001Okay, thank you so much. The time is now 5:30 p.m. Um, and we're going to get started for this evening. So, Miss Woodridge, please call the role. >> Mr. Briggs, >> present. >> Miss Boozer Strruther, >> present. >> Mr. Jackson. Mrs. Olivo, >> present. Miss Gins Mccant and Mrs. Aikay >> present. >> There are four present. >> All right. With the quorum present, the academic achievement committee meeting will come to order. Uh good evening and welcome to the May 11th, 2026 academic achievement committee meeting. I'm Jonathan Briggs, committee chair and district 2 board member. Uh it's brings me great pleasure to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting. For those unable to observe now, the meeting is being recorded and can be accessed on the PGCPS YouTube channel for later viewing. If there is no objections, the
002committee shall adopt the May 11, 2026 meeting agenda. Okay. There being no objections, the May 11, 2026 meeting agenda is adopted. If there are no corrections and give me just one second here, uh the committee shall adopt the May uh the April 20 of 2026 meeting agenda. Okay. There being no corrections, the agenda is adopted. Sorry about that. my uh my laptop s me out for a second for whatever reason. Not sure why. So, I'm getting right back up to speed. Okay. Uh so, we're going to keep moving forward. Um the um there is one live public speaker this evening. Our first speaker is Miss Tia Kolier, individual academic potential and achievement. Um so, Miss Woodridge um is Miss Kolier in Q. And if so, >> yes, she is ready to go. >> Thank you
003so much. All right. So, we're gonna turn over to you, Miss Kolier. Thank you. Um, good evening. Last week I was encouraged to hear about our upcoming strategic planning session which will emphas emphasize excellence everywhere over isolated pockets of achievement. And so I want to speak directly to what that must mean in practice because I have lived the opposite. And so I hope that by sharing my experience it can inform what we build together. So my oldest child was a high performer throughout elementary school, consistently earning principles honor role with straight A's in core subjects and later TAG identified in fourth grade. Once identified for a TAG pull out, those services did not occur regularly and were limited to conversations about growth mindset. Helpful, but I expected more. And so I supplemented his learning from
004home, including paying out of pocket for a math tutor. My younger child transitioned to a TAG center in second grade. And what a world of difference we experienced. More rigorous writing task and real projects that made learning come alive and built skills that compounded year overyear. Meanwhile, my tag identified principal's honoral fifth grader at our neighborhood school was being assigned book reports using second grade graphic organizers. And when I required him to write grade appropriate essays at home, he pushed back. Why do more if he was already earning an A? So upholding a high standard as a parent was tough when his school accepted and highly rewarded his bare minimum. When my older child entered a full-day TAG middle school, the culture shock was intense. Elementary school had sold him a false work ethic. And
005despite my efforts, I could not fully compensate for what his classroom had never required. And this is not an anomaly. I have exchanged nearly identical testimonies with parents whose children have transitioned into specialty programs or private schools. And so I want us to be very clear that excellence everywhere must mean that we stop selling students a false sense of achievement. No student should have their potential neglected regardless of demonstrated ability, school type, program type, or learning needs. Yet currently, right-sized opportunities depend mostly on which parents have the time, the knowledge, and access to fight for them. A student consistently learning, earning high grades with minimal effort is just one example of potential going unmet. And I share my experience as examples. But I wonder how many other stories like these go undetected. How many students
006across this district have their potential quietly thwarted? Not by lack of ability, but by a ceiling we set too low. Every child in PGCPS deserves an environment that allows them to discover what they can actually achieve and challenges them to stretch toward their greatest potential. And I know that every one of you agree with me uh on that. And so I believe that excellence everywhere should start with refusing to let any student coast through on a standard we know is too low. So, I challenge the district, the committee, and the board to hold that line, and I look forward to hopefully working with you on making that happen. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Miss Colier, and hopefully I am saying your name correctly, but if not, >> you are. Thank you. >> Thank
007you so much. >> Okay. Um, we're going to move to tonight's presentation, but again, thank you, Miss Scolia, for your um your your testimony. Um we're going to move to the academic achievement committee 20252026 recommendations and next steps um concerning equity and special education CSI which is comprehensive support interventions multilingual learners and family engagement. Um I'd like to recognize um Dr. Kia McDaniel um who will be stepping in for Dr. White the chief academic officer for the 2025 20226 recommendations and next steps. So I'll turn it over to you um Dr. MC. >> Awesome. Thank you, board member Briggs. Um, thank you for having us back this evening. We're excited to just uh share with you some of the reflections that the team has had after presenting to uh this committee throughout the school year.
