you under four organizing principles the first being student achievement and accountability focus and what we mean when we say that is we're looking at to further structuralize intervention and fluency and literacy and numeracy based classes to help our struggling Learners in addition to aligning course curriculum with high quality instruction materials such as

what's provided by the college board or Carnegie and our math classes or Project Lead the Way and you'll see some significant changes in the Project Lead the Way program we talk about the second organizing principle we're looking at increased Advance coursework options so we're continuing the move to Rebrand honors courses as pre-ap and pulling in the College Board curriculum there so

that it's a true pipeline to AP classes you will see that we've included the words where appropriate because there are some subject areas that don't have a Continuum of courses that would um take away an option for students to take an honors class rather than if they're not ready for an AP class so that's noted throughout the document as well we're adding some AP offerings but we're

expanding our early college Pathways and we are expanding access to students for the bio medical science pathway within the pltw the third pillar we're looking at is to expand Career and Technical Ed programming we're looking to add criminal justice as a stepping stone to a First Responders pathway that we'll be talking about we are adding an infant and toddler care Under the Umbrella of early Ed

we are now going to increase with find we have our Co-op coordinator on board and we're going to increase our Co-op opportunities for um for our seniors that also when we look back at accountability Focus counts as as advanced coursework for students in CTE so that's another piece attached to accountability and then when we look at expanding our curriculum so that it reflects the

diverse student body that we have in in a student's opportunity to personalize their learning we're looking to add some courses that that are already kind of alluded to a couple of them within the AP program so as we look at expanding our offerings or retooling our offerings refining our offerings and in some cases deleting an offering it's always based on student subscription it's always

based on the mission of serving all students and I think that this document is is I'm proud of the document that the teams put together and a lot of hard work went into it to refine it a lot of it rolled overly a year for sure but all eyes were on it to make sure that we got all the details right if there are any edits or any things that we missed we

always appreciate the input and as we get into Department by Department I have my department leaders here that have the major changes proposed if there are any questions

so just uh there's a lot in the document granted you know it takes a lot to add to all these various things I'm always looking to just one of my complaints I think last year was about credit recovery and not having those options can you just touch on if that's how it's going with that now is it good bad is it should be an improvement so Credit Recovery um right now to date we look at uh

Durfee for this school year we have um 162 students have participated in Credit Recovery up through the first semester and 200 and they've participated in 225 separate courses we have another 90 students currently in credit recovery and presently when we look at this school year um will probably exceed 400 courses by the time we're done in terms of recovering the credit so uh with the focus of an of an ISL position

on credit recovery Staffing a lab having students be able to stream through there it's working and we're looking to build on it with additional supports because we notice that some students struggle special education students generally struggle with online curriculum without having that direct human support so we're looking at how can we redeploy some of our resources this year to be more structural about it

next year to support those students so what does that look like in between all those classes what a what would that look like in this program of studies well it would be spun off of a course that's in the program study so you know we had with a credit recovery courses are um focused on the the power of powerful standards within the course so each Dean and department head and director has

worked with guidance along the way to develop these courses and then they sit as an archive now as we as we propose new courses we're gonna have to design new credit recovery courses on the opposite side of that so they line up they wouldn't be something that would be listed in a program of studies but they are attached to you know Street for example so that's what I was asking so if I was

a parent whose child needs Credit Recovery I couldn't look into this program of studies and see what credit what courses offer credit recovery and in one mechanisms no so they what they could do is they would look at their students report cards or transcripts and see where they failed and then okay if they failed English three let's stay there for a second then they know that they've

got to recover credit for English three and then we have a course designed for that so it would be it would be a conversation between guidance student and family and the staff that are in the credit recovery lab it's I mean it's really mirroring summer school kids failed a couple of classes and they choose to go to summer school but it's going to be guidance that's going to program them into the courses that they

need so what in what does that look like so when you say mirror summer school can you just explain what summer school looks like then a little summer school we is it a course is it Ingenuity is it a combination thereof is it what well it's been a lot of iterations over the last few years with remote and hybrid and all these things we'll get back to face to face so last summer we ran face

to face summer school so it's it's five six weeks in a classroom daily with a teacher um and it's it's you're not going to get the same course I mean let's be honest right 180 days versus five weeks in the summer it's not the same thing but it's the core of what are the things that you really need to carry forward most precisely to be able to take that next

course and where are the details of it might not be in here but is it but from the handbook or something where it says what do you have to do in order to be eligible like How would how would you know whether you are eligible to take credit recovery requests is everybody eligible to take a course you have to be x amount of time behind like what those protocols policies whatever you want to call them

so we it would be listed anyway probably not okay uh we're here to talk about the program of studies tonight but if you're talking I can get you that information in the past we've sent a minimum grade okay if the student's grade is lower than this like a 50 then they need to retake the course rather than go to summer school so the teachers have some input there guidance has some input

they've got the vice principals have some input as well because they may have information and I understand we're here for this program of studies but if you recall back several years ago the questions I was asking were in the program of studies at prior meetings we've had this discussion so when that got pulled out of the program of studies at that time I had asked well you need to be able to

prepare kids for what does the credit recovery look like and I was assured that we're going to have all these various options at the time we got a nice spreadsheet that said all these great things that just like RPA was doing we were going to do a different thing you know all the stuff you can go back and look at the records my questions now because I still am not

seeing it here but I'm also not seeing it on the other end of what is a credit recovery find it'll look like what we do you know so maybe that's something that needs to be created but uh as well uh to your question Mr agyar on page 11 of the program of studies we do have a generalized some description of some of the credit recovery options that directly similar to what we had in the previous school

year it's kind of instilled in a family-friendly language some different programs or credit recovery options that students have access to either during the school year or through summer you don't get into the specifics of the actual forces but we have the general kind of description of credit recovery and I'm assuming you think that's sufficient if you were a parent would you think

that's sufficient and your child is two years behind grade level and whatever click yeah I mean I think one of one of the things that parents want to know in students as well is how it personally impacts them so towards the end of the school year before um kids a personalized letter they need to take a credit recovery course in summer school those are more course that they need to take tells them the registration

details on the top school and that's sent out by the house offices towards the end of the year but you know towards your point we can certainly add a specific courses under this under this chart to get more information I always think more information you're right if it's good for families to let me understand the best Pathway to get back on on track or not yeah I just maybe it's just not the

right piece in the program studies but I've said this over for a while I think we need to look at it what's the option we sign bills for Edge annuity an online program what is the eligibility for when you can do that when you can't do that if parents are calling me asking me those questions I'll have to refer to the superintendent she'll refer down whereas if we had something where you

know this is what we do it I think it would be beneficial because that would be my you know my personal opinion and the other one that I talked about if I could just add sure I would say those should be referred to the guidance counselor because it's a very personal decision right depending on what the student is lacking you have to look at their history and design credit recovery

for that student so if a parent has a question if their child is failing and they want to know how to support their child so that they recover some of their credit I would say the first person they should reach out to is their guidance counselor so that a meeting can be set up and we can create and design a program for that child because it's not a one-size-fit all people are failing in

many different ways and there are different options based on how how much they have to recover and I would assume that we wouldn't need that If the parents are calling asking that and the kids are behind that just begs the question of why hasn't someone reached out many times they have reached out right but granted I understand that I work in a school so it's not always like oh it's easy to say now Mr

