001ation offices 182 Longill Avenue room is 4 M roll call >> Kate Coutach >> here Rosson >> here Joey Palagi >> here >> also in attendance Dr. Pen Serinich, Kristen Santilly, and Tina Xavier. >> 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, liberty and justice for all. Have a motion to that's attorney. I'll make a motion to approve the January 13th meeting by Lorraine seconded. >> Sorry by Joey. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> I opposed. Motion carries. Any public comment? No one in the audience wishing to speak? Anyone in the audience wishing to speak? Sensing no one here. Okay, thank you. Um, agenda item for today is the review of midyear data. Bring it over to
002Christian and it's not just me. All right. Can Can you hear me? Is that better? Okay. So today we're going to review the fall to winter uh data that we um conduct in Shelton in grades uh K through 4. Um in ELA we um utilize uh the Amplify MClass Dibbles for reading um in K4 and then we use for uh 5 through 12 ISL reading uh as well as for science and social studies they use the um for 5 through 12 as well. So we are going to give you a overview. So, first we're looking at MClass math. Um, and you can see um the beginning of the year to the middle of the year. Um, key takeaways from the for the whole district. Um, for math K4 um all grade levels um showed growth
003from the beginning to the middle. Um there was sign significant reductions in student per students performing well below benchmark. um increases of students performing above benchmark across grades and benchmark performance remains stable um including uh student acceleration. Thank you, Tina. Okay, in kindergarten in math you can see um a 15 point decrease in students performing well below benchmark and a 23 point increase in students performing above benchmark. Um these results indicate that early math intervention and targeted instruction are having a strong impact on the foundations foundational math skills such as number sense and early problem solving. first grade. Um you can see they demonstrate they demonstrated out of K4 the largest overall growth across those grades. There's a 34 point decrease in students performing well below benchmark and a 39 point increase in students performing
004above benchmark. Nearly half of grade 1 students are now above benchmark. And that suggests um a strong core in tier one instruction and very effective uh intervention alignment. Feel free to ask questions along the way if you have any. Here you have second grade. Um they show continued positive movement with fewer students in the well below category and it increases in both benchmark and above benchmark from win fall to winter. This suggests that grade two math ear ma grade two made gains um are being sustained and built upon and many of the students continue to move to higher levels of performance. Third grade uh benchmark performance remained stable while we saw a 16point decrease in students performing above benchmark. This indicates that students are progressing beyond proficiency rather than remaining at the benchmark level. Um
005so which reflects effective uh differentiation core instruction. Fourth grade uh they they continue to show growth with an 11 point increase in students performing above benchmark and a reduction in students performing well below benchmark. While progress is evident, this data highlights the need for continued targeted support for students who remain significantly below grade level expectations. >> I ask a question before you go on that. >> Yes. So, beginning of the year scores and then to the middle of the year scores. Do the beginning of the year testing test on elements that might not have been taught yet? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, when you look at your data and you go from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year, do you take into account that you've taught that now? And and
006how much of the middle of the year increases take into account that the students have learned that um area of of instruction? It I I'm I'm not being clear. Can I >> do you know what I'm you know what I'm saying? Okay. >> And and with that we need to understand that what we're looking at is data for to drive instruction. >> Mhm. >> It's not about data to assess student performance and growth. >> Okay. >> In the mid year >> you're say you're saying what I was trying to say. >> Yes. In the midyear you're still going to have students that are not being exposed to certain aspects of the curriculum that they're being tested on. For us to solely say that this is performance data on students is an unfair assessment. What we
007really need to do is look at when we have the end of the year and in the full completion of the curriculum and that's student performance. This data although we're sharing it with the board to be transparent is really being used at the school level to help drive instruction on areas that we need to concentrate on um and continue to perform before the ESPA tests and then before the year. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So the math key takeaways in grades K through four, we see continued uh systemwide trends, um well below benchmark decreased by as much as 34 percentage points and above benchmark increased in every single grade. The strong strongest acceleration occurred in kindergarten and grade 1. um which is really great because we know that early intervention is key in order to
008keep kids on on target to staying on grade level. Um and as as it says on the slide, we're just going to continue to um prioritize the early grade interventions. Um, and and you know, I think that that's a tribute to Shelton that we have these good scores now with having to cut um our tutors and our interventionists and, you know, cut down on our intervention model. So, the classroom teachers are taking on those tier 2 kids um along with the with the math specialists doing the tier three. So, um, clearly there's some a lot of solid instruction happening in in our K4 math classrooms. Okay. MClass Dibbles reading assessment. Um, this assessment is required by the state of Connecticut under the Right to Read Act for grades K through three, but we use it