008And so, as you mentioned, you'll hear from a variety of different offices just on what some of the findings have been with regards to the information that was previously shared as well as the next steps for um next school year. So, um, I'll have each person introduce themselves now and then we will get into our presentation. So, I'll start. My name is Kia McDaniel. I am the director of curriculum and instruction. I'm going to pass it over to Trenell. >> Good evening everyone. Trenel Bowman, associate superintendent for special education. And I will pass it over to Dr. Glosser. >> Thank you, Dr. Bowman. Good evening, board members and all those assembled. My name is Latricia Gloucester and I serve as the associate superintendent of innovation and performance. I will turn it over to Dr. Williams.
009Good evening everyone. My name is Ingred Williams Horton and I'm the director of community schools and I will turn it over to Mr. Jason Ray. >> Good evening board members and friends. Um I am Jason Ray. I'm the director of equity, diversity, and belonging. Happy to be here and I will turn it over now to Dr. administrator. >> Good evening everyone. Doug Strader, chief of accountability. Um, welcome. I will turn it over to Dr. Bowers. >> Good evening. Glad to see you again. Uh, Dr. Bowers. I'm the director of testing, research, and evaluation. And I will turn it over to Dr. Faison. >> Good evening, Liz Faison, associate superintendent for student services. And I'll turn it over to Miss Hogan. Good evening board members and all guests assembled. I am Daren Hogan, supervisor of the
010office of 504 and school counseling and I will turn it over to Dr. Thompson. >> Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Thompson, 504 instructional specialist and I would turn it over to Dr. Owens. >> Good evening, Laura Owens, office of 504 compliance analyst. Is that everyone from our team? >> I can jump in here. Hi, I'm Ben Levinger. I'm a supervisor in the office of monitoring and accountability. I'm filling in for Anthony Whittington who couldn't make it tonight. Thank you. >> Thanks, Ben. Awesome. So, you see we have quite quite a team here this evening. Um and so, Miss Witch, if you could bring up the slides. Um we're going to get started again with um just sharing some of our major findings from this year as well as the next steps as we move forward preparing
011for school year 2627 and we're going to get started with special education. >> All right, good evening everyone. So for this current school year and in fact last school year as well um we have been digging deep into the problem of practice that you see on the screen here which is that PGCPS must strengthen support for students with disabilities by building positive family partnerships in the IEP process ensuring specially designed instruction and also uh expanding inclusive practices for students of disabilities and we have had tremendous success um very fruitful collaboration and we've learned a lot Um as we have kind of marched through this work together um just a few highlights lessons from the field. The first one is that regarding family engagement engaging parents really does require intentional effort. Um we have to be
012very purposeful and strategic about how we develop that ongoing relationship and have clear communication structures and and making sure that we really do create and carve out their voices in IEP decision-m with regard to specially designed instruction. Um, we've learned that staff really do value differentiated in-person training and role clarification. Um, they don't like ambiguity. Also, collaboration is critical for consistent implementation and aligning SEI directly with IEP goals creates focused instruction. And then with regard to inclusive practices, so while we had a summer learning series and a systemic focus for the entire year and last year as well, um we this time we really did include parents and we were successful in that. But what we didn't do is we didn't incorporate the direct voices of students. And so that's something that we learned is
013very high value and that's something that's central as we move forward. >> Yeah. Can I actually just really quickly um one if we could just all be muted when we're not speaking so that there is no background noise and then two if we could zoom in a bit so that anyone who isn't able to see this can see it. Um Miss Woodridge if you could just like maybe increase >> let me see. Okay. >> Hit where it says 100%. If you just hit the plus sign it might >> we do have the option. We have the actual slide deck if that would be better to have one of us share it. Um I think so for the sake of presentation I think that might be a better approach than maybe this because I know everyone's
014accessibility isn't the same. >> Correct. Um let's see. >> Okay. Can you see it now bigger or it's still not showing bigger? >> We can see it. I think she's saying they actually have like one that'll fit the screen. >> Let me see. Okay. Let me unshare then. Okay. Let me take mine off and let you guys share. Thanks so much, M. >> Okay, you should be able to share. >> Um, that one has to come down first and then I think you'll be able to. >> Yeah. So, um, Miss Woodridge, I think you're still sharing your screening if you weren't intending to. Yeah, I'm not sharing anymore. It's not showing on my end. >> It's still up. Okay, let me just shut everything down. Let's see. Okay. Can you >> Yep, it's perfect now?
