001Miss Hail, Miss Holland, Miss Reyes here, Miss S here. Uh, please rise for the pledge of allegiance. 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. Hello everybody. Got a big packed room here. So excited. Um we are going to start out by with some presentations. Oh, I'm sorry. Public comments. Um we now open the floor to public comments for agenda items. Does anyone have any public comments they want to make tonight? Okay, that's usually how it goes. So, we're gonna move on to presentations now. Wonderful. We have two presentations this evening, but I think what you're all here to see and experience is our student growth uh celebration. Favorite meetings of this
002school year because it's my absolute honor, joy, and privilege to recognize some truly exceptional students. those who demonstrated the most growth from fall to spring on their academic assessments in English language arts, Spanish language arts, and math. While test scores can be one piece of the picture, what we're celebrating tonight is much bigger. It's perseverance, grit, a growth mindset, and the power of hard work over time. These students didn't just show up. They rose to the challenge. They leaned in with determination, believed in their potential, and kept going even when their path wasn't easy. The their growth is a testament to their determination, courage, commitment, and also all of the family and friends support that they have at home. To our students, your growth shows us that learning isn't about where you start, it's about
003how far you're willing to go. We are so proud of you, and we hope you feel proud of yourselves. To our teachers and families that are here tonight, thank you for nurturing, guiding, inspiring, and loving these students every step of the way. Please join me in celebrating these outstanding learners. Their growth is a shining example of what's possible when we level up, lean in, and sparkle on. We are going to give them a round of applause all at the end. I'm going to have each one of the principles and Dr. burger come up and recognize the students and their name, their grade level, and then what subject area they made the most growth in. We have certificates for them that we're going to take one giant picture and then we will all applaud and celebrate
004and recognize them. So, thank you again for coming tonight. And if I can have Mrs. Moley come on up and announce the um students from Diamond Lake. All right, our first student is Francisco Reyes in kindergarten for the math star assessment. Come on up. We have Oh, wait till the end. Wait till the end. Come on over. Ashley Dwerte Darus in kindergarten for the early literacy test in English. So, come on up, Ashley. Advik Holly, come on up. That's for the early literacy, Spanish, and reading in English. Come on up. Kindergarten. Jose Herertado in first grade for the early literacy test. Come on up, Jose. Aaliyah Aggie Parker, first grade reading test. Josiah Butler for the first grade math test. Leonardo Guzman Silva for the Spanish Early Literacy Test. Sebastian Pacheco, first grade reading in
005Spanish. Nathaniel Sitler, second grade reading assessment. Urelli Figareroa Delgado, second grade early literacy assessment. Oops. Sorry, I'm too fast for you. All right, you're come on. Nathan Cabrad, second grade, reading Spanish. GMO Lara, second grade, early literacy, Spanish. And then Mig Miguel Wuerta, second grade, math. And those are our representatives from Diamond Lake School. Let's give them a round. All right. Some students aren't here in the doorway. Okay. There's a way to be a men. Okay. I know. I don't see Daniel Monia, though. Hi. How are you? Did you just come to show us your dress? Oh, thank you. We love it. Yeah, it's very sparkly. Thank you. She's so cute. She wanted to show it. Okay. Um, students that showed the most growth at West Oak Intermediate School for third grade in reading, Daniel
006Bonia. Is Daniel here? I didn't think so. Okay. Um, in Spanish, Quinn, come on up. And in math, Carter, come on up. Good job, girl. Way to go. Awesome. Fourth grade for reading. Chris, come on up. For Spanish, Julian, come on up. and math was Alex Rivera. I don't see Alex in the audience tonight, though. Oh, you snuck by. Oh, good. I didn't see you. Hi. Congrats, buddy. Okay. Fifth grade for reading. Vlad. Is he here tonight? No. Okay. Let's give Vlad a round of applause. Thanks for keeping track for me. Spanish. Anthony and for math Brandon doesn't look like Brandon's here either. Yeah. All righty. All right, Mr. Hans. All right. You ready? Okay, last but not least, the the greatest uh scores or or greatest uh achievers here at the West Oak Middle
007School. Uh, sixth grade uh, highest score was um was Alli Cabierro. Come on up, Ally. Yes. And then we also have uh reading uh reading was Autumn Moore. Come on over, Autumn. Congratulations. And then uh and then also our reading uh Spanish reading was he's not here today but Charlie Swanson at the seventh grade we have in math was Joseph Cross I don't I don't believe we saw with reading here I don't believe Julian Reoso I don't believe he's here today correct no platform anyways And then uh with reading Spanish was Natalie Sak Gonzalez. Good hustle. All right. Uh eighth grade eighth grade u they're back. I I know they just graduated but they I I'm sure they just can't wait to come back here. Um but uh wi with math our our greatest grower
008was Sophia Lopez. Reading was Mr. Jonathan Balder. So Sortello and then and then reading in Spanish was Mr. Abraham Carmona. Come on up. Okay. Welcome back. We got two. We got two lines or he's scrunched. All right, that concludes our student growth presentations for the evening. We do have an assessment update, but families and friends, thank you so much for coming. We hope you're enjoying your summer. We hope you have a great rest of the summer. Thank you for all the support, love, and nurturing that you give our students to make this growth. We're really proud of them. Congratulations. And if people would like to leave, you are welcome to. Um otherwise, we're going to start out with our student uh excuse me, our student assessment presentations uh with Dr. Burgerer and Dr. Cunningham. There
009you go. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Nicely done. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Oh, the air. Thank Thank you. Our goal tonight is to be um both informative and to be um with speak with some brevity. So hopefully we accomplish at least one and not zero. Uh so our goal is to give you both those things tonight. So we one of the ways that we're going to do that is normally the principles will speak when it comes to their schools. We're actually going to have it so that I'm going to share an introduction and some important data things that are up just updates. Dr. Ber is going to share the building based data and then some of the celebrations and rationale for why we think we're seeing what we're seeing and then