America's never called me but my only point is is that we I think as a whole body need to take a good look at the credit kids that are behind because it's a draw on you I said this all the time at some point we have to be honest and say it's not for everybody we've got to do different times we've got to do different things so it's not I'm not

trying to be critical of what you're doing but I think as a body we can support that so we can you know make better options one of the things that I think is successful is doing it sort of during the year the kids failed out then what are they going to do they're sitting in a class they're failing anyway if we said in summer school as you it's going to be a

reduced situation where you're not only going to pick up why wouldn't we like sort of put that on top of the school so that the kid's not getting to summer school with zero credits as a freshman or whatever and then they're behind so I think looking at things like that would would help and I think if you had the resources which we finally have a lot of resources we could we could do something

but I do think that those are some options we're not waiting for every child that needs to recover credit they're not waiting until summer school there are options during the school year there's the three to five they are options for kids to recover product before they get to June so the communication piece I think that you're speaking to yes you're absolutely right no parents should hear at the end of the

term that their child is failing there should be some communication along the way but there are opportunities for kids to recover credit throughout the school year so that we would have a huge number in summer school if that if that was the case waited for every single child to make up their coursework in June I my last question is on the special education piece of this and I've raised

this in the past as well that we've taken some courses out I still struggle with that and it's probably a special ed issue that we can bring up at one of the meetings but how are we making sure that all of our special education programming is is sort of out in the open for everyone to see what is available I think the last time it was that it was a cost it's a costly

only but um on the other end we see different type of special education programming that's not all created equal and I find some of this is looking every everything's equal in it I don't know how that well you know the the charge is that all students have access to grade level curriculum and the standards guide with the course entails so I'll put an example in front of you if the the double-digit growth and math

with our special ed sophomores last year the department had really challenged his teachers to make sure that that grade level curriculum the Carnegie curriculum was in front of the students and that you provide the support that's needed and they can perform and and so I'm expecting to see even more growth in all areas this year because we're doing more of that but those kids were probably in a what kind of settings

somewhere in special in some were in sub-separate some were in inclusion we have lowered from last year to this year and we'll continue it to next year we're lower the number of sub-separate sections because the trend should be the opposite of what it is what we saw over time was that our subsection sub separate sections at Durfee were growing rather than shrinking and we reversed that Trend and we're starting to see

success we're seeing get the kids are the dropout rate is improving with special education students the graduation rate is improving and the outcomes are improving yeah I think that's just something to keep our eyes the other piece of it is like I said there's a lot in here but at some point we have to trust you and superintendent to have reviewed what is in here and your directors and all that stuff so at

the end of the day really the only thing we do is sort of well we're accountable to make sure that she's holding you guys accountable to get the results so I'll say again the same we need to see results and I think he would agree with that so good luck and I make a motion to approve and look forward to the full company second yes yes I do we voted but I have a question sure

so so that it could be for you miss Sylvia um the adding the criminal justice yes okay I'm just wondering uh if would there ever be an opportunity to have a collaboration with BCC in their criminal justice um degree program well I'm hoping to get an articulation agreement when we get to the program it takes about three years to get a new program lifted this is a very infancy in getting a new program lifted so

um it would be my intent to have an articulation agreement built with um BCC for that program right we have articulation agreements and others right so we just take that same organic same process and my other question is what happens to the honors classes that you're switching over from you know honors to algebra and you're sending them off to AP classes correct what happens to those honors classes they're

just they're just going so when we looked at okay for math right right you'll get an entry point of pre-ap but then math splits right you go to Geometry you go to it trigonometry calculus the goal is to get as many kids into college level classes as possible so they can experience before they get we saw close to 100 student increase in our AP participation this year around 385 kids we're looking to increase that

our kids can succeed in AP ril so to challenge them and and also to show them success in the AP setting the pre-ap calculus instead of pre-calculus instead of honors pre-calculus would get the kid ready because the curriculum is in alignment with with the College Board standards right so it's a pathway it's not as clean in all content areas you know you could do pre-ap chem and then

go to AP chem pre-ap physics go to AP Physics for history it's different you know so there will be honors offerings in some areas but other areas at that point when you get to the upper level pre-ap it's is it a change in just the name no because these are courses that we're pulling curriculum from the College Board okay all right better understanding thank you I think that's it because I have something Mr Costa but

unfortunately I yield okay so we move on thank you very much thank you we now move on to 3.03 discussion curriculum pilot yeah I was wondering what she was um

thank you

my heart is in the space no please so uh the next piece on the agenda is a curriculum pilot we are currently piloting two different um curriculum resources in our middle schools for English language arts amplify and springboard and Stephanie Kennedy our director for English language arts in the district is going to speak to the process I think what was shared with you was well it is not I

think it is a document that was previously shared it was a proposed timeline for the pilot and we're just here today to revisit that proposed timeline and Stephanie going to highlight some of the changes in that timeline since it was first shift the second just that's out of order just Oh I thought because I think that the data piece is on the agenda Oh I thought the doctor skip because it is well discussion updates

I'm sorry okay we can take it out of order go ahead that's fine so do you have a newly revised with blueprint okay so um the document that was sent out on Friday has been revised just with some of the points that have happened um and changes that have happened since um this was handed to you I think maybe early um so I just wanted to go over it real quick we've pretty much stuck to the

timeline except for a couple of um a couple of points so I know first thing is that the um the pilot programs were um identified through vetting of the Ed reports and the spring um Ed reports and cure rate we looked for highly rated in all areas and decided that amplify in springboard were the two that were most most highly rated and so that's why those two were selected we followed a

similar process to that of Wonders where we started by doing all the legwork around identifying them and then teachers got involved in the rest of the process um we started with identifying District specific look for as we started with the Cure the rubrics and pulled their Criterion out um we were lucky enough to have the Cure rate rubric um to dig into and then after that which is something new we identified or

actually invited all teachers to become part of the curriculum adoption team and so an email was sent out to all Educators asking them if they were interested in doing that before that was sent out there was some criteria that had been developed and it was arranged from a brand new teacher to someone who had a lot of experience um across schools and across subgroups and so and then a survey went out to all

staff to refine that criteria yet more so um it went from the leads digging in to the identification and work of the curriculum adoption team and then out to everyone to refine that criteria for what we're actually looking for for our students in our in our district um and one of the big things that came out of that was meeting the needs of subgroups and so we know that that's a Judicial in Fall River

um and that we have very large subgroups and so it made sense for us to really have a heavy focus in that area um the summer of 2022 where we were supposed to come in front of the instructional subcommittee did not tap in instead a written this written documentation was sent out and that was the extent of it there was some um crossed wires and so that did not happen

um and I I take that that's me um and then from there I Linked In the survey I know you don't have an active document but I can certainly send out what the survey looked like um and then we file the timeline as far as pilot teachers sharing with families at open houses and they continue to send home the family engagement newsletters that come along with the two pilot programs

so the pilot is running across our 2K to eights and all three Middle Schools traditional middle schools and so um the K to eights are piloting amplify and they're piloting in all three grade levels um and the reason for that is because they really have one teacher each and so we wanted to make sure that we had enough teachers actually using the amplify materials and we chose to do all

three grade levels because it was going to be just it was going to be more of um a better experience for teachers and students if the lead could focus heavily on learning that new curriculum um and then in the other in the traditional middle schools one school's doing sixth grade one's doing seventh and one's doing eighth so all the teachers in those particular grade levels um so we will be talking about the data and

so under fall of 2022 to Spring of 2023 data collection and program comparison when we met to talk about this earlier in the year um during a Leeds meeting we were a little nervous about the data to say that like having used a pilot program for a couple of months was going to have a huge impact on the data and I still stay true to that statement but what we are seeing is that pilot schools