015>> Yeah, I think that's good. Let's see here. All right. Is everyone able to see the screen fully? >> Yes, we can. >> All right. I think we can continue. >> All right. Thank you. So, as we think about uh special education, you just heard um Jason Ray talk about our lessons from the field. So, as we think about next school year, um, as we reflect on family engagement, one of the things that we want to continue to do is to increase the training opportunities for our families and understanding the IEP process, their role as families, what they bring to the table, making sure that they have an understanding of the special education process so that they can do the best job in advocating for their son or daughter in that process. We also want
016to make sure that we're continuing to work hard to build staff capacity on collaboration and partnership. We've had a systemwide focus on that and our PR systemic principles meeting and we want to continue to enhance what does collaboration look like and making sure that we enhance our IEP structures to be more flexible and accessible for families at targeted schools. particularly as we look at our IEP parent survey and where we see um schools are not meeting the target the way we would we would expect based on either the actual survey data or our anecdotal comments that come with our IEP survey for specially designed instruction. We know that we have to address the inconsistencies of our SDI fidelity tools, our SDI look fors, and our SDI planning considerations to make sure that we're improving that
017instructional quality. Part of what we'll do here is strengthen our professional learning approach to make sure that we had differentiated pathways for different uh roles within our organization. So thinking about, you know, teachers who may be um teachers from 0 to three years, thinking about teachers from 3 to six years, thinking about career changes, but making sure that we're thinking about the different roles that our teams play. Um general educators, special educators, our support staff, and making sure that we have professional learning that addresses their role, but also that's differentiated. And then we want to make sure that as we roll out any training that we're looking at job embedded coaching as a followup. So we're not just doing kind of this sitand get approach but we're following up around coaching based on what we
018trained on and then offering more SDI exemplars and really having a laser focus of what this does this look like in actual practice. So really going out with our practitioner practitioners in this in the field doing video vignettes doing interviews but making sure that we're hearing directly from the field that will help um our co-eing partners as well as our various school-based settings how it looks to implement SDI. And then for inclusive practices, we know that we have to develop new strategies that reach and engage all staff and professional learning to really really deepen their understanding on how to implement those inclusive practices and making sure as you heard Jason Ray say to incorporate the student voice into the training around what does it mean to be inclusive and what does it mean to be
019included um in the school community. And so those are the adjustments that we're looking at for special education next year. Tonight, Miss Doren Hogan, supervisor of 504 and counseling, will provide an overview of the lessons learned and adjustments for our upcoming school year. >> Good afternoon, everyone. Again, our problem or practice that we introduced in September was um centered around 504 implementation um coupled with the difficulties of introducing a new platform in our new student information system um named Synergy. Um and we uh have several lessons from the field and several reflections and adjustments or next steps for next school year 2627. I'm going to I'm so grateful to have my amazing team here um this evening and I'm going to pass the baton to Brandon who's going to give us some reflections on lessons
020from the field. >> Thank you. Um this school year um the 504 office uh as Miss Hogan uh stated we switched over to Synergy SE and so there was a lot of lessons we learned. um our office put together a survey and sent it out to the counselors just to uh get their feedback because they're the individuals who's using the the platform the most. Some of the lessons we learned from our counselors were some of them expressed uh the ongoing uh confidence within this uh the system and many of them talked about the compliance and how everything is now is in one place. So that was a plus. Uh many of our counselors also identified that they needed some ongoing support as in this year we came up with learning labs where we uh almost
021every month we had different learning labs so counselors can sit in could come over to our office and kind of get uh one-on-one help and we also went to several different campuses and provided that one-on-one assistance for you know certain cases that may have been a little more extreme. Um some of the common um concerns also included the def the the difficulty with uh the parent view access and also uh some of the upcoming challenges with the electronic signatures. And so we uh met with uh Edging Point every week almost to try to uh rectify some of these issues that we kind of got into with uh the electronic signature and some of the other things. We also um ran into some of our counselors also said it would be very wise for us to
