Huntington Place Elementary

A-F Report Card “Talking Points”

For the first time in several years, the Alabama State Department of Education will release an “A-F Report Card” for every school and every school system. The determination of how to fairly and accurately report data that is important for our families, communities, and state has been one of the most highly debated processes in recent history. Educating children is highly complicated and involves so much more than the use of an annual test to indicate success or failure. Still, annual tests are important checkpoints for progress and serve as one source of information for students, parents, and the community-at-large. Research across the country clearly shows that other critical factors in a child’s life, such as personal determination, support from home, and community life all play a major role in student success.

The ACT Aspire was introduced in Alabama schools beginning in the spring of 2014 as a more rigorous assessment in the areas of mathematics, reading, and science. It is given in grades 3-8 and for the first time in 2016, grade 10. The test measures how well students are progressing toward meeting college and career-ready benchmarks as they all will eventually take the ACT Plus Writing college entrance exam in grade 11. Whether or not a student intends to go to college, the rigor and academic progress measured is important for whichever path a student chooses after high school.

The “A-F Report Card” for this year will not report letter grades. It will indicate a proficiency level in the areas as listed below.

[Schools with Grades 3-8 Only]

Learning Gains: This measure is important in that it shows the progress that individual students are making over the course of time. Using baseline data of 2014, this measure looks at the developing trend showing whether or not students are improving in math and reading over the three years the ACT Aspire has been administered. High schools will not have this measure as 10th graders took the ACT Aspire for the first time in 2016 and the data is not available to determine learning gains. That measure for high schools will be reported starting with the 2017 report.

Student Achievement: This measure is a reflection of how well students performed on the test for the spring 2016 administration in the areas of reading and mathematics.

Local Indicators: This is a measure of how well a school or school system performed in meeting a locally-selected area of need (example: improvement in discipline; character education program; attendance goals; etc.) based on beginning of the year baseline data compared to reports at year-end.

[High Schools]

High schools will have the “student achievement” and “local indicators” measure along with a measure for “graduation rate”.

Graduation Rate: This measure will reflect a school’s percentage of high school students who graduated within 4 or 5 years from the time they entered ninth grade.

What We Are Doing to Address Areas in Need of Improvement

Our instructional focus at Huntington Place is to help students achieve their full potential, and this revolves around several key areas. The initiatives and strategies we have in place are listed below:

·  All non-tenured teachers at Huntington Place will participate in the Mentor Assistance Program in which the instructional coach mentors, co-plans, and co-teaches with the new teachers.

·  The teachers meet periodically with the administrators and instructional coach to discuss common formative assessment data and implications for instructional practice. Formative assessments are quick checks that are given on a weekly or even daily basis that provide feedback to teachers and students.

·  In 2014 the teachers at Huntington Place began meeting weekly to plan formative assessments for math. As a result math scores increased by 10%.

·  Research shows that coaching is one of the most effective strategies to improve instruction. Our system has employed twenty-four instructional coaches and reading specialists to work with our elementary, middle, and high school classrooms.

·  As a result of an identified need to increase the rigor for our reading instruction, the Wonders reading program has been provided to all elementary schools at the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year. Visits and consultation with other school systems that showed greater proficiency in reading helped us determine that this program would be a great benefit to our system. HPES began using the Wonders program during the 2015-2016 school year, and as a result had a 10% increase on the ACT Aspire Reading.

·  Professional learning communities, where teachers who teach in the same content area communicate and work collaboratively to plan for instruction, develop formative assessments, and analyze assessment results are being set up throughout our system. Teachers meet in grade level pods every other Thursday to collaborate and plan for instruction.

·  Much work is being performed in professional learning communities to clearly identify the learning targets associated with each standard within a content area. Emphasis is being placed on how the instruction and formative assessment is closely aligned with those learning targets. A team of teachers from Huntington Place attended the training PLCs at Work.

·  Teachers at Huntington Place are participating in 2 book studies, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids and The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan.

·  Efforts are being made to develop strategic intervention plans where students who struggle in a particular area may receive additional time in instruction, and for those who are more academically proficient will receive enhanced instructional opportunities. Research based programs have been purchased for interventions. Students determined to have characteristics of dyslexia will receive Tier III interventions from the SPIRE program. In addition, Marilyn Burns’ Do the Math subtraction and multiplication programs will be used for students for math intervention.

2015-2016 A-F Report Card

Final Comments

Huntington Place is committed to continue our work in meeting the needs for every student so that our achievement levels continue to rise. Most importantly, the work that is done every day by our teachers, counselors, staff, and administration to meet the whole needs (social, behavioral, academic) of the student will continue to be a prioirty.