010I'll share some of the next steps and things that we're doing. So um the first piece is that just for the board's sake that those goals and priorities we use in priority one really we're looking at letter A which is utilizing our multi-tered systems of support so that our measurable evidence is that 100% of our kindergarten to eighth grade students demonstrate growth on STAR and growth in this case is referring to one point of their score not percentage point but a literal point is the way we've defined that in terms of what we present to the board. We also have three tiers of instruction. This is a local decision. So we made this decision of what these cut scores would be back in about 2017 2018. 30th percentile and above would be considered tier one
011or at grade level, tier 2, 29th to 12th and then tier three the 11th or below. And we give the STAR test three times a year um as kind of our benchmark test of where we may be. What I do want to start with tonight is in the winter, for those board members that remember, we shared out that STAR released its first ever dual language study where they ran us they ran programs from second to sixth grade of all different varieties. They tried to find as many as they could and then decided to kind of set the norms just the really the trends of what students in dual programs were showing and they really just looked at two English well they just looked at English and Spanish dual language not English Russian not not English
012Chinese they were looking at English Spanish which is very relevant to what we offer here makes a lot of sense we do have 23 languages in our district right now that represent the EL program the vast majority are Spanish um they're the only one we have over 20 kids. Um, but out of we have 369 ELEL students. So, no other population gets to 20 students to move us to the next level of things that we offer. So, Spanish is a big deal. This was just a slide that I updated from the winter that explains what the study was and that they literally three weeks, not even three weeks ago, launched the dual language by they call it by literacy trajectory of how. So it's kind of nice for the first time we can instead of
013saying to school boards across the country dual programs work trust us now we can say here's the data to show what's happening with our dual language program students and it's interesting and relevant even to this board we were thinking about this I think 100% of our board members have kids in the dual programs that's f that's interesting so has an extra bit of relevance so this graph is not our kids I left it in here just to kind of give a visual really to the new board members these are like these fall winter for spring scores of all the different groups. Home language English taking the reading test, home language Spanish taking the English test, home language English taking the Spanish test, um, and home language Spanish taking the Spanish. Actually, I should say home
014language Spanish. They have a typo in their own report. So then I drew this red line across because that shows you where our interventions typically would start. And if you see that home language Spanish speakers in dual programs, their median score is way below intervention line. So we talk about closing gaps. It was important to think about that. But we did for the first time run our data through this. So star uses something map does not use this for those that know map. Star uses something they call the grade equivalent. And this was just an easy way for me to plug in some of our numbers versus the national. So what this graph is showing is, and this is a graph from the winter. It's showing how kids did in their home languages across the
015country. And then in red I added us. So, I'll use fourth grade for example. So, in the darker blue on the left, that's a home language English student in a dual program taking the reading test. Nationally, they score in fourth grade and an early fifth grade level. Okay. In our district, they score at an eighth grade beginning level, 8.0. Okay. In a home language English speaker on the Spanish reading test tends to score a a late second grade. At this point, they would be scoring a 4.8. would be considered grade level. In our district, we score 3.5. So, we're a grade level head nationally. Um, if you look at our Spanish speakers, they're they're just a tick above. Really, if you watch our Spanish across the board, they pretty much stay um just above the
016national average, which is great. So, you can see our Spanish speakers sit at a a late fourth grade level in English and then uh are in Spanish, excuse me. And then on the English side, our Spanish speakers are about 0.5 back of where and you would want to test if you're exactly at a grade equivalent. And when I say grade equivalent, here's what I mean. I forgot to say that. I apologize. It's basically saying that you're testing like a typical student would at that grade level. Doesn't mean you can do that content. If you were to look at fifth grade, for example, we have this wildly high one where English speakers are testing like a typical senior in high school. For those that take STAR all the way through that STAR has 35,000 districts. So
017all the kids that are seniors in high school that take this test, our kids are testing like a typical senior. Now you might have a fifth grader and say there what is wrong with the seniors in this country? Um but this is where they land. So you can see our English speakers really accelerate all the way through. At the sixth grade level, that's where the study ends. Our English speakers in the dual language program test exactly at grade level where they should be for Spanish. Late sixth grade is where they should be testing and that's where they hit. But you can watch our Spanish speakers. This is important. We think about achievement gaps. Even for our our Spanish speakers period when we talk about this in in our for our EL population the gaps you
018can see our Spanish speakers tested at early fifth grade level we what the goal would be for grade equivalent perfect match would be 6.8 is where they would be. So this matches our data very good. We're just really excited this study exists now. So it's this data is really fresh. So it's it looks this way. It hasn't air canc. So you're getting the Dr. Cunningham version um which is like clip art on top of it's this another example of that. Hansen's got much nicer looking ones. These numbers you'll see later and Dr. Burgerer will share them. But what I try to do here is now the percentiles also change in the dual language study. So let's say I was in the 15th percentile intervention and I'm a native Spanish speaker. I'm in a dual program.