009for grades K through 4. So, um, you can see there's some key takeaways from all of the grades. Um, The reading overall remained stable. Um, kindergarten showed the the highest um gain in on track performance and our upper grades show some mixed movement. Um, that doesn't surprise me because in grades 3 to four, as you know, you're you're reading to learn and the um comprehension is a really big um important aspect for those students. and it can um it between now between January and June um that's when a lot of the concepts are are delved into and they go deeper. So I am anticipating to see that trend shift in um at the end of the year. So here's your kindergarten beginning of the year to middle of the year growth. Um they showed the
010strongest growth in reading and they also did in math which is great. Students performing well below and below benchmark decreased while students at um benchmark and above benchmark increased. So their early literacy instruction and intervention are positively impacting the foundation reading skills. And I'm not sure if you recall, but we have really pushed to move in kindergarten to rather than um the reading consultant and math specialist just always pulling out, they're pushing in and working with students. So, it's benefiting, you know, not just the tiered intervention kids with the with the classroom teacher. And I think that this is a a solid result of that. Kristen, the um the the assessment numbers that you use above benchmark below and well below are those state are those state numbers or those Shelton numbers? >> Shelton. Thank
011you. >> Yeah. So the state puts out a literacy assessment um list and you have we had to tell them the one that we use. This is one of there's like five assessments. So, every district um we don't have anything compared to the state because the whole state doesn't take it. But they did the state did say um I'm on the um literacy assessment state committee and they are collecting our data from fall to winter and they're going to take everybody that does dibbles and everybody that does another one and and so on and so forth and provide um some feedback for us. So, that will be I'm I'm eager to get that because we've never gotten that before. >> Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Right. I thought she I thought she said in Connecticut. So,
012okay. Here is the first grade data. Overall on track performance remained stable from beginning of the year to middle of the year. Um while there was a small shift between benchmark and above benchmark, the percentage of students needing additional support did not change. Um it it suggests that instruction is maintaining skills but um we may need additional intensity to accelerate growth between middle of the year to end of the year. Here is second grade. Um they show very little movement across the performance levels. Um it indicates stability. Um it also suggests that we need to have more targeted instruction with these students and um I just had a reading and math specialist meeting last week and we all talked about that they're going to really um hone in on second grade um at this point
013in the year to >> actually this is good because second grade nose dive in a heart >> second grade overall is our grade that just tough. >> Yeah. So then third grade reading you see we see a slight increase in students performing well below and below benchmark. Um this shift highlights the importance of closely monitoring reading comprehension and fluency demands as texts become more complex at this grade level which is what I was just sharing before. And here you have fourth grade. they they show a notable shift with a significant increase in students performing above benchmark um and an increase in students performing well below benchmark. So that suggests to us a widening range of performance levels and reinforces the need for both um strong enrichment and intensified intervention supports. So those they have such
014high you know on on grade level and above grade level that why they say enrichment is because the kids might be where they need to be at the end of the year now. So what instruction are we providing to those kids to push them even further. Here are your reading takeaways. Um you can see we see consistent systemwide trends um well below benchmark decreased um and above benchmark increased in every single grade. The strongest acceleration occurred again in grades kindergarten and grade 1, which is great. And um moving forward, we're we're looking at prioritizing um interventions and tweaking um uh like I said, the enrichment with fourth grade and and tweaking the model um with the reading consultants, math specialists, and um school leadership teams. Any questions on on those assessments? >> I I just
015have one question and I'm not asking for you to share the data. I'm sure you look at the data by school. Yes. >> And are you seeing trends? >> Yes. >> Among schools? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Kristen, how many kids um in kindergarten had a prek program? >> Um so this group of kids, this group of kids were born in 2020 when we were at home on CO. So, I would say that we're still with kids that didn't didn't. >> Okay. >> Um, but some some did, you know, some did, but and some, you know, not not so much. So they're really regardless of like whether they're four or you know back in the day we would be like are they four are they five you know that was like the big determining factor
016>> cuz we everybody you know had something and now we're seeing that um this I think over the next few years this group of children that we get were going to see that they that they had less of that. Um, I also think that many of the programs in town, um, it was more of it was more of daycare versus school or nursery school. >> So, um, I think they're trying to get back to that. >> Yeah, >> I know our grades change every year obviously cuz kids progress, but do we use this kind of data to look at pacing and instructional units and >> Yes. Oh, all the time. and and I took um I did do Carol to answer your question, I did create a one-page report for each K4 school and um