regardless of which pilot are trending upward from year to year and so if that that's now that could be due to a variety of different reasons it just happens that that is something that's sticking out in the data um we have started instructional walks of the leads across buildings and so that you that entails going in observing the pilot program in action and then digging into the actual unit itself to see if

the task in the text are um what we expect them to be and then we have conversation around the implementation but it's not evaluatory it's more just for us gathering information around how we can better support the teachers that are piloting can I interrupt yeah okay so just a question on that process um so I might forget about that but um is there feedback like what's the process for the feedback with the

teachers after these walks yeah so um today the we did a walk at class and the T the um lead sent out just grows and glows general not teacher-specific our brand program the program itself okay documentation just okay yeah yeah so no teachers were identified and it was clear um made clear to the principal and the lead that that was not the purpose of the walk and um they were asked to

communicate that too that was my next question is it made aware when you are coming to oh yes they knew we were coming reserve and is this do you see stress levels kind of fluctuate on I mean I'm in the classrooms often so I didn't notice a difference but I mean that could be I I do think that there's a little bit of I mean it's normal people don't get anxious when they see District people

yeah it's natural that even though we tell them that it's not valuative for them they really are getting their formal feedback from there evaluators at the school but um I think it's natural for people to get a little nervous and to wonder why we're there right and that that's never held against them if their anxiety is high or it's just it's positive feedback that's what we're working off is

positive feedback and how to make things you know we had stepped away from that right right and now we're back like we're with me schools a lot more so of course you know it's getting used to that again and rebuilding that trust so I'll just add on to what Marie is saying so I've been in I'm in plc's with these teachers I'm in their classrooms all the time

um and so but again I had like a little team with me so I guess that could have added stress as well um but we did communicate in advance that what the purpose was okay and so yeah um and then to add on to that um we're digging deep into the materials during our leads meetings and really like ripping them apart um you know from the beginning of a unit

to the end of a unit and then on February 10th our district is focused on internalizing curriculum so we thought this was a great opportunity to get everyone kind of messing around with the materials and so we've selected lessons um that even if you're not a pilot teacher you have the opportunity to dig in and then take with you a lesson or two that you could um play with in your

classroom and see how it how it feels when you try it on um so as far as the next bullet there is some stress around that piece of it about having model classrooms we don't think that we have model classrooms at this point it's a brand new brand new curriculum everyone's learning it we didn't think it would necessarily be fair to the teacher to bring people in um and we also didn't think that it

would give the visiting teachers um a true picture of what the program could look like when it's fully implemented um I mentioned the curriculum adoption committee so that's a group of 16 Educators General Ed special ed MLL and a rep from Durfee just so we can talk about like that roll over into the upper grades um and they have looked at reports and curate they've engaged in lesson

analysis and they are also going to be doing video analysis we have their second meeting coming up next week um and then in the winter we applied for gleam and we're waiting for a decision we have our fingers crossed that we're going to get some money to help us pay for this you know rather a large purchase and I everything else kind of Remains the Same and still to come any questions

Mr idea what when you say a large number what are you looking at it as the number yeah so um I actually pulled that information today and I don't want to miss quote so I can send you I can send it to you no it's significantly more than that no more than that I mean it's safe to say um I can actually get it while the next I'm not concerned about it until us

makes sense but as we said at the last meeting oh I think it was the math one yeah we we're in a position where we don't have to hope for our grant in order to implement sometimes yeah but I think it would help us to know cost four hundred thousand dollars so then we know we've got 400 000 this is gonna yeah you don't want it to be a surprise later oh

nobody told us we didn't get the grant like thankfully we're in a good position just put it as an estimated like an estimate of what we're looking at for whether it's from a grant or from Opera I agree with you we're in a position this is our opportunity to build that infrastructure and this is part of that infrastructure yeah I don't think we were looking at it like a

um if we get it we'll do it because we know that the committee has been really supportive of a new curricular decisions um as long as they're solid and based on you know a multitude of good solid reasons at the bottom it says April 2022 that should mean 2023 you're going to bring it oh yes sorry still on task like oh yeah so yeah we're hoping that so on the March half day

um the intent is to have the Publishers there for all Middle School teachers to kind of hear their Spiel and then we'll have a panel with um curriculum adoption committee people as well as pilot teachers that can kind of field some questions and anything that comes up from the teachers I'll just speak for myself on that I know that we're trying to make sure the committee some committees get used as far as I'm

concerned like this process is in play so at that time I wouldn't think that needs to come before this committee because my own personal opinion that whatever the committee decides should go immediately so oh yes myself on that brushing another one of these meetings to go over a piece like I said to the different folks you have we have to trust that yeah putting these things in place and then the

results have to be following that's so um with that ideal thank you thanks any other questions just wasn't for you right okay so we have to vote on this no it's just a discussion so I will get those quotes to you thank you very much we will go to discussion 3.02 uh discussion and update local assessment data it's early so I'm here with um all of the directors today and uh we are going to just be

talking about our district-wide data mid-year data within the context of the instructional priority so we'll spend just a little bit of time talking about the district-wide priority I know we're going to revisit that a little bit later when we talk about the district Improvement plan and the school Improvement plan and then we'll just do a data review from each of our departments okay so the first thing that

I just wanted to in a revisit is yeah it's in both places is that um when we drafted our district Improvement plan we used um MCAS data in local assessment data so performance data for students um we also based it on some observations that we had carried out last year and then survey data that we had collected last spring so um I color coded them so that in blue you can see the kinds of trends that

came out of the MCAS data and local assessment data we know about the performance gaps between us and other districts across the state we certainly see significant performance gaps when we think about our high needs subgroup and then we we've noticed a trend and we've talked about this before about widening performance gaps as we look three to five they grow six to eight and then by

grade 10 we are you know our performance is way off so those are all the things highlighted in blue in green we talk about the observations a big one for us was that while we had high quality instructional materials that we had purchased in both Elementary and secondary math Elementary Ela and then we had science Pilots going on at the middle and high school level we were seeing a lack of consistency in

implementation over the course of last year and then finally we used some we were looking at some survey data and this is data that we've talked about before as well perceived lack of confidence that students can Master grade level work so we were hearing from teachers they weren't sure that that students were able to master the work confidence in students own abilities this is an element of you know what what

students are saying about themselves where we saw that students were saying like yeah I can actually do the work that my teacher puts in front of me and then the final piece a perceived lack of teacher resources so hearing from teachers that they weren't sure whether you know or not they were getting the support and research sources they needed to do the work in the classrooms so this page this particular slide and

I'm not sure if it was in your packet or not um it is there okay so we we started taking a look in the last couple of years at a research study called the opportunity myth 2018 tntp we've looked to this body of research quite a bit and really saw some alignment between what we were seeing in our district and what was happening um kind of across the country so where one of the findings from the

opportunity myth is that students are doing what they're asked to do in school but still not ready to succeed after school that's what um we saw that alignment there in terms of potentially the work that we were putting in front of students wasn't grade level work we weren't holding students to high expectations students have confidence in their own abilities I think it was like 80 something percent

of kids said I can do the work that my teacher puts in front of me but then we weren't seeing that same success when students were sitting for you know State tests and things like that and then that perceived lack of teacher resources which I mentioned which is where we saw a teacher saying I'm not sure that I have the resources to do this work uh the research study said um students are spending most of their

time in school with access to four key resources and they identify those there we saw that as running parallel to what we were seeing where even even where we had the high quality resources they weren't being implemented in the way that they were supposed to be so that was what was prohibiting students from having access to that grade level work the third piece is around um students of color low-income families