022come out and do some more trainings and also some of those refreshers for our principles and other staff members who may be uh transitioning over into synergy within the next school year as we expand from the 504 office and some of the upcoming um next steps. Dr. Orange, you want to take that? >> Sure. I apologize. Yes, good evening again. Um, some of our next steps and some things that we're planning are to increase our family engagement. We will send out the same synergy survey to the parents once they have access to use it. Um, we also talked about making sure that our professional learning focus on appropriate accommodations because the plan 504 plan isn't useful if the staff aren't actually implementing it. So we want to have more opportunities to reach our teachers as
023well as our professional school counselors so that they know and understand what accommodation should be implemented. Um also for inclusive practice practices and equitable access we want to make sure that we're doing our child fun correctly. So we'll have culturally responsive supports and increased accessibility for our multilingual families and not like oversight not miss students. We also want to make sure it's not mentioned here, but that we did with bullying as well, cuz we've had some cases this year where bullying um was impacted as a part of the 504 plan and behavior. Also, team collaboration. We want to make sure that we can um have access to school leadership so that we can improve collaboration among the school-based teams. And I think that was it. Equator access includes all programs and activities. So, those are
024our plans for next year. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, we are excited about the work that was completed this year and the success that our students had this year and look forward to building upon our services next year. Good evening. My name again is Latricia Gloucester and I proudly serve as the associate superintendent for the newly mented innovation and performance area. This year has been such a dynamic year, a year of of learning, a year of implementation, and a year that we are just simply excited and proud of of us being being able to create an area that is designed specifically for supporting our highest need schools. So as noted on our um as we shared back in September and I'll just reiterate today and remind us to ground us around our problem
025of practice. It was really around this idea of in what ways can the innovation and performance area establish and operationalize a coherent systemwide instructional leadership model that ensures consistent highquality teaching and learning across all of the 33 schools by strengthening principal supervision. um aligning support and accountability structures as well as building and strengthening the capacity of instructional leadership teams to drive measurable improvements for each and every learner. This year we did a lot of work with uh supporting our principles around defining what is an instructional leadership team. Uh we did a lot of work with our instructional directors so that they can receive very prescriptive uh professional learning with our partners with the University of Virginia. Um and we work with our cabinet members to help us align our supports around this 360deree holistic uh
026support model for our highest need schools. And from that work, we've been able to identify and align to what the University of Virginia has provided for us, this framework for support. Um, and that uh that identifies four specific layers. Um, systems leadership, support and accountability, talent management, as well as the instructional infrastructure. Um, so I'll unpack each of those from our lessons learned as well as what our next level of work will look like as we engage into next school year. Um so as we begin to think about systems leadership, this charges us with thinking about how can we as a cabinet and as central office members really create systems of support to ensure that our principles have access to the resources that are needed to support our teachers and ultimately our students. Um one
027of the things that we've leveraged this year um and we're still embarking upon you'll learn about is something called a well we did two things. won a district readiness assessment where we were able to engage in focus focus interviews and focus groups around each of these four levers. Um they from our superintendent, all of our chiefs, associate superintendent, principles and even teachers were interviewed to really give us a full scope around how each of these levers are impacting our work and then likewise how it's ultimately impacting student achievement. Um so we've replicated that same model with doing what's called school readiness assessments. And so we're doing that. We're in that phase now. Um so as we think about systems leadership, one of the thing that is revealing is that there is clarity around the vision.
