At BTSN we shared with you information about Almond’s initiative to meet the learning needs of all students (specifically in reading for the 2015-16 school year).  We outlined that in order to accomplish this we would need several things:

1. Common instructional times to regroup students as needed
2. Weekly embedded collaboration time emphasized on instructional design
3. Multiple assessment measures to pinpoint student learning needs
4. Additional professional development for staff
5. Additional instructional resources to focus instruction for students

For ALL students, Expert Teacher Analysis is shared with you through the end of trimester progress reporting.

For ALL students in grades 1-6, in the months of December/January/February you will be receiving individual student reports of the iReady that compare the 1^st assessment to the 2nd.

At this mid-year point, we will only reassess students with the F&P who are not YET reading on grade level.  Here’s why.  This assessment is very valuable; at the same time, it is very time intensive because of its 1:1 nature.  It takes a minimum of 30 minutes to assess one child (for 25 students, that’s 12.5 hours).  Substitutes are providing coverage in classrooms so that teachers may efficiently assess students.  However, it would take a teacher about 3 days of substitute coverage to assess all children in a K-3 classroom and a bit more in an upper grade classroom.  Research confirms that the single most critical factor to a student’s success is a high quality teacher.  While many of our substitutes are high quality, they can’t replace the classroom teacher’s expertise and the relationship that has been built over days and days of time together.  Because we have multiple measures for determining growth, we are still able to monitor the needs of students at or above grade level without administering the F&P at this mid-year point.  We will make arrangements to assess ALL students with F&P at the end of the year.

I’d also like to share some preliminary data from ONE of our multiple measures, the iReady Reading Assessment.   This research-based computerized assessment tool communicates growth via scale scores that are broken into performance levels.  For a “typical” student at a particular grade level, there is an “average scale score gain” that is to be expected.  The span of points is higher in the lower grade levels and tapers off in the upper grades due to the nature of this being a reading assessment.  Please note this is not % proficient or students meeting/exceeding targets, this is students who are on track to meeting the target growth.  From this chart below, as a school, already at the midyear point, we are on target to meet the expected growth.  When looking at the data by grade levels, the fruits of our labor are also paying off tremendously.

As a staff, we continue our laser focus on ensuring EVERY single student, in EVERY single grade, in EVERY single classroom is “empowered to own their learning in a collaborative community.”