English Learners the gaps that they found in their research study really paralleled the gaps that we were seeing for our own students and so where they're identifying um you know this if you give greater access to these four resources we're going to see Student Success we're banking on that when we when we built our district Improvement plan we we committed ourselves to that so this is you know kind of an enlarged

piece here these if we have access to the four key resources in there um date in their you know daily practice then they're going to be successful all of that lands us in our instructional priority for the district where we're committed to grade level work and Beyond and then using appropriate instructional scaffolding because we're not approaching this in a way that if we assign the work they're

just going to do it we recognize that that students are going to need support so last year I mentioned we looked at our high quality instruction materials implementation we were seeing that even where it was available we'd go into classrooms less than 50 of the time we were actually seeing those high quality instruction materials being used as of December um in the walks that we were seeing

where the high quality instructional materials are available we're seeing it in more than 75 percent of classrooms so really big uptake uptick in the in the usage and we attribute that to the kinds of supports that are in place for teachers in their weekly planning with their their coaches and their Department chairs and the support that we're providing for schools it's a big box it's a really big box foreign

survey data and I think that this is one piece that wasn't in the slide deck that got shared originally when we did our survey of teachers in the spring we had 410 teachers participate this is where we got that data that said only you know 61 of student teachers felt that their students could master the skills that they were teaching and so with the assumption that that they were teaching

to grade level standards it's at that time only 61 percent of teachers feeling that yes my students can do this we've seen a little uptake in the day uptick in the data in terms of our fall survey when we revisit the question about the tools and strategies and support that teachers need again we see a little bit of an uptick in teachers beliefs that you know that they're getting what they need and in that last piece

um it speaks a little bit more it wasn't part of the original data set that I shared from the spring but at that time 71 percent said teachers said that they were they felt like they were getting connected with the kinds of resources that they needed I really wanted to revisit this data because I definitely think that when we've talked about it before I think the um the interpretation

potentially maybe in the way that I delivered it or just in the way that it was heard is that you know our teachers just have really low expectations for students and that that sits kind of alone out there that the teachers just don't think kids can do the work we're really approaching this with a very different mindset in thinking that teachers we are you know we hypothesize that teachers feel that way just because

they're not sure that they have all the tools necessary to support the students we all know given you know kind of where we were even you know five ten years ago where we've been in the last few years that our students have gaps without a doubt and so it would be unreasonable to think coming out of these last couple of years that we'd have a really high percentage of people saying oh sure my

kids can do this you know no big deal um of course teachers are going to feel like our kids are under the gun here and that we have to make some really big moves and really accelerate their learning so I just wanted to revisit this so that it's Crystal Clear that we are approaching this in a way that says if we're not sure our kids can do it it's really because of where we've been

in the cap last couple of years and maybe people not feeling confident that we have all of the resources that they have all of the tools that they need so we're expecting that as we see those lap you know the last two questions um when we see those last two percentages going up that we're expecting that first one to increase as well so I'm a little fairly new so how long have we been collecting that data

okay so the conditions for learning survey has been in place for a really long time I mean a really long time um we probably don't have access to too many years of data just because I think that when we switched over from test whiz into a new system we did preserve some of the data coming out of test Wiz and I'm not sure but we at least have the last few years just as

a comparison to see what it looked like say six years ago maybe I think that's important I'll take a look back at that I think in the past I think we were giving I think the survey would maybe administered once a year the intent was always twice twice but um but I think we were doing it once we'll do it again yeah all right digging into it in the same way that we are digging into it

because the needs are different in fact the the situation is different okay thank you so um as a district when we when we think about how we are marking our progress over the course of this year certainly we're using student performance data to do that we're also um you know walking in schools setting short-term goals setting short-term action plans so what this describes is back in October we did a walk of eight

priority schools coming out of that we set um we entered into one of these Cycles a plan due um study act we entered our first one basically coming out of that first walk we We examined practice and said um we thought one of the barriers to full implementation of our high quality instructional materials and making all of that work accessible to students was that potentially teachers didn't have a deep understanding

of the expectations of the standards of of the resources and we started a small pilot and Cheryl Patterson was working specifically with seventh grade math classrooms across the middle schools on our December walk we were able to observe some of the teaching some of the implementation of those lessons that were internalized through that process and we saw a change in practice and because of that we entered into our

second cycle plan to study act cycle number two with a full blown implementation across the district so now in all content areas where we have high quality instruction materials we are entering into this in this protocol this internalization protocol so that on that February 10th PD day in aligned to what Stephanie had shared all of our teachers pretty much every teacher in the district is going to be

participating in an internalization process around a particular lesson or set of lessons and we will then have an opportunity to go into classrooms and take a look at what that looks like in practice and it's something that will kick off a process on it's not like a one day thing it's something that will kick off a process that we will support in schools like from now until the work is done

um in March we're going back to the same schools that we visited um in December and uh we'll we'll be looking for a change in practice we call those triangle schools like the bounce ago tell that they feed us Watson the neighborhood you know call that a triangle because they feed into each other so in level four they're underperformance schools so we want to study them um very specifically indeed we also

create another triangle with because it's an anomaly right we have high performing elementary schools we have Sylvia is a higher performing Elementary School we have tansy and they're feeding into Morton which is struggling under the 10th percentile right so if we create another triangle to try to understand how or why that's happening you have the higher performing schools feeding into a school that's

struggling at the middle school level so um that so we're creating triangles of theater schools to try to understand the process um anything on that so far thank you any questions so the next piece of this step is to take a look at individual departmental data uh from kindergarten up through the high school so um I am going to start with a Dibble share and I focused um on the early literacy years where we don't have

um a net data um and I can certainly give you the other data but I felt like it was really important to share this um as these are the kids that were trying to build a strong foundation so that when they get into the upper grades they're ready to read and comprehend while they're reading and comprehending grade level text um okay so a couple of things I just want to mention before we go into dibble's

eight data Dibbles has been in the city now gosh for over 20 years um and it is approved by Desi as one of the dyslexia screeners and so it's highly rated um screening tool that we um that we've been using for a very very long time so there are six subtests that are assessed using this screener and they're all early literacy skills ranging from automatically naming letter letters

um to taking apart and putting together sounds to reading grade level text with accuracy and comprehension excuse me um and so one other thing that I want to mention because I think it feeds into why this data looks like it does is that we are have partnered with Uconn and UConn is UConn in the hill are doing a study and we're part of that study six of our schools are part of that study

and what happens is they're using Equity routines which are enhanced core reading instruction routines and those um the best thing about the echo routines is that it gives students ample practice and the skills that are being taught in the core um specifically around phonics and phonemic awareness and so that's just a backdrop to what I'm I'm going to kind of talk about um as we go through

so we're on the first slide You See kindergarten data within year and across years and so to the right of the slide you see on 2020 to 2023 and then to the left is last year's data so in kindergarten we assess four different subtests letter naming fluency so a child's ability to automatically name the letters in a one minute time period for an insect fluency which is a child's ability to um take apart or

um a spoken word nonsense word fluency which we receive two scores for which is correct letter sound and can they blend those sounds together and then word reading fluency which is a child's um automatic recognition of sight words okay so I chose to highlight these um the nonsense word fluency and the word reading fluency because they are the hardest skills that are being taught in kindergarten and

assessed on dimples does that make sense um and so I just want to point out a couple of things that we're seeing now keep in mind that this is whole District data and when you look at individual schools obviously there's some varying scores but what we're what is clear in the data when you look at individual schools is that the schools that are part of the study are the highest are having the greatest growth which is