028Dr. our our current interim superintendent superintendent has been clear about what our big rocks should be. Um but that variance that exists around the execution of that um is where our next level of work charges us to to to glean. And so as we think about that moving into next year um we want to establish a single coherent instructional leadership system where all departments are unified um and school experience framework. So where there's a clear through line across our big rocks. So from our innovation and performance zone to the work we're supporting with principles to their instructional leadership teams to classroom practices and then ultimately student outcomes. The next lever is around support and accountability. The next thing that we learned is there is some differentiated support um is a strength because we recognize that
029each of our schools and our leaders are at varied levels of of expertise, right? And so the extent to which we provide support has to be differentiated. And so we've done a lot of work around working with our principles, defining our coaching model and identifying the needs um holistically as well as um just kind of tiering them, right? Um and again there there's that variance in consistency as a gap. Um, we've also done a lot of work around supporting their CSI workbooks for our CSI schools as well as the school performance plans, our SPS for our ATSI schools. No matter what we call the plan, we recognize that it is a tool that guides us to the north star. And that's beyond just exiting the state designation. But how do we ensure sustainability of highquality
030access uh or highquality instruction and accessibility for each and every learner that is so we want to move from this notion of being compliance driven where it is a lived document where that you know school improvement plan or this or the CSI plan truly is a a guide a blueprint um for our principles to really leverage which has charged us as a team to create our own um implementation plan as well where we are modeling um how to leverage this at a blueprint so that we can reach our northstar as well. Um so as we think about excuse me the implications for our next level of work moving into next year um we recognize that again we have action planning that exists but we want to again move from compliance driven to being to a
031a true improvement document improvement source so that we can support our our leaders. Um so instructional directors will be providing meaningful coaching um setting expectations based upon the supervision that's varied across our area and then likewise being really clear about the distinction between supervision versus coaching around purpose around cadence and then those outcomes. The next lever is around talent management. talent management uh really is beyond just the recruitment and the retention, but likewise, how do we provide um clear professional learning? And we hear our superintendent, our interim superintendent speak a lot about job embedded learning and opportunities for for the for the human capital that currently exists in the district. And so what we've been able to do, we are very very excited and very proud to partner with our HR team to c what
032we've created is a very systematic and strategic hiring profile and hiring structure specifically for our highest need schools. Um, we know and the data has demonstrated that our our uh CSI and some of our ATSI schools um typically have had some of the highest um vacancies. And so what we've been we've targeted that by having targeted um recruitment fairs. You saw that back in October and November. Um we've been able to identify, you know, potential educators with early contracts and so now we're able to leverage them early. Um and so we're really really strengthening our um instructional leadership team framework so that once we have these new lead or new uh teachers on board we're able to not only keep them and sustain them but to create and build their capacity where they are pro
033providing the performance needed for our for our for our students. Um we're also again working with our principles around instructional leadership teams. That has been probably one of the hallmarks of our work this year. Um we really did a lot of work around defining what it is to be an instructional leadership team. Um from clarifying and communicating the goals, analyzing data, monitoring strategies, aligning our professional development and learning for teachers based upon what comes out of our observations and walkthroughs. um ensuring consistency and then translating what that means into into monitoring the impact. So, we're really really excited about what that looks like and what's to come into next year. And then finally, the final lever is around our instructional infrastructure. We've been working very closely with our cabinet members to help us really think
034about our instructional infrastructure around curriculum strategies, our assessment strategies, our um monitoring and then datadriven practices. Um what we recognized in going into schools is that our principles have a ton of autonomy. Um but you know there's it's like a double-edged opportunity, right? Because where principles have pro autonomy that does create the variance that we've seen, right? And so we really want to be clear about what is the vision for high quality instruction. How do we define that and what are the look for so that we can monitor what that what those supports should look like and likewise it'll help to frame the coaching that principles pro and assistant principles provide to teachers so that we can see the student outcomes. Um and then we so that that whole cyclical process is the is our