019when I get compared to other Spanish speakers taking the English reading test, I actually jump to the 38th percentile. So, I actually come out of intervention, if you want to think of it that way. So, it makes things clearer and muddier at the same time. So, you're like, "Oh my gosh, this makes sense, but wait, the kid doesn't still doesn't have the skill. So, we still have to think about making sure they learn it, but should they get pulled out for intervention or do they need to be in the dual program?" We push it. Those are the kinds of things we start talking about. Um, and what we do. So this is showing you what our numbers will look like in the next part part of the presentation. If I flip the slide, you watch
020what happens when I add it in the dual trajectory. So if let's pick a grade here. Let's pick maybe sixth grade 57 and tier 1 16 and 8. If I change it, it goes 65, 10, and six. So you can see all those kids move out of intervention because they're if I use the dual language trajectory in Spanish, you're going to see these numbers later, so I'm not going to necessarily spend time on it. This one's actually closer, which makes sense. when you add our dual trajectory in, there isn't a lot of change, but if I again, if I use sixth grade 32,2 and 1, it goes 34 1 and zero. So, we have nobody in tier three Spanish. Um, but our Spanish numbers have always been very good. Uh, and they continue to be.
021It's very exciting this data initially because it shows that our dual program is very, very good. Our students that are in our dual program are doing very well. Uh, and we really are very excited about it. Additionally, I shared this out as implications in the winter and I kind of kept a lot of this that our dual language students um match or outperform nationally. Uh we have a very high interest in where the Illinois report card is going to go because right now uh if you want to think of it, our dual trajectory, our Spanish speakers really are on a long range trajectory. So, are you doing things to be aggressive to help them um catch quicker? Absolutely. But if we look at how we're measured in IR, for example, third and fourth grade, especially
022for our native Spanish speakers, they're getting measured at grade level, and they're not at that point yet, if that makes sense. So, we're very interested in this because what the state wants to do is give points to schools that have dual language programs to compensate for some of that. You can still pull up some of your charts and you'll read the way it does, but in terms of the overall school scores, it boosts schools that run dual programs. So, we're very interested in that. Uh we also are using FastBridge as a new product we introduced this year in progress monitoring that's letting us take kids that maybe didn't do so well on STAR and English that are a Spanish speaker and we can check their Spanish skills in all these different areas and we see
023they're actually extraordinarily high in Spanish. That helps us figure out that it helps us answer this question. Is the student presenting a reading deficit or are they simply acquiring a new language? That's really the question we ask as we work with our students in the dual program. And then we're going to probably revamp the way we share out with the board. We'll want feedback from the board. Dr. No will take that feedback for the next presentation in November of what we might need to be putting in these presentations or not uh moving forward, what makes sense. Um, the other piece I want to share as an intro, it's just Tony Sanders put this out to the Illinois Association of School Administrators that it's really for school boards to be informed that there is a narrative
024right now of Illinois lowering the bar for their test scores. And really, it's what's happening is Illinois set their standards higher than the college board's recommendation of what is college ready. Illinois made their cut scores harder. So Illinois is going to adjust that because what the national narrative has been is Illinois is one of the lowest in reading and math even though when they take that national assessment of educational progress they come out higher. Other states will say where we're doing so well in reading but it's not apples to apples and how it's compared. And so what happens is Illinois outperforms other states nationally but it's considered failing. I gave an example in our district on STAR a majority of our kids are p are proficient in in reading and in math and I'm not
025including dual language measures just the normal national majority are but in AR that drops us significantly because the cut score moves so much higher that our students get caught in that except for our top performers. So this is just a graphic that Tony Sanders put out to the IASA that just shows compares in Illinois to Connecticut to Florida. It shows Illinois considers just that if you I was looking at the bar graphs that Illinois considers this the top two the two greens as proficient. Florida will give you the yellow on top of it and says that's proficient too for us and well if we put our yellow in we're way ahead of Florida but we don't we don't consider that proficient and so other states will give a narrative and Connecticut doesn't even measure it
026that way totally different so this is really not about this part is not about us this is just a to give the board an FYI is the community may talk about these things the newspapers pick these up that we're changing scores or or whatever we're being we're just having too many kids that are in three AP classes in all these different clubs getting scholarships that are considered failing all the way through their senior year of high school. So that we're trying to adjust that. So, um, with that, I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Burgerer to talk about the data. Thank you, Dr. Cunningham. Fantastic job. Oh, thank you so much. You're welcome. All right. To start out, um, looking at the different components of the STAR assessment, we want to take a look
027at DLS first because this is the early childhood testing system. It does the ELA assessment in two different components. One can be uh early literacy foundational skills which is generally always given in kindergarten usually also with first grade as they progress into reading by the end of the year. And then a lot of times um what we see is that sometimes we'll have students in second grade still doing the early literacy piece but again by the end of the year getting closer and closer to the reading piece. So when we look at the early literacy, it's talking all about these foundational skills of the alphabet, phmic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension versus taking all of those foundational skills and then applying them in reading such as author, literary, argument, vocabulary, comprehension, more of actually reading