017met with the um principles and their teams to go over in your school, this is the grade you have to focus on or this grade's doing great, why what are they doing, let's mirror that in other grades. So to come up kind of with a reading and math plan from middle of the year to end of the year. Um I started really meeting with them more frequently this year and I think that it's just been great dialogue and um again we have to be creative because we only have we have limited resources. So now we're pulling in the Tesla teacher and whoever else we can get that can you know >> have some skin in the game. >> Yeah. and and and and you know kind of um provide like a a team um when
018we're addressing um the interventions and the in the teaching. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Right. Mhm. >> Yeah, we can always help. >> All right, so reading literacy. Um I'm going to go through these rather quickly, but you can just see uh here is the fall. Um we had 43% above in in language arts and in the wait, I'm sorry. Oh, I we took the fall out. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. All right, let me go back. Okay, the winter uh we had 43% above the national average and in grade six we had 54% above the national average. So, we're we're pretty much, you know, midway um with March, April, May with three and a half months left of school. Um over >> these were January. Overall, um the ELA benchmark growth you could see
019in grade five and grade six from fall to the winter is showing an upward trend. Here is grade seven winter ELA. uh 45% were above the national average. Uh and then grade 8 um 39% were above national average. But you could see um if we look at like those in like the 40 to 49 um in the yellow um I would be I would want to dive deeper and look at those kids and see how many kids were how many points away you know from making that >> close. >> Mhm. >> So here's your overall ELA benchmark growth in grade seven and in grade eight. um grade seven remains um they're maintaining and grade 8 had a little bit of a dip. So that's definitely a conversation. Um I have shared all of this with
020with um with SIS um and they they are they are looking at this um very intensely and the curriculum coordinators are you know having these conversations about with their departments and about what they can do. So, now we get to the high school. So, here's grade nine winter ELA. Um, what is that? 54% um of our students are um above the national average. Grade 10, we are at 44% above the national average. Again, you can kind of see a trend across from five and up that it's pretty much in the the mid um around 50%. >> Grade 11, um 44% above the national average. Um and here's your high school overall ELA growth. Grade nine in the blue again remains um stable. Grade 10 had a slight dip and grade 11 is um pretty stable
021as well. >> All right, here's the math. >> Can I ask a question? >> Yes. >> Um does this scoring take into account new students? I mean are let's say >> it is everybody. It is everybody. I mean, it would be great if we if we could just report out on the kids that started the school year with us. >> Yeah. >> But unfortunately, >> we could have poor students move in. Oh, yes. And be very impactful on the >> Absolutely. Or they could come in and and have, you know, IEPs and, you know, I mean, impact those numbers or EL. So, >> they're not pulled out. That's >> they're not pulled out. >> Okay. I I don't even know if there's a way to filter to do that, but that would be good data
022to look at. >> Yeah, >> just as I always say, I would love to look at our kindergarteners >> from kindergarten to senior year, like if they were really with us for all for the 13 years, what did their test scores look like versus when we have all the transiency, >> right? >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Um, in grade five in math, uh, 62% are above the national average. and 65% in sixth grade. And you can see again those grade five and grade six, those upward trends in both grades, which is great. Kristen, um, isn't it an anomaly to have higher scores in math >> than in ELA? Because usually it's the opposite. Is that your experience? >> Yes. Years ago, our math scores were the concern. What do you what do you think
023that what do you attribute the trend to? >> I think that we finally now have a solid consistent math program that everybody is doing with fidelity or should be doing with fidelity. I think we have looked at shifting our intervention model with the roles of the reading and the math people to being that of more of a pushin versus everything used to just be pull out. Um and also increasing coaching with teachers. >> Yes. covered. Last one on now. 100. When when you're saying utilizing talking about an online program or the kids >> and the kids go on at 10 minutes a day on Monday. >> Oh, okay. >> The program is a a crutch. It's a tool, >> right? It's a complete tool. We've had we have I'm not going to lie, we've had
024some um teacher buyin concerns. Um we're still working through that being it's a first year for five through um the high school, but um I what you need to know is this data that I'm giving you is not the weekly data you're getting. This is the diagnostic assessment that we give three times a year. So the now has that. That's why we switched from NWA to this because it linked to the actual skills plan for each student. So, it's so linked to the assessment and there and I should tell you is linked to our um curricular programs. It's linked to um our IM math program. It's linked to wit and wisdom. It's linked to SAT. It's linked, you know, there. It's all in there. So it's I if you use it, it does work. >>