035next level of work into next year. So we're excited about the work we've done in the innovation and performance area and we look forward to partnering with each of you and others um to continue this work moving forward. Thank you so much. I turn the floor back over to you. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Ingred Williams Horton and I'm the director of community schools and I represent what it looks like or my office represents what it looks like to create a healthy village for which our families and students live. Our problem of practice today is regard is in regarding to we have experienced numerous successes scaling from 20 schools in the fall of 2019 to 147 schools in the fall of 2025. Staffing shifts over time require continuous re-education about community schools, how it
036differs from title one, what constitutes allowable expenses. Our growth has required us to leverage a new platform with our community with city span partnership that will allow us to collect impact data across the 13 wraparound services and optimize how we use resources across the 147 sites. We've had some lessons learned in the field of community schools and one of them has been rapid growth that requires intentional scaling of systems, staffing and infrastructure to maintain quality impact. So what we have found regarding the rapid scaling is that we have worked a lot and continuously with our community school coordinators and we've expanded and scaled those systems and structures over time. But also, we've noticed that we haven't we we haven't been really intentional about the systems and structures with not only our community school coordinators, but
037also our principles and our bookkeepers. Um, we want to make sure that we have and we look at manageable case loads for them. We align our resources that we have for our community schools as well as provide ongoing professional development not just for our community school coordinators but for our principles as well as our bookkeepers. Another lesson learned is um structured professional learning and how it is essential to maintain clarity and consistency and implementation especially as staffing occurs. We have learned that it's very very important that even though the staff may change the practices that we have in our community schools as well as the implementation should not change. So if we continuously re-engage re-educate all the players um community school principles, our community school coordinators as well as our bookkeepers if we're always re-educating
038them providing that professional development opportunity. Um that way we're creating sustainable systems and structures within our community schools that will last no matter whoever is in that place or whomever is in the school and community schools becomes part of the culture within that school system. Then we get into developing and implementing a data platform like city span. Um we were learning and we've noticed that we have our community schools and they do um look at the 13 wraparound services based on the needs assessments and their need um implementation plans. But we want to figure out or we want to know how are the schools utilizing the wraparound services to improve to improve schools. Um so how are we capturing that data? Who are the vendors in our schools? Who are they touching um in our
039schools? and what has been the impact on the um services our students are receiving. So we've done a a wide array array based on p per sorry procurement and purchasing. We worked with them and we got quotes from vendors and we looked at city span as a data platform for gathering that information on our students as well as the vendors and partners that we're looking at to see um what over time is the return on our investment. The adjustments that we're looking at for 2026 is to continuously look at our community school coordinator handbook and consider changing some of the demands of the position. We've heard time and time over and over again that some of the community school coordinators don't have a lot of time to u make adjustments to their workloads. Um what
040does the adjustments look like from one school to the next school? So we're going to look at the community schools handbook for the community school coordinators and make adjustments based on what they have said to us. We need to communicate communicate and have clear narrative of the impact of our stakeholders. So in instead of allowing others to um create our narrative, we need to use data to speak for what community schools is happening or what in PGCPS community schools look like, sound like, and feel like when you walk into our buildings. um we need to work on aligning our partners to specific wraparound services. So as we look at our 13 wraparound services, who are the vendors and partners that can provide those services and align them to the wraparound services, but not just the
041wraparound services, we can also align them to the six pillars and see the correlations and provide that to not just the partners but possibly to our community school coordinators as well as our community schools. Um, we have been providing monthly professional development to the coordinators, but again, you heard me speak about providing and offering that opportunity to our principles and our parent engagement assistants and bookkeepers to provide that through line. If everyone is hearing the same information and they're getting the same information, then we can make sure that we're re-educating as well as helping everyone to understand the systems and structures and really understand the why of how community schools can help change the community and also help our students achieve academically. Set consistent communication. How are we going to communicate with everyone in our