028pieces and being able to answer questions regarding them. So when we take a look at ELA for DLS, they did a great job. Um what you'll see here is we had 97% growth in early literacy and 100% of the students who actually were ready to take the reading showed growth also. And one of the important pieces to remember when we're looking at these results is that you're looking at the number of students that scored in each of these tiers from the fall compared to the spring. And remembering that our students could have made growth but could have changed to a different tier. So, for example, if a student, let's say, had a raw score of 500 in the fall, they scored in tier one. In the spring, they had a raw score of 505. They
029technically showed an increase of five points, but according to STAR, it may not have been enough to keep them in tier one because Star projects they should have grown to a raw score, let's say, of 510. So when we look at the difference with the the tier pieces, it doesn't always mean that a child regressed. It just might mean again that it wasn't enough growth according to STAR. So whenever we count this percentage, we count every single student even if they just grew by one point in the raw score because it is showing an advancement in the child's abilities. This was our math scores for uh DLS. 99% of our students moving ahead in math, which is absolutely great. And this was our second year with our new math curriculum in visions that the kids
030absolutely love across the entire district. Um, and they have more many more experiences of hands-on and different manipulatives and things like that at the younger grades. This was for Spanish in kindergarten. 95% of our kids only took the early literacy assessment for this. Many of the things that we see, especially in kindergarten, when it comes to um Spanish language arts and the development of skills, even if the children are Spanish speakers at home, it's not formal Spanish like it is here in school. It's very conversational, sometime of a different dialect, sometimes of a different um cut or clip of words in comparison to what they're learning here. So, we generally keep just with the early literacy at the kindergarten level. And then when we take a look at first and second grade in comparison, again,
031we're seeing huge growth. 100% in first grade, whether it was ELA or reading, no matter what assessment they took. 94% in second grade. And Miss Mley put it into effect this year that all students would take the second grade reading by the end of the year so that they would have some baseline data as they enter WOIS and before starting third grade. And then first and second grade for math was 100% across the board. So every single student within those two grade levels had also shown growth. And for Spanish it was 94% in uh first grade and 100% in second. And again this was looking at the transition of the number of students that were actually at that level of being able to take that reading assessment. So huge growth across DLS, great uh early
032childhood development skills in both all three subjects. For WOIS, this is taking a look at third grade as we compare the ELA scores. And we talked about this a little bit in the winter when we look at third and fourth compared to fifth grade. This is our COVID group. The this is the ones they were in kindergarten when CO h COVID happened and it was a very difficult transition back into school. There was so much lost classroom time as we know. There was a lot of time that just we needed to make up for and in many cases in fifth grade 2 there were um students that also had IEPs as a result of COVID that I'm proud to say many of them are now off of those IEPs and exiting all of that getting
033into middle school because of course now we're we're much more back in the swing of things to uh have the data to show that it was not a developmental delay of any kind or a disability. it was co. So we we are continuing to work and improve with that grade level. And then this was math across the board for third, fourth, and fifth showing some great growth there. And Spanish scores as well across the across the building. And then for our middle school, this was unbelievable growth as well. And one of the things we had also talked about in the winter is we were very meticulous with middle school this year, making sure that our children were taking the time to answer the questions and not rushing through things and making sure they were really
034reading the questions carefully. Our middle school staff also did a great job of test prep for our students and really getting them excited and motivated. beginning of May, you know, like in eighth grade. Um, STAR might not be our number one uh favorite thing to do, but they did an absolutely great job. The the teachers, Brandon, everybody really motivated the kids to do their very best. So, this was our growth for ELA. These were scores for Spanish across the middle school, and then also for math. So, some of the great things that we accomplished this year that we want to celebrate is that we had a completely revamp of our professional learning communities. Um, especially at um West Oak campus, we were very meticulous about making sure that our teams were meeting on a regular
035basis. They were looking at data. They were making datadriven decisions and that we had a purpose with everything that we did. We also completed our unit plans for guaranteed and viable curriculum for the foundational work that we need to do with that for our school improvements. Also making sure that teachers were consistently using their learning targets. So students were fully informed of what they were learning, why they were learning it, and how they were going to be assessed. Our interventionists also began to shift their practice um with using different um tools to be able to progress monitor and thinking about the reading deficits that we had and why and how we would be able to service those students. Teachers were also getting training um in vocabulary specifically with things that had to do with the
036standardized assessment piece so that as we were preparing everyone for AR, our teachers knew exactly what those different terms meant because it changes each year. Um, one year it might have said give the answer. This year it said something like what's your response? So, it's changing all of that different type of vocabulary to make sure that our kids were ready. Um, we also were complete with our instructional rounds observing the effective teaching practices that were happening in the classrooms, our coaches stepping in and providing a lot of support to teams, individual teachers during PLC's, all of that great work. And then of course the standardsbased report card that we love. Everyone does, especially Rhonda. Absolutely. And with that, I will turn it back to the one and only. We all know if you were at