025But but it's remarkable that now you can if someone says if someone asks you the question as to why do the scores reflect growth, you can readily answer >> and that wasn't always the case. >> Grade 8 um 48% is above the national average in math. Um and there you could see there's SIS for seven and eight with math. Um again seven is maintaining and eight is showing a slight dip, a slight increase. Um and they um are really focusing on um reflecting and um refining their schedule so that they make sure that they're doing the LL 10 minutes a week. So I anticipate now that that's a a goal for them that this will increase in the in the um spring. So now the high school um in the math n grade nine 51%
026is above the national average. Again, I would look at that that yellow bar in grade 9 because I'd want to look at that 40 to 49, which kids I'll bet you there's some there that we could really hone in on and focus on that could are just that close to getting over to the um above the national average. Grade 10, 44%. Uh grade 11, 39%. And there you can see grades 9, 10, and 11 at the high school. Um the only grade that's you know just maintaining is grade 10 but grade 9 and 11 are showing some increases. High school is also still uh in the same place as SIS with um they were looking and refining what they how they were using. So I I am very optimistic that again in the spring we
027will see these these go up higher. All right. So before Tina starts with science, any questions about ELA or math? >> This this may seem significant, but I'm just curious with the LL being implemented once a week, is is there anything or are you tracking like attendance if is there something in the program that says when a kid hasn't done it in next weeks because he's a chronic Monday absentee or whatever. >> So you can track that. Is there makeup time provided? >> Absolutely. And it's not something that we're encouraging to be done at home. >> No. >> Does that make it? >> Yeah. >> Okay. For science. So, um, this year we moved to, um, for custom assessments, which means they're not normed like the math and ELA. Teachers are actually creating them and
028they're aligned with standards. So, at the beginning of the year, I explained that during our fall meeting, um, the departments got together, the teachers who teach specific content areas and they created the assessments based on the standards that that were covered. So before we share the date, I just want you to bear in mind that this is um curriculum for the entire year and when they took the assessment, it was only in December. So they would have only gotten through half of the year's content. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Oh, sorry. All right. So for grade five, um so again, it's a custom assessment. So it's showing the average score of out about 100%. So the students are about at 46% which again as I said it's only half of the year's content that's covered
029but the majority it's a nice bell curve. The majority of the students are right at that cusp. Um same thing with grade six um where we have 47% of the students answering um 40% of the questions correctly. Again another nice curve where the majority of the students um are at that middle cuspby um tier. for grade seven um we have 40% of the students um answering the questions correctly and again when Kristen pointed out I where we have 153 I would like the the teachers can actually go into the assessment and actually do a um an item analysis so they can actually as a grade level go in and actually look to see the questions that the students are getting the majority of them wrong like which ones are they doing really well on and
030then which ones are they not doing well on? Also, it um I I dug in a little deeper as I looked at like for instance, you know, where I start to see a dip. I go into that the teacher and then you can actually see across the grade level and you know the curriculum coordinator can look to see is is there a pacing issue? Is there a teacher that's behind and hasn't covered the content and why is is that the reason why the score is slightly lower than other people within that same grade level? So again, you can dig really deep into the data. Grade 8 47 um 48% again with the majority of the students, right? It's there in the middle with half of the content of the school year being covered. Okay, this
031is showing our growth pattern from fall to winter. So um we see that there is growth. I know that the you know we weren't at the 50% mark, but we could see that there is significant growth um across all grade levels. a slight dip in grade seven. Um so again that's that's an opportunity to go in look at um curriculum look at pacing um and and try to determine why do we have um not as much growth for that particular grade level and grade 8 we have growth as well. Okay. The um for the high school level we were able to create content specific um assessments. So specifically for the different courses again these are al aligned with um the NGSS standards. Uh we have 43% of the students who are enrolled environmental science scoring
032an average of 43%. For biology 48%. Chemistry um 35%. And I'm just going to um just going to just put this out there. So we did have a teacher uh the curriculum coordinator was out was a new teacher didn't administer the assessment and so we had to have him go back and actually administer the assessment. So, these are things that we're learning as we're administering it that, you know, being mindful of a testing window, making sure that everyone's administering it because if we don't have all of the students participating in the assessment, that is going to skew our data. Physics, 42% of our students um answered, you know, the questions correctly. And again, I'm actually just going to go back to physics for a second. So um for physics in the fall did not have