042system? have weekly internal check-ins with our central office teams, monthly with our principles and associate principles, but not just that, we can also communicate with all of our other departments. We're constantly thinking about how can we break down silos that will benefit all of our students and families within the systems that we work. Then we were talking or we're looking at next year is piloting ideas with a small group of schools before rolling out span. C-SPAN is a long overhaul and we've been working with it, but we don't know how well it will work. Um, just rolling it out quickly. Instead, we were going to look at a small group of schools and have them pilot City Span with the vendors and the partners and then take the work take the work we've done with
043the pilot schools and make changes and adjustments before rolling it out in August. The last adjustment that we'd like to look at is ongoing training and support. Developing reference guides as well as short videos because sometimes everyone is not able to attend training virtually or in person. So creating those supports to make sure that they're available in multiple media options so that we can ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate. Thank you and we look forward to working with everyone here on this um media outlet as well as in the future going to share with you an update at this point in the year on our dibbles data. So we have been able to share our beginning of year and middle of year dibbles updates with you. I just wanted to share an overview
044um that we've been looking at trend and patterns over the last several years. So this is the fourth year that we have been using our Dibbles universal screener assessment to identify students who are at risk for reading difficulty. Uh and that our four-year trend is showing um some significant improvement in our students who are achieving at and above benchmark performance. So across our four years, we've seen an average of 10% across all four grade levels in our students who are achieving at and above benchmark. When looking at our national trend, Prince George's County is still slightly below the national uh trend performance of their peers across the nation. When we look at students who are in the well below benchmark, we see about uh 39% of our students, which is about 9% higher than the
045average across the nation of our students still remaining in that well below uh benchmark. And then about 47% of our students in the AT and above in our grades K to three, which is still about 8% lower than their peers uh across the nation. In looking at the subtests that have persistently been underperforming, so our kindergarters and phmic awareness, specifically our phone segmentation, where students have to sound out uh syllables in the words. uh in April, we were able to share with you some specific data on what that looks like and what the rigor is for that subtest. However, looking at that four-year trend, uh we have had between 74% and we have decreased that to about 57% of our students at the middle of year able to uh demonstrate at and above uh proficiency
046on that subtest. So, we are making improvement. Um it's just not quite where we want it to be. So emphasizing uh those phone name segmentation skills with our kindergarten students. Uh additionally in in first grade our letter sounds or our nonsense word fluency having students uh being able to read using those phonetic sounds, those nonsense words. In April we also shared with you the oral reading fluency trend. Uh we are looking at a good pattern when we look at accuracy. So students reading the words um accurately. What we're looking at um is not a strong trend in students being able to read the number of words uh that need to in uh the amount of time that they have. So that's designated as our oral reading fluency or number of words that students are reading
047correctly per minute. Then in third grade we're looking at uh persistent unperforming of our reading comprehension. And so the reason that that is something that we are keeping track of is because that also lends itself to our students on our MCAP assessment in third grade uh where they have to read many passages and answer select a response questions for those passages and then write about those passages. So our reading comprehension is showing um an increase over time. However, it's not quite where we need it to be with our third grade students. So some things that we are looking at uh adjustments being made in schools or in our training continuing to provide uh scoring refresher training for our teachers who are administering our dibbles assessments to make sure that when they are administering those they
048are recording those results with fidelity so we have accurate scoring to look at. continuing to work with our Amplify vendor to offer coaching support training and intervention services to our schools. Uh we have many schools that are taking advantage of that initiative and we want to continue that where schools are having the ability to have a hands-on coach or something working uh directly with their teachers and providing some of those supports on the subtests that we see that are lower performing. And then continuing to ride family engagement nights to review our uh home reports that go home to help parents understand some of these subtests and where their children are performing and then how that data is being used in the classroom to improve reading instruction and hopefully lending thatself to comprehension in later grades.