really kind of a cool thing and we started noticing that almost right away and we've made some tweaks even within those schools initially we saw schools that were allowing a lot of practice but were not necessarily teaching explicitly and so we went back to the to those schools and we modeled for teachers how to teach explicit skills and then allow for that practice and since then during

the November PD we offer it out um supports to schools of a non-study schools so they can start to take on these practices that are showing um really great things in Fall River um and so the correct letter sounds we've increased 10 percent into the at or above grade level in kindergarten so that's huge we went from 22 percent of our kids meeting the the um the goal it's a 32 at the mid-year Point

um and then being able to put those sounds together now and read a word a nonsense word um increased by 16 so students are blending and that is really really important in kindergarten that they're blending these CBC words um again increased by 16 and then for word reading fluency we have an increase of 13 where 42 percent of our students are meeting The Benchmark right now um on that particular subtest and so

ultimately when you look at these graphs you want to see more blue and green because that's meeting grade level or going above grade level and less um red and yellow I want to point something out that looks a little messy there are sometimes we have gating rules and so there are some times where the data the yellow bar on the data in the beginning of the year appears to be um significantly more than

uh and then it turns into red in the mid-year it's because when a child discontinues on specific subtests they don't take the rest of the test so they automatically um they they automatically get like no score for that and the um in the beginning of the year for nonsense word fluency words read correctly um students The Benchmark is that they have zero and so with that there a zero

looks like yellow okay that's a question yeah we're reading numbers will you read in the middle here on I'm in the middle yes numbers where you were reading and I wasn't matching them up yeah so I I am right in the middle because at this point in the year we've only done the M the middle of year yep so yeah when you were saying like a 10 to 20 jump which

where was that in the so if you can I go up to the screen yeah good sorry so in the beginning last year when we're looking at CLS which is this one correct 11 seconds I was looking here so we were at 22 percent of kids at four or more right yeah I was in the video only talking about that that's our time oh sorry I thought you were going beginning to

Mid over there yeah you're going from last year to this is some totally different kids like totally yeah but what I think it does is it speaks to the teacher practice when that's the case and so the kids are kind of coming in as any kindergartener would come and they either have been to preschool or not um and so their data looks pretty similar in the beginning of the school

year but then we see that the data is starting to shift to come mid-year because of teacher practice okay I get what you're saying I just my feeling is a totally different this kid absolutely so the children coming in last year could have been totally different than sure so I was just trying to match it up thank you and I think the other thing maybe to just to point out is that the um

with the beginning of year in mid-year they have different um yes yeah so they have a moving Benchmark and so in the beginning of the year kids might have to um read 10 10 words Blended correctly but by mid-year it bounces up to 14.

um so there is a moving Benchmark so it's not like a kid um doesn't have to grow in order to maintain proficiency can I ask you one more question who does the data um so who is eligible to do the data in the school anyone who's been officially trained and so we did our best this year and this was the first year where we did whole District trainings um and so in some schools they have an

assessment team which um might be an interventionist a coach but most schools the teachers collect their data and it's always been like that in Fall River but they've all like even if they've been trained 15 years ago they have a refresher every single year um yeah and then there there's opportunity for um and I know that schools take advantage of just spot checking kids wouldn't that be

beneficial I agree with what you've seen but I think it would be beneficial for a teacher to do the assessment I agree to see what the assessment certain schools that I know about only have the interventions to it and the teacher like so that's why I'm asking now yeah I agree with you doing something from having that test that's really what they're looking for thank you yeah I think it's just I don't know as an

elementary person like in my whole career teaching um I wanted to hear my kids and if someone offered to do my testing it was a no like I wanted to hear my kids thank you um and I wanted to see what mistakes are they making so that I can fix it now that keep in mind that our interventionists that do go in and assess are keeping our Running Records so teachers can then use that data to

plan forward it's just nice to hear your kids not that they don't hear them because they do all right so then we move into grade one in grade one um they assess all the same subtests except there's one additional which is oral reading fluency which is a grade level passage put in front of students and they're asked to read it fluently um and accurately okay and again we're seeing the same thing

um I don't know if you want me to go into every single thing okay so um yeah they did really well I think when you think about the words red fluently just a note to myself is that um we only serve four percent increase there which is alarming to me because everything else is looking so solid um and so be on the next slide it's also grade one to me the word reading fluency

in the ORF although there were increases I feel like it's an area that we need to dig a little bit more deeply in to make sure that kids are reading every single day um and so yeah that's what we're working on currently in grade one um and then in grade two we drop letter naming fluency and we add maze which is a comprehension measure and again we had really great growth there as well from

middle of year 22 to middle of year 23 with a nine percent increase in both um both of the nonsense word fluency pieces and then an ORF the um we saw growth and everything except for maize which kind of stayed the same maze because it's a comprehension measure it makes sense that we're kind of living around the 37 right now because our kids are learning to read and so there's also this language

comprehension piece of reading so there's the word lifting the print and then the language comp and so we have to dig in a little bit more about what that language comprehension looks like okay then we go into wonders um and this is um 21 to 20 uh sorry 21 22 to 22 23 so pre-post data and you can see it's significant um and that really does speak to the teachers being highly focused this is a

language comprehension assessment as well as some foundational skills um we have done we have worked so hard this year on putting the science of reading in every classroom and I feel like that's what you're seeing there is that oral language I'm strengthening in kindergarten as well as some really great practices around reading on the next page you see um grade one unit two we haven't done unit three yet

and so that's why that data is not in there um again you see some growth um some growth in the partially meeting and the um partially meeting low and partially meeting High we haven't pushed kids up to the meeting and exceeding um the reading comprehension section of this was focused on narrative elements and this to me speaks to teachers really starting to understand the materials

that they're putting in front of kids and how um how to use them um with Fidelity so that we start to see the the growth that we need to see in kiddos all right and then um we move into Aina yeah yeah of course I think but when you stop that great too his wonders not I thought we did wonders we did oh we do we do um we have not administered wonders

um in grade well I shouldn't say that that's that's not true yes we have not collected District data using the curriculum-based measure in grades two to um to five because we were using anet as we move into um alternatives for next year and grade two we'll definitely use wonders um schools are using it for school-based data but that's not collected at the district level it's K-5 it is that's

awesome yes oh sorry I thought you were asking me where the data was it's almost like a continuation than a stop and it went to this so I get it thank you um okay and so in grades two to five you can see here that there is um that we're starting to see some traction due to the fact that partially due at least to the fact that we have a solid

curriculum in front of our teachers and our students our processes have remained the same assessment previews reviewing data supporting action planning um and we found two areas that we're going where we've been focused on which is standard one um in standard three so the ability to provide and analyze evidence in a text and then standard three narrative elements um from tracking the characters thoughts

feelings to actions and into like how is the character responding to um events in the story so am I going on too much about this you just love it sorry too she drives it's my thing um and so I think like it's just kind of cool to see that we're starting to see what we hope to say and then we get into six to eight and then there's them yeah yeah

um what I would say and I said earlier is that our classrooms at a piling hqim although they're not necessarily knocking it out of the park we are starting to see them kind of like rise up a little bit um we are flat in in some cases have decreased um and so I think it just speaks to the importance of having um supports for teachers in the what they're teaching and allow them to have

the craft around the how they're teaching it so it goes back to the points that Tracy made earlier around the opportunity myth making sure that we have grade level appropriate assignments in front of kids with strong instruction and um the curricula that we're looking at offers that to our teachers which it's important they're not curriculum writers right um and so uh some things that came out of

this data is the importance of focusing on theme academic and domain specific language across the grade levels Durfee is the next slide and so in ninth grade we're seeing the most success um and in meeting with Tanya the Durfee Department Dean um some of the things that came out of that conversation were that the interventions that they have in place are um supporting students and so they

have a full-time interventionist he is servicing 36 9th grade students 60 minutes a day five days a week um focused on TWR which is the writing Revolution strategies um and really digging into text with those kids another piece to that is that um Jess and her team I'm sorry Tanya and her team redid the unit um for ninth grade to mimic that of the pre-ap and so again like we're saying we

want to make sure we have strong instructional materials in front of our teachers and so the pre-ap materials they're at least trying to incorporate the pillars that make it the dirty way that you hear the team talk about so frequently and so it's about pushing the rigor for kids