033a developed high school physics assessment. So when those teachers created that assessment they used eighth grade assessments but used the highest level of questions because it goes from a level one to a level four. So because they didn't have a high school assessment but we still wanted them to participate. They used eighth grade questions with the highest questions. The following month, EXL had an a physics high school physics assessment. So, the reason why I point that out is that we'll see Oops. Okay, that there is growth in all of the content areas with the exception of physics. Okay, because we could see in the fall it scored really high and then um in the winter the physics score drops. And I'm going to attribute that to the fact that probably in the fall they had
034eighth grade questions versus when they took the assessment in the winter, they were actually high school physics questions. Well, we're not comparing the same assessments. Um, you know what I'm saying? Because it's not apples to apples. We had an eighth grade question. >> The assessment, >> right? Right. But the assessment questions I feel like in the winter might have been harder than the eighth grade and that's why they were >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> But they were at 47%. Yeah. >> Is that 11th graders that take physics? >> Yes. And that includes students that are also taking AP physics. So we also have the assessment for social studies as well. Um so fifth grade social studies the students um are at 48%. Sixth grade social studies 70%. Winter uh sixth grade 7th grade social
035studies are at 63%. 8th grade uh takes a dip at 56% but again that's this is covering half of the year's content. So we should expect to see much higher scores in the spring. And um we could see here uh there's a dip with social studies across uh the grade levels with social studies. Yeah. Yeah. The winter is blue also. um high school US history 1 and AP US history 52% students scored answers correctly for US history 2 61% modern history and AP history 75% of the students scored well and then we have the data sort of kind of mixed where we have some growth and some decline across the high school social studies. >> Could you go could you go back to um grade five and six social studies? >> Sure. So when you
036look at the disparity in the in the um scores there 48% in grade 5 and 70 in grade six is that could that be because kids coming out of grade um grade four are having limited access to social studies curriculum and I I don't know I mean but that seems to >> I don't think so I because I only reason I say this Carol is because our written wisdom is so embedded with social studies and science on top of the social studies that they get. >> Um, you know, >> but for the same school, you know, to see >> to see a big discrepancy 100%. >> Okay. Eat it. >> Okay. And and also I think too like the we have to remember this is all based on usage too. So it's we we they
037kind of turned the shift with their usage around December and then we took this in January. So I don't really know if we would have seen um a turnaround at that point. Hopefully we'll see that in the spring. And when do you administer the assessment in the spring? >> May. >> Okay. >> The um social studies content, does that include map, skills, and geography? >> Yep. >> We have we we follow the new um social studies um standards that came out in 2024. Um and we are um utilizing uh the state has uh units and we also have um discovery education that's a resource for our teachers. So but again like wit and wisdom in grades K through 8. It may not be there's so much history and social studies in there. Um it may
038not be the only problem is it might be like well that standard's in a different grade. Mhm. >> But they are exposed to a lot of it. >> Right. I re I I really wish in science and social studies for K5 that they were written in like a K2 band and a 35 band to master by you know those grades because then I think our curriculum would it would completely cover it. Great. >> Hunting. >> Thank you. End of our presentation. Any other questions, Kristen? >> Oh, I'm good. >> Hey, superintendent's comments. >> So, as you can see, I I love the idea or what what is now being offered to us in terms of data that we're getting in all content areas. Years ago, we we didn't get this breath of particularly when it
039came to science and social studies. So this is a really good step forward for us as as Kristen and Tina were saying you know to help strengthen curriculum alignment to help strengthen teaching learning and and student um as we have reviewed the data obviously um our problematic points within the K12 continuum continues to be the transition years >> and we lose ground during those transition years. Um as the board I I have communicated to the board but I know a lot of things happen. You know, this year I have a group of individuals working um on like a district data team level to assess and look at granular sizes, do site visits to kind of help put a comprehensive plan together of what we're going to do to assist target those transition areas. So, we're
040making a lot of headway and ground with that particular group. Um I'm pleased that where they're going should have recommend that I will district by the I have no comments. Thank you to Kristen and Tina for was a lot of work and and analyzing all that data. >> Thank you. >> Um our next meeting will is May, right? And do we have any proposed pardon me? Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't have to pardon me. >> I said I love to be Yeah. Would it make sense to put it in June or else going on? >> Um, it just depends on what day in June because >> and everything >> right now. The last day of school is the 16th >> that gradu >> Well, we haven't said >> we don't do >> I didn't think I
041read it yet. >> No. >> All right. will be determined then we'll take a look at the calendar. >> Yeah, then it would follow up on this. >> Does get a little >> It is relevant and and it would be it would make more sense to um postpone the regular schedule date for that first week of June. Yeah, >> we're not going to teach it, >> right? Yeah, I would agree. Changing the date would >> we'll take a look at the calendar and set something that makes more sense. >> Yep. >> A TBD. >> With that, I'll take a motion for adjournment. I'll make that motion. Arrow. I'll second. >> All in favor? Bye.