037the end of your gal, you know Rhonda Curley especially um is a huge fan of it. Uh just Yes. There's been such great work. We've learned a lot of things about test prep as well and preparing that our students really we talk about what is it closing gaps and and being aggressive with it. A lot of our students, especially as they get to the upper grades, lack a lot of the vocabulary that gets used in the reading passages that gets used in the questions that are being asked as the rigor increases. And so we have to be extraordinarily intentional from younger grades on and we'll talk about that in a moment. This these two graphs are were at the request of the board a couple years ago and we keep trying to find different ways
038to present it. The last one seemed to have landed decently so we went for it again this spring. So the question was about achievement for our students that are in the top percentiles. How many students do we have? How are they doing? So what this is showing is the number of students or excuse me the percent of students in the 75th to 99th percentile from fall to spring. So if I was to take third grade for example in the fall 2% of our third graders were in the 75th to 89th percentile. Once you hit the 75th, you are considered typically this is kind of the first measure we would use to consider advanced programming which starts in third grade which is why you're seeing it in third also because the early lit comes out at
039this point. So you can see in the spring 15 I said the biggest of all the grades 15% of our students were testing in that range and so a number of them they're recommended by their teacher to move into the advanced programming potentially for the following year. In the 90th percentile 5.6 six and then 9%. And keep in mind in our district kids represent multiple percentage points. So one kid is 2% or 3% or are% and a half typically. So on the right side you can see that essentially we went up in all of our percentages of students that are in the advanced program. We are averaging basically between the 21st and 30th 20 30th percentile essentially. Sorry, 21 to 30% of our students qualify for advanced programming is what we're looking at. Um anywhere
040we went down is usually we just traded a kid from the maybe they're in the 89th and they went to the or the 90th and they went to the 87th so they traded over in terms of why there's red there. But at the end um also in some of these scenarios really it could just be enrollment change. In seventh grade, we went up 0.5. That's well that we don't have that many kids to do that. So, it means our enrollment probably shifted. So, but we're still showing it in the green because it makes us feel good. We like that. Um, and so, but we showed that on this slide, too, as well as math. So, you can see we started this one in kindergarten. What's impressive is in kindergarten is kindergarteners are normed based on
041first grade standards. So that means we have 23% of our kindergarteners are testing in the top 25% of first grade is what that's saying. So very interesting when we think about it that way. You can see we held even in second fourth grade we went down 0.9. You could argue that's one that that's not even a kid. It's an we actually had a lot of enrollment come to fourth. Um and so we can look at those pieces. And then um sixth grade there's a piece in the memo to the board we talked about a little bit there. And then um in seventh grade again.3 this is a change of enrollment. It's not a shift there. Overall same average as you can see 20 to 29% of our students fall into the advanced tiers. In math
042it's a little different. If you are in advanced math you basically jump a grade is what happens in middle school. If you're in the 90th percentile the end of fifth you're going to be able to jump. You have the option to jump again. And so our students in 90th and above can finish middle school taking geometry. Uh or every once in a while we get a special circumstance where someone may be triple accelerated and those students we send to Stevenson. Um but it's very rare you're talking about less than 1% of your population we do that with. So uh but that just to show why we have it broken out that way. Also I um STAR likes to break it out this way as well. Okay. This um diamond was because the board had shared
043with us that we want to make sure our kids are more than just one test score. There's more to our students. So these are five different ways we do measure our kids in general and we think about how they're making progress. So that's just the the graphic that we use. What I do want to talk about briefly is some of our next steps. So I mentioned to the board and I think a couple of the oncoming members were in the audience that we said we were kind of on under the the we had to move quickly, let's put it that way, to get some funding spent. And so we were going to work out some of what that looked like afterwards working with Marzano resources. It's a great organization when you think about how do
044we build literacy capacity with um all subgroups. So um the group that the they wrote a actually I'm going to grab it. It's Dr. Burgers. So um this is this is the recent book on it. So one of their newer initiative is humaniz is humanized education which um essentially deals with kind of I have the clicker. So I did the same thing deals with a lot of level four and five which is standardsbased grading and competency based learning which is basically personalized the learning experience for every kid and what they need. So we've signed this three-phased agreement. Dr. Mike Rule is the one that wrote this. He's got a team together. They're actually really excited about us. One because they know we're awesome. Um, but also they're excited to do a lot of action research
045with our district of like what's let's what's find our what really works with a lot especially when you have dual language programs and vocabulary. It's really built on these three concepts mastery growth and strength. These are the sub areas. In July we're going to meet as a group of I instructional leadership team to figure out what are our needs in these areas. Um some of these things play into really what we're all about as a district. And then some of these things are going to leverage what we're good at to get better at some other areas. access via literacy, pressing our kids, uh teacher optimism that we can push them to a certain place, um working on our assessments that we use locally to give better feedback to our kids and to our families. So,