I'm willing to do that but I think you're going to have to do it again what I would make a recommendation is that we just summarize it a little but as you're talking I'm saying myself what you're saying in words to add to this for the full body makes the most sense to me so like between now and the full meeting what you're explaining what this slide looks like this that whatever if we put

that in a narrative in the note section just in a narrative so that when we get to the full committee okay sometimes we just get stuff and it's like oh what is it we're trying to ask a good question what you're explaining is the detail and I'm assuming everybody else can do very similar stuff I know very quick I know remember stuff you guys can dig into yourself and everybody will have this too and they

just say that I didn't know we were going forward and then you say you write some stuff okay then we can save it for the meeting I have a question on Miss Kennedy saying this rather than have us be stuck at the time and that's just Mr agya you just shut me off sooner because I'm done I'll just close with this but I do think that this is the importance of

supplements is when we say we're gonna have a subcommittee we're going to get this data now three months from now when we have another meeting you're going to I assume take what you've done now and put the third column in it's almost like we can get in a system of you can know that we're going to check it people know that you're checking it right those people know so that's all I'm not suggesting that

to have quick meetings because you know I'm not a fan of those either but I just think it as you're talking I'm saying we just had this written down yeah but it's not to shut you off believe me that's okay well the Lexia data was next you can peruse at your uh just coming before us next month we can you can refer first to share or we can share on the Friday um

what I've suggested about the uh I would say maybe for March well like in the meantime yeah to send it because I think everybody would be liking at their own Leisure to read what you're saying right and then Target someone yeah I can totally do that yeah okay thanks sorry guys I love listening to it I'm so good okay okay on to 3.04 discussion School Improvement plans and District Improvement plans we did

what I I was the only thing I would say is if we get let them at least give a higher level individually Math Science and Associates I thought it was the Stephanie show

so this is the advantage testing similar to Dibbles it's been around for many many years um the data is not as detailed as you will find in Dibbles I'm hoping to work with um someone in assessment to pull reports similar to what you saw Stephanie present this is just a beginning of year to mid-year comparison for grades one and grades two they tested in September and in January about

test again in May kindergarten is just beginning to test um just finishing testing right before February vacation teachers have been um we consistently trained throughout the summer and throughout the year so teachers had opportunities to train in August and in January and then hopefully we'll be offering that again in the summer time as Miss aguiar had mentioned mainly interventionists will test

students but we also have department heads and coaches who do that when when available and as you can see we've had a jump from the beginning of the year to the mid-year for both grades one and grades two okay so when you say it those growth is where they should be not necessarily material that they haven't learned yet no where they should be measured and they test for adding and subtracting

counting backwards forwards structure so it's not like you know when you do the pre and post test but we'll do a pre-test we haven't taught you then we'll do a post testing thank you thank you okay Chase so as we go through the internet data this is a little bit different than Ela where we're not testing the same standards so from test to test the standards will change and from grade

level this is the elementary this is a year-to-year comparison when we go through all of the slides whether it's two to five six to eight or six um nine to twelve you'll see that there's been some growth but it isn't substantial right now grades three and four show the most growth for this level um some of the work that we have done that I do want to highlight in terms of the

elementary school is with our L population we have developed a small committee that is developing modified assessments in previous years depending on language levels our L population did not test what would happen is during the during testing time they would work with their classroom Educators to look at the structural problems and look at content vocabulary just to get yusu a testing

environment but right now grades two to five they're engaging in the assessment just like every other student starting with A1

so for secondary again this is um a year-to-year comparison and you can see that we don't oh I think we skipped one well you looked at me so I thought oh I'm sorry you know what I didn't even notice that it was the same one that's my fault so in grades six through eight we have the opportunity to look at not only here to get a comparison from test to test they're the only

um group right now that have completed A2 Elementary will finish up we'll begin testing in the next week or so and the high school will finish they have testing before we go on vacation so they show growth from test to test and I really think that this is contributing to some of the things that Dr Curley was talking about consistent practices we're spending a lot more time when we do data Dives

looking at the types of problems that students are engaging in and making sure that when we're in the classroom that we're incorporating these into their daily problems most of the high quality instructional materials have these types of problems but if we see that we need to insert more we'll pull examples from empath so they get that practice okay and 9-12 as I said they're finishing up

testing due to retests at the high school um were a few weeks behind in this is the first year that the high school has intervention walks so they're using Mafia Flex which is part of the Carnegie Matthew program and just like Stephanie had mentioned the groups are small um they don't usually accept C10 they're running it three days a week with a select group of teachers so the next set of slides you'll see are

all our digital programs that support the core content this is St there this will show you the cumulative progress from year to year the bottom schools from TMZ to um the last school which is green they're in their first year of implementation as you can see there's been significant progress from year one to year two and all all of the schools that are doing this for their second or third year will reach their

progress so it's estimated that you should reach about 80 percent by the end of the year if you're a first year school the expectation is reaching 60 percent so even though laterno and green are at 56 based on the meanings that we have with their coaches from here we um we feel secure that they'll hit the 60 Mark each student is a is proposed to complete about 60 puzzles per week and

that calendar that I shared with you this just demonstrates how we're checking in weekly so we set goals with them and their coaches meet with them three times a year to provide support yeah additional data looking at the this is I think the whole class the whole school yes okay I wouldn't be concerned about what children do not reach you know like so we could have me doing 100 I'll be doing

30 percent made me do 100 it's kind of not if we could get numbers just to see we can who's below 40 50 you know I think that's some it's important it's when the coaches when the SC math coaches are meet with the schools that's what they discuss in those meetings they're broken down by class they're broken down by student they develop plans for how they're going to move those numbers forward we had a meeting today

um it also carries over into PLC where they'll meet with the teacher and develop steps for them based on individual students okay and this represents um quiz growth uh this is a great report so when we meet with coaches um Kristen and Brenna from SC math they'll actually identify by grade level and by standard and by puzzle they break it down that far to show you for each grade level how many puzzles

within a standard the growth for them K and one they do not have pre and post tests so we don't have data for that but anything that is above 0.25 25 hundredths shows that they're a medium effect size which means you will see that there'll be growth from pre to post-test and in all grade levels were above that

so from Mrs Matthew is an extension of Carnegie Learning I think the difference with this one is ST Math enhances the curriculum and so does iready but with Mafia it is an extension of the curriculum and I think that is just a switch for classroom teachers it's a switch for me right this is if we're not completing what we should in Mafia it's like really removing part of the curriculum textbook

some highlights for our year total usage we've increased by three hours and 15 minutes for the year our active students has also increased the year total syllabus completion has increased from 12.9 percent to 17.2 percent for this year that's a 33 increase overall three schools are in the approaching range for the syllabus completion where last year all schools were off track again we have math coach we have coaches