046we will look at what are the areas we want to dive into probably one or two and then we really will move forward with that. So, that that's just a little this just explains where some of this will show up and how it will show up. We're going to meet with the team. Um Dr. is going to get brought into that work here in a couple weeks as we talk through what this might look like for a district, but it's totally personalized. It's not someone coming to the can program. It's what we really feel like are our needs as a district. We're it's a we're very privileged to be able to do this. We're so small to get this type of attention. We're very excited. So, um the other piece I want to share with
047the board is that we are going to revise our tiers for next year. 30th percentile comes from when we were using MAP, which we stopped using in 2019. or 2018, excuse me. But then COVID happened and STAR did not reorm their tests to determine like what percentile means what for what kid. So they've just this year reormed it for the first time with this year's testing. So after our MTSS team met, we determined 25th with the way that they do STAR does it 25th percentile would be appropriate for tier 2 intervention. If you want to think of a grade equivalent, it means you're about one year behind is tier two. Anybody that falls in between the 25th to 35th are typically in the same they're within the grade level. They might be just need some
048extra support and those are things we typically can support in the classroom um with our teacher and any interventions that support in. So in terms of providing targeted interventions, we're going to go to 25th. And we also have to think about this biiteracy thing and what that means for us and how we do uh we've started these conversations. we're going to consider biiteracy when placing students, but we talked with DLS, for example, about this because um they're kind of really at the beginning of our students educational career and saying, well, if I don't service them, they still don't have this skill, but they're on track with their students. So, we're walking through what does servicing look like? And Miss Morley's been really integral to that conversation. So, I here's a grab. Again, we don't have
049Hansen making things look nice. So, you get this um you get a circle. Okay. You like So, not this. Yes, this uh so 26 and above will be considered tier one. This is a local decision. It's a district decision. STAR has their own ways of doing it in terms of how they divide things up. So we landed this way and then we show the board kind of three areas that we at each of our meetings that we're working on moving forward. So we have somewhere exploration camp. Dr. Burgerer has done an outstanding job getting that organized. Um and Mr. Rogers has worked closely at FFCS to ensure the afternoon pieces are happening. So our kids have full day summer camp. We talked about with the board last year that summer schools have been shown to
050be too too short and too boring to actually have any real effect on students. We're trying to combat um both of those with what we're doing. So really excited about that work. We're going to work with humanized education. These are the topics they've identified potentially to work on. Assessment stand report card working a vocabulary phonics word study and then we call a model of instruction. That's kind of educational jargon. Um, a writing curriculum revision. We're going to work on that next year. That's up for revision. Uh, PLC manual development. Dr. Burgerer's been working on that. We're really excited about those pieces just to enshrine the work they've been doing. Interventionists will start working with preK next year. That's going to be a change. Um, so they're going to start even at that group with our
051early intervention students. That's something we've not done. We've always been totally play-based. So, this will be a way that, hey, we're going to have fun at this station where we're going to talk about some pre-ereading strategies. Um, and I know that Robin and and Sunny have been working on that. Our coaching cycles have been outstanding. We'll give an update on that at the 17th meeting, but there's some work that they're going to be doing. And then data driven wise, our PLC's are driving everything. FastBridge, we're getting better at using um our sped and tier 2 students are getting included in the classroom more, especially if it's a language, a lang an issue of language. And then we talked about updating our tiers of support in our new curriculum. So, okay, questions and comments. There's a
052excuse me, there's a memo from Dr. Cunningham that was just recently added, but it explains some of the changes that have happened this year and some of the things that may have impacted some student growth um personnel related. So, we wanted you to have that background information and details so you can read through that um at your leisure. Okay, I just have two quick questions. Um, in regards to the fifth grade, um, is and I completely get the COVID stuff. Um, I was curious to know if the data sort of nationally, um, also because I know you use I know that from what you've just said that they haven't really updated, but is this something that and I'm assuming it is not unique to our district, but is there any like more national data that
053supports that trend that this age group, you know, whether where you know wherever they were that is there a little bit of a dip or is that something um that's more unique to us which could very well be the case as well. It doesn't mean I I was just curious to know if there was more more data nationally or even locally that supports that um given that those students were kindergarteners at the time and just beginning their um teaching you know their learning formally. Um the other question that I had um was just more of a clarifying question. Um the change in the tiers um I know that you've discussed the fact that there's a lot of pushin that's happening. So the students that might nec they might technically qualify for tier one, let's say
054they're in the 27th or 28th percentile um and and they technically are in tier one. Um are those students still able to um you know when there might be you know an interventionist or somebody who is let's say in a whole group setting um be given a little bit of additional support. Again this is just more clarifying um because obviously 28th percentile is still not you know maybe where we would ideally like the student to be. Um, so I was just curious to know if you know, yes, they're technically within tier one, but you know, are we also kind of looking at the whole the whole picture to maybe make sure that, you know, if they need just a little bit of support that there is somebody there. Um, so I hope I'm being clear.
055It's a it's a great question. you know, STAR, we've we've almost used we've it's become more that we're using it as really where do we stand against others versus are we going to use this to determine what skills kids are missing. So, we're follow we've actually we just tried it this spring at WOS instead of doing what we call this FNP bass. It's this long reading assessment, we switched to something called fasttrack where every we're going to have every kid take it moving forward. And so a lot of the reading support, for example, we're grouping kids by what we see in those letters, if you will. And we're actually trying something at third grade, for example, next year. We've aligned Dr. Clips worked really hard with the BLT of that building to align all of
056our interventionists that are reading to be available now. They're going to be pushing into the third grade guided reading and writing blocks. So they have their own small group that they work with that are at those letters, if that makes sense, that they can provide those support. There's also not too many kids, ironically, that sit in the 27th to 30th. There's like there's almost none. Uh, with our current data, they're either one or they're the other if that makes sense to which we looked at what will the impact be if we do this and they were like this actually will not change any of our loads right now with how it sits. Uh, so that was another reason we kind of made that that decision. But between between basically we are trying to triangulate every
057like have three measures essentially for every kid that we're working with. It's it's STAR it's fast bridge and then the third measure can be a couple different things. It could be FNP, it could be like if it's Spanish, it could be Apple or something. It a lot of times it's a teachers assessment or a local assessment as the third and that will and sometimes it's two fast bridge measures. So we'll target student support that way. So teachers felt a little bit better about that knowing that we're not going to cut the conversation off if they're 26th percentile really for the purposes of us sharing with the board we're going to share it at that range but we have kids that are being supported that are above um yeah and then the other question in terms
058of do we see that trend nationally it's it's yes and no. I was actually just peeking at the dual language study looking at the growth for English speakers. English speakers, their growth percentile drops fourth to fifth. Spanish, it goes up a little bit. That being said, we felt like our data was a local thing that we can work on in our own district with our own we can support that at the grade level if that makes sense because we felt it was our Spanish speakers that were not showing as much growth when they nationally show a little bit more while the English like a little bit higher growth percentile if you will versus English. So that told us, look, yes, can we say it's a trend? Sure. But we trends can tell us a lot
059of things, but we still want to do right obviously by our kids. So we we felt like we need to make some some shifts and and Vanessa came in to support some things on the Spanish side more aggressively and we'll continue to do that with that grade because we really feel like we have great teachers there. We want to we can see stronger growth that we want to see, but yes, nationally someone's supported. So, my district does MAP testing and if a student comes to the test that day and has a terrible cold and is coughing and isn't focused and their score plummets, they can't retake it really. We don't they don't allow it, it seems. Does STAR let you take that kid whose score let's like is unusually diff different different um and retake
060it. It's totally Stark is a totally is a local decision. So this is you just walked into the middle of a debate we're having right now. So I don't know if you want to comment on this Dr. Burger or not. Yes. STAR will allow you to do a retake. That's her comment. Okay. So if you look at like within reason, your discretion like anybody who wants to like redo it can redo it. Yeah. It's not just any not just anyone who says, "Can I get a retake?" It it certainly doesn't work like that. But it was like we were talking about in the winter. It was that time piece when I went and ran that report and it's like the score is way off and now I'm also seeing that the child only spent four
061minutes and 14 seconds to answer 42 questions. You know, this is it's not even possible. So yes, we when we know that it's not a normal score and there's other factors such as sick or rushing or something like that, yes, we will allow them to retake it. And then the newcomer group, do they take the STAR test? Like if they're if they're if they don't speak English fluently and they're taking it in English, I can't imagine their scores look very good. So what value is it to give that and have it reflect in our tier three data? Then I'm sure they're tier three. Then what what is the value of them taking it if we know that they're tier three? You know, it allows us to see I guess fortunately for us a lot of
062them are Spanish speaker newcomers. So we can test them in Spanish math and Spanish reading. So a lot of times we use it as a comparison to see is it a reading deficit or a function of language. So if they score fifth percentile in English reading but then 50th in Spanish, for example, we actually had a kid that just came in from Columbia that was 99th in Spanish and he's tier three in English. Um, so that that tells us so that that's a huge piece of why we do it. Also, it doesn't count in the state metrics. So it's it's really just a local for us to find out. Um, the star could be in Spanish as well. So what about your Ukrainian student accom right that we can't accommodate. So other languages you can't.
063So there are some tools we've started to explore. There's one we're using called Magma Math right now. It's a lot of fun where you can throw it into any language you want for the students. What about taking those students who are newcomers out of the just for our sake like out of the equation and seeing what our data looks like then? if the board wants. Well, I think there's a couple of pieces to it though. When the when those students who are non-English speakers, let's say who come from Ukraine, they can't take the Spanish test and let's say yes, they're in the they're in the first percentile at the start of the year. Those are some of your children that are going to make the greatest growth at the fastest pace. So, they've gone all
064of a sudden from the first to the 15th. Now, for us, it's like, well, of course, we want every single child in tier one. I'm doing cartwheels down the hall when they've already made it to tier two in a matter of three months. So, I I think it it goes kind of both ways because of course you always want all a higher number, more students in tier one, all of that. But when we look at these percentages, it's like I said before, it's looking at that raw score and any sort of score increase to show that that child has grown in some way. So those students are a huge part of that 95 100% growth that you're seeing in a lot of the categories. Yeah, that's good. And you guys had mentioned the triangulation with