who come in from Carnegie and then being monthly with each school they spend either the day or half a day they go into classrooms they observe they plan with teachers they give feedback to teachers and just like the coaches within the district that's a sacred relationship what they're doing in those meanings Administration isn't allowed in there what will happen is twice a year we'll have the leadership walk where

administrators from Carnegie will come in we'll walk the school we'll give feedback it really is Carnegie's way of progress monitoring what the coaches are doing and making sure that it has an impact on instruction is your country um

to science thank you so for science our high quality curriculum materials are at the secondary level our Middle School is the lead in terms of farthest along in the work um they're in year two of our three-year pilot with the state they are just completing or in process of completing round four of a six round PD cycle we are um the work that we're in the teachers go to all teachers go to at least four PDS

and then there are lead teachers that would go to six in the cycle we have mentoring support from Boston College oei that come in and like Carnegie they walk with us twice a year in the fall and in the spring into our classrooms and they're looking for the lesson internalization and that's the support that they're providing in classrooms with teachers as needed and then they also with me attend plc's

and they attend my secondary lead meetings Monthly our high school program just completed training for the 7th of seven lessons units in their courses for biology chemistry and physics and that was a two-year field test they provided much feedback to open Zaya that has been Incorporated and the first round of units that that have been revised based on their feedback will be released for

National use in a few weeks so that's kind of the status of of the training and the interactions outside um we within science don't have a variety of these assessment platforms available nationally for us to be able to get so we had as you know invested in illuminate for us to be able to take the summative assessments from within openside most units in opencide have a midpoint summative to see where kids are

at at the midpoint of the unit and then an endpoint transfer task and we worked last year to Pilot some of those within illuminate taking them putting them into illuminate trying to just understand what is it like now taking this performance task that was on paper and trying to do it digitally what are the challenges for students what are the challenges for teachers in grading and

we've ironed out a lot of The Kinks with that that we're now putting in place for this school year and so in this school year we have um the assessments getting in there with the expectation that all schools are now using them digitally once they're in so we're building with the as the units progress um and I'm going to give you some of that data that we have so far for what's in there our performance assessments

reflect the good thing we're going to see some core data but we also have a glimmer of hope that our performance assessments we are able to track bystander and the way open syad works is standards it's kind of cyclical a student might get get introduced to a standard in sixth grade and it's reintroduced maybe in the seventh grade unit or an eighth grade unit or later within the year so we're also Tracking

not just overall performance on the summative assessments but how is a student progressing in response to the assess the standards because as as you know they're assessed in eighth grade for all three years so it's it's important for us to track that so the First Data Page is not that promising I think it's characteristic of teachers learning a brand new approach to science we're moving away from having students

that know science facts to having students that are skillful with science practices and that's a whole different way for students to learn it's a whole different way for our teachers to teach and it's different than most of our Educators even experienced as students or were taught to teach as teachers so that's where that PD piece comes in for each unit for each teacher and I think

we're seeing that they're not that good yet in terms of Mastery because of that big shift that we're underway we're really moving to performance-based science and that's that's a whole different thing so we're seeing not mastered across the units that were currently assessing on pretty high rates anywhere from 60 to 95 but when we pull that out and start to look as I said at the single standard across that

grouping of units that we can track right now from one unit to the next is the sixth grade physical science standard that's noted on this page with the bars we are in the first unit of of 18 units of study students mastered at 11 and a half percent for that standard that that unit builds into the second unit for sixth grade which also incorporates that standard and what we saw from the final

assessment for the light and matter unit to the midpoint assessment for sound is that we've now moved Mastery up to 45 and that's reflective of what's happening in the classroom students are seeing and experiencing things in the sound unit and they're actually verbalizing their connections to the first unit so we are seeing this when teachers are skillfully and these are units that teachers now are teaching for

the second time this year some of these other units that are listed here were brand new for teachers this year it takes two or three times through for the teachers to have even their part down and it's been the same for students what we are seeing for students too is the routines and open-sided repeat and they're structure and unit from the same way so our students are moving up in

grade level owning the routines they're moving up from middle to high school owning the routines and we've also seen evidence of data in the high school Baseline test at the beginning of the year where teachers were scratching their heads saying how could our students score on this this particular item or that particular item we didn't teach it yet and when we looked at what those items are they go back to thermal

energy and they go back to the market sound so not only are we seeing small glimpses here but we're seeing that students are filming it overall performance still looks pretty poor but when we look at the individual standards that kids have really honed in on we're seeing them that's that's what I had for today um it's a it's a program that we're building right because we're building with our world next time yes

any questions thank you very much on to social studies I won't skip you last but not least so um so we have two types of Assessments um for social studies and this is Middle School social studies we have summatives and formatives and we are in the process this year of revising the benchmarks and also in some cases creating them for new from um just new ones so basically um the information there on that page at

the end of every term we assess the students we have standardized how the assessments look from grade to grade from term to term they're all 15 multiple choice questions they're based on four or five sources and the sources students have to either read they have either math skills it might be an image of some ancient artifact and from that then they will answer questions and write an open response question

um the benchmarks are aligned to the new content standards they've been developed and revised this past year by volunteer teachers and myself so this is the new um illuminate um all the students are taking their tests now on illuminate and it's really nice it's it's easy you can like your segregate data you can take a look at data from school to school this is the summative data for all of the middle

schools 2K through Wade and three middle schools so for grade six for the first two benchmarks this year um the students that met um exceeded or partially met um were both basically the same for both Benchmark one and Benchmark two I mean if you add the green and the yellow in both cases it comes out to 58 percent so uh that that worked out well for how much time between each

um about 45 days eight weeks yeah thank you now if you look at the grade seven so this the second Benchmark um you can see there is a lot of red a lot of children did not do well on it um boy we gotta go back and look at us there was a lot of reading on that Benchmark and a lot of primary source reading and I think they might have

found it too difficult and gave off um and then for grade eight um grade eight that's why seventh is different but the codes are different the first one has meetings exceeding the other one yeah I don't know why that is I have to find out about that that middle oh yeah it looks totally different does anybody know yeah okay what is it it's the performance you have to go ahead and manually change

changes because there's the default in the system yeah and that will change this data significantly so the basic basically that would be in the yellow category normally I mean either way yeah yeah and then for grade eight um grade A in the first Benchmark 40 of students um and then for the last Benchmark just taken um right around Martin Luther King Day 53 scored um efficient or advanced

so the formative assessments we changed this year um we changed them to a line to the practice standards in the Frameworks and the practice standards are basically the same as the ELA literacy standards for social studies they they assess students ability to comprehend what they're reading know the main idea um understand things like point of view um bias in Reading what is the conclusion of what they're reading so

this this new formative is just a reading piece it is tied into their curriculum the subject matter they're studying at that time but they don't need prior knowledge it's basically on demand you know non-fictional text and based on that they they answer questions so that is a work in progress I'm hoping that by doing this they will support the works of the ELA teachers who are trying

to teach these skills students these critical thinking skills so first formatives they have not done great if you take a look at grade six only ten percent scored advance to profession for grade seven it was a little bit better and for grade eight it was much better we've been trying to select pieces of reading that students would be interested in and this week they're taking the second formative

that's where we are on social studies any questions just a request if we could get the data by school sure when that data comes out thank you new business is there any new business we have one more yeah in my piles oh there it is I can't no problem is I can't see this it's time I'm just gonna put it out there I I can't see it I'm going by memory

the agenda the agenda I can't see it I bet if we didn't have war dogs listen I I'm struggling I apologize