065the but with these new students then access. Yeah. I would also show like you're talking about growth and that's huge because when they get here they don't know but when it's a good base point and then you're able to triangulate and even add a fourth score in there. No, it's a great one. We like I said we've tried this product fastlight 360. There's one of the many products out there to help with access that benchmarks them as well and so that tells us how they're making their progress to proficiency because star is it has its limits. It does. And we've been working to Dr. Ber's point, we've also been working, it doesn't work for all students, but we've been working with a lot of our students on taking tests and thinking the way the test
066wants them to think. And for some of our students, it's very beneficial. In fact, one of our I was looking at some of our biggest growers tonight. One of them, I remember sitting with him uh and his reading interventionist, he was stuck in the 25th. Teacher was like, "That's not accurate." Parents were like, "It's not accurate." They changed some things in the test conditions and the student jumped to the 75th. Um so but they've been sitting in the 25th for years until we started addressing something with test conditions prep or the way they approach it. Now that's not the story for everybody but we are finding especially the upper grades the vocabulary of taking the test matters and you and if you don't you're not using some of that terminology outside of school we have
067to be very explicit in school to do it. I'll give it to the teachers on that one. They did a great job but Um, I have a quick question about, well, maybe it's not so quick, but could you explain more about the report card reform that they're considering doing and um like what tests are given that are reported as part of our report card? And for example, like would those new students um that are having to take a test in English, is that any part of like the new equation for the report card reform? Like do they take into consideration they've only had x amount of years of instruction in English even though they're at this level? I don't know. Do you know how in-depth they're going to be with it? Yeah. Somebody stopped me
068if I'm quoting this wrong, but typically they don't if you're within your first year as a newcomer, they will not count you, but after that you go live with it. the national government will one national group that's affiliated with the department of ed or used to be affiliated with department of ed would argue that newcomers three years um but we in Illinois have kind of treated it within if you're within your first year your test does not count but beyond that it will start counting which can be very tough especially at older grades if you're a newcomer not strongly literate in your home language coming into higher level English that can be very difficult what the state's doing now is Tony's got a group that Tony like I know him Tony Some people do. He
069actually Dr. Charm, Dr. Burgers do know Tony. Yes, he has. But I'm not on No, I'm not calling him up. But okay. To Yes. Tony Sanders, the state superintendent. So, he's he is working with a group of teachers this summer in August to try to reorm. Now, because he's doing it and he's trying to make it happen for this fall, which means he already kind of knows what he wants. And so, he's going to work with teachers to get a green light on it. And so he's going to change basically. For example, one of our students might score 220 in reading, which can means all kinds of different things, but that may not have been proficient before, but now they're going to say a 215 is proficient. And so what that will do is it
070will probably raise their IR scores, which is what realators and everybody sees is just that number. Context doesn't really matter. It's just that. And so it will it raise ours? It should. Um, it will also raise just about everybody else's. Um, but it should raise ours and that will make tests like MAP and Star more accurate because a lot of curriculum directors have criticized MAP and Star for being poor um, predictors of IR because Illinois's test is so much harder than those tests are. Um, some cases they're very accurate, but in some ca like for us it's about a 10 it's about a 15 to 20% difference. I can take the STAR test, subtract 20%. And that'll give me pretty accurately what our kids are going to do in IR. So yeah, that that's basically
071what he's doing. So I can see the raw scores now, but I can't see the percentiles this year because they don't know what they're going to be. They don't know if that's a proficient score or not. Oh, and sorry. And they use the Illinois science assessment for us. Fifth and eighth grade, that counts. Um, attendance counts a lot. um which is that means that DLS is totally dependent on attendance which is usually the school you don't want dependent on attendance uh because of their primary at that level especially kindergarten um and prek but that's all they really can control they get they're also scored on third grade's proficiency and fourth grade's growth so DS has one measure that really plays into their report card yes they Any other questions? All right. Thank you for all
072of that information. Thanks for synthesizing that for us. It's not easy. Um, all right. Well, let's move on then to our business agenda. Um, we've got one item for review and two for action. Um the first for review is the omni omnibus vote agenda. Um and then do we just move on to the action one? Okay. So the action ones are we've got a personnel. We've got three new hires. Um where's the resolution? Okay. And then just read it. Okay. So, be it resolved, the Diamond Lake 76 Board of Education accepts and approves the personnel items as depicted on the agenda. Can I have a motion, please? Still getting used to these voices. Mr. Becker, yes. Miss Holland, yes. Miss Bis, yes. Miss Crutchfield. Miss Reyes. Oh, very good at this. Um Okay. And then
073um the next one is going to be our uh oh approve uh resolution to designate interest earnings for the fiscal year. Did you want to say anything about that? Okay. To move that money around into different funds, right? So, okay, great. Um, so be it resolved that the Diamond Lake 76 Board of Education accepts and approves the designation of interest earnings for the fiscal year 202425 as recommended. Can I please have a motion? Miss Bis, yes. Miss Crutchfield, Mr. Becker, Miss Reyes, Miss Yes. Okay. And then moving on to board discussion. Did anyone have anything they want to discuss? Oh, great. Great. Thanks for doing that. Appreciate it. Um, yeah. Approval of I think that's what Mr. Rogers I think that's what you were approval of I think that's what you were um Yeah. will
074not why you don't see one in there is okay. Um we don't have any freedom of information requests. um not notices and communications. Um we have some highlights and uh do we have any public comments uh on non-aggenda items? Anybody? Aaron? No. Okay. All right. Any other others? No. Okay. Anyways, all right. We're gonna move on and we are gonna be done. How do I say that? Ajourn. Do you have a motion to Can I have a motion to adjourn? We put me out of my misery. Okay. I got to get Mr. Okay. Mr. Becker. Yes. Miss Reyes. Miss Bis. Yes. Miss Crutchfield. Miss Holland. Miss Salt. Yes. Oh, yeah. Sure. Thank you.