we have a long way to go but as you can see we have systems in place we are much more focused on data we are looking at the work it's not only just sitting in the office looking at the work it's disaggregating the data going back to what's happening classrooms supporting our adults going back making the adjustments so where we're not where we need to be we never will be where we

need to be but we are far from where we were and we're going to continue to grow so it's just it's encouraging to see us put good systems in place where we can really support what's in the heart of the work which is the classroom our teachers I'm going to give them credit because it is not easy we adopted curriculum a lot Ela math that's a lot of Science and um and they are

doing well good that's good to hear so I'm just going to guess what's next before we wrap this up kid I just want to be crystal clear about what comes next in terms of this data sharing presentation and how we're sharing with full committee what is that okay expectation oh we're going to share all this with the full commitment share with the full committee with notes we have to make all those

changes on the slide send it to everybody right you don't have to go as in-depth but just bring your you're looking right at me we're not putting it on the agenda we're going to send it to them oh and pager summaries for each one with the highlights perfect yep all right so now three and I can't even see it three points District Improvement plans and District Improvement plan School Improvement

plans and District Improvement plans who's got that okay so I do Dr Curley what is shared with you all is the district instructional priority with a link to the district plan and then by school an excerpt from each of the school plans that shows alignment between school plans in the district plan in terms of the prioritization and or any kind of strategies and actions that are being taken at the school level

what's in the table isn't comprehensive it's far from the whole plan but each School plan is linked here and that's something that we'll share with the committee um like each plan will be shared in its entirety okay so I was like going today so so I can talk I know I talked a little bit about the district Improvement plan in terms of how the priority is driving the work across the department I think that um

just a little bit of review the district participated in a prioritization process that was sponsored by the department of Ed and it was facilitated by the new teacher project tntp and so we did that last spring we developed based on all of our data that I discussed we developed a district instructional priority which was brought to our principal group for feedback and discussion and then that

drove our plans moving forward and also became the basis for the school Improvement plans we did not require there were we when we communicated to the schools that they would use the same format that the district was using so some schools had already began working on their school Improvement plans using the template that we had used for the last couple of years or they were schools that had been

working off a Statewide template based on their turnaround and so some schools elected to use the same format that we did at the district level and other schools said we'd really like to come you know keep using the format that we've been using for this year but we'll show how they're aligned and so when you do take a look at the plans what you'll see is that they are in different

formats moving forward we are going to bring all schools into the fold so that everybody has has a plan that looks similar questions if we get this link we're going to see the whole plan yes in those plans is data in there as far as goals and yeah and those align with the district as well so it's not going to be no but some of it is school specific so when we did our district Improvement

plan um when you take a look at that one it's so it's it's really it's an instructional priority in the plan that goes along with that part of that planning required us to do a a kind of this strategy alignment where we say if the district does this and if School leaders do this if the department chairs are doing this if people with expertise in special populations do this and teachers do this and parents do this

then we're going to land in a place where students are able to do this so that vertical alignment strategy is what moved our plan forward and then we asked schools to look at that if you are living what we say School leaders should be doing what will that look like if you're living in your schools that if teachers are doing this and and what does that look like what will the support be in place and things

like that so we at so our measures are there things that say like we're going to go into schools and we're going to measure this we're going to survey teachers and students and parents and we're going to be looking for this we then ask schools to add their own measures what else will you be doing to support your teachers how else will you be measuring progress and that's the kind of thing that you'll see in the

ones that are aligned with the district plan if schools opted to use our old format then it's going to be centered around the four turnaround practices so they'll have turnaround practice one that's around leadership and different structures teaming structures and things like that you'll see alignment because they're going to talk about how they're how their teams are going to support

this kind of work in standard two around instruction for all students you're going to see how that aligns with this but it's not it may not be completely explicit that's why I pulled out some language from the plans and put it in bold so you could see where that alignment is speaking for myself I think it should have been and I don't know all the details in history aligned this is the

plan this is what the document is just me speaking for myself but if we look at it as what's the role of the school committee is to hold the superintendent accountable to make adequate progress we now it's your charge and her charge to make sure that the schools are being held to that same standard what typically happens is we at some point miss it in fall river that nobody gets

held accountable for whatever happens so when I keep asking that it's like the only thing that we can do is hold the superintendent account so she has to hold her people accountable but the information in here should reflect the fact that if all those things are done as you said then she's going to have a glowing report and everything's going to be hunky-dark if those things don't happen something has to happen

you understand what I'm saying I'm not it's just kind of that's just the role of what everybody does but I find that in the past and I haven't looked at these yet because we haven't gotten is that what each school's goal was was too low not clear whatever else so then we could never like it was like trying to figure it out it should be clear if the school does this

Oka attendance that's one that I've been on with Mrs bonds if she says the attendance rate is going to be 90 and she's got schools that their goals out to make it 75 she set herself up because she can't make the 90 if this so educationally that's what I'm going to be looking for when we get these so I mean I I would say um it's very hard to I I we do I don't

have a problem with holding people accountable every plan is going to be unique in that it represents the school and the population and the work that needs to be done so one school may be further ahead than the other school but that doesn't mean that we lower the standard just like we wouldn't want people to do that in the classroom that this year the format we allowed that to happen because we

have schools and turn around that at the time that was a template that was being used by Desi and they already had started that plan so what we said was as we went through our comprehensive plan and going through that whole process of creating a really a district Improvement plan that was thoughtful and intentional right we really had to be reflective look at our data own it and really put a plan in place that that

spoke to what is each person own and how we're going to get there because every single person needs to own a piece of that right and as we did ours then we said moving forward next year everybody will follow the same format that doesn't mean that just because somebody's plan might look different the format might look different than the district format it doesn't have the same pieces the components

we will all be on the same page in September as far as the format itself but the expectation is the same um I mean I I get it you know your job is to hold me Council I I understand that my job is to hold they I don't I don't think that it's letting them use the same template this year that they were already started on was a lack of accountability I think that it

was we're already part way into it this is something that we engaged in that has been a long process so let's continue instead of blowing it all up and saying now I want everybody to use this let's continue but let's make sure all these components are in place but knowing that next year everybody's going to be using the same format you know I I point well to I you know yeah and I think it's just

like my feeling is on the whatever that number is whatever that would be of the measure of success it should be the same no matter what the plan is the more confusion that we have about what it looks like that's where it gets a little dicey with what are we going to do because oh I said this but it didn't say that so the other piece of that is the one thing

that drives me crazy is we go through all these plans when the schools are under performing or in so we create all these things and systems and this that and the other thing and then if they get out of it then we forget about some other thing we shouldn't forget about it so there's actually a point that we made the other way around that if the district with the School's underperforming required that maybe we

should have went with we did use that we did it district-wide and then now it changed we that's that's exactly what we did we had it wasn't required for all the other schools the template right last year we decided hey if all these turn around the if this is the format and this is that specific we're going to do the same thing and we did it district-wide now the the template has changed again

um but we thought okay that was based on who yes yes which makes no sense yeah so we participated in a process that they sponsored so I mean we're actually entering into it again this year in March they're holding a two-day prioritization Institute where we go through the same process we have pre-work to do in terms of examining data and then we enter the process again I think we anticipate that it's not like

we're knocking it out of the park and so we're going to just change our Focus but we're going to go through that process and be thoughtful about it the upside to doing it a little bit earlier this year we had an opportunity to either enter into that process in March or may we chose March so that we could establish a priority for next year earlier in the spring that we could then take to

schools in schools could start thinking through their prioritization process prior to the end of school and that they could actually use it for planning over the summer so you know she'll return second all in favor all right