049For our benchmarks, we're also seeing very positive trends across both our reading and mathematics benchmarks. We've been able to share both the beginning of year in December and then our middle of year in April that we're looking at uh between a six and almost a 9% gain in both reading and mathematics. So, we had more of a measurable gain in our mathematics assessments, which is a great trend to see. This is the sixth year that we have been administering our benchmark program to our students. Uh for several years, we were pretty stagnant, especially in our middle school grades. To to see a three-year average um 8 and a half% gain across our mathematics assessments is definitely a positive trend that we want to see. We definitely have seen um some measurable growth uh and both
050our middle school and high school students on our benchmark assessments. When focusing on reading, we have also seen a gain of 5.7 percentage points across all grade levels. Uh we are noticing and you'll see that in the last bullet that students have improved on their written constructed responses. And so that is having a direct uh correlation to the increases that we're seeing in both reading and mathematics. Uh the grade levels that we have seen some demonstrated improvement on our benchmarks. uh and the most noteworthy gain have been grades three, four and five in elementary. Our high school mathematics and geometry, quantitative modeling, and algebra 2. And then in our reading, we've seen uh significant uh changes and gains in grades 3, 5, and 8, as well as our high school grade 10. So, in looking
051at our benchmarks, we very closely monitor looking at how students are writing. uh writing has been a uh initiative that our district has focused on this year and looking at strengthening not only uh students writing ability but their ability to write about the text that they're reading. And so one of the things that we have been looking at across our elementary to high school are written conventions and expressions uh and also our uh overall zero scores. And so across both of those conventions and expressions on our rubric scores as well as uh students scoring zeros, we have seen improvements in all three of those areas. In mathematics, very similar. We have been looking at our modeling and reasoning constructive responses and we have seen noticeable gains uh using those rubric scores for those as well
052as well as less overall zero scores for written items. So the initiatives that we are putting in place in schools to support students and their writing is definitely having a positive impact on not only our benchmark scores but things that we're seeing coming out of the classroom from writing as well. Some of the things that we are going to adjust or keep in mind uh as we continue with our benchmark program next school year is continued training. We did implement the automated scoring engine for our reading benchmarks this year. So, we want to continue to train teachers about the instructional implications and providing student feedback with those automated scores. We want to continue to rise the prompts that we are giving to students and align those with our updated MCAP expectations. We want to provide
053uh more exemplar student responses to our vendor to continue to improve the automated scoring engine. And then we also want to do an internal audit to check our rubric scoring alignment to make sure that the rubrics that we are using on our benchmarks are also similar rubrics and expectations in the classroom. So we have an alignment between those. We want to make sure that our benchmarks for math uh are not just being implemented as assessments in the classroom but as instructional tools. Uh and they should also be used as our end of unitit assessments to inform progress across time. We will continue to revise our math items. We are going to be experiencing a uh scope and uh sequence change for our elementary and middle school math grades next year from the MSDE policy. So
054we have revised and are in the process of aligning our items on our benchmarks to make sure that we are aligning ourselves with our state expectations uh as well as aligning our assessment items with grade level competencies defined in the numerousy development framework. Right. Hello everyone. Um I'm here to talk about chronic absenteeism today. I know my colleague uh Anthony Whittington had presented um some of the data that we had worked on regarding chronic absenteeism uh and its relation to course grades as well as just about chronic absenteeism in itself. So some lessons uh on this topic this year. Um the main thing we showed is there's a direct correlation between attendance and academic performance. Um across the the three different grade level spans that we looked at elementary, middle, and high school. We saw
055a consistent story that uh students who were not chronically absent who were coming to school on a regular basis achieved higher grades. We showed the grade distribution and fail rates that that demonstrated that. Uh we talked a little bit about some of the differences between the grade spans but the overall uh trend was the same. Um I I believe uh Mr. Whittington also spoke about uh chronic absenteeism is a measure on the report card worth 15% of the total report card score. So it is a um pretty critical metric in that report card measure. uh some adjustments uh or next steps for the next school year. Um one big one that our office will be working on is we're going to be enhancing the district performance dashboards. We had come out with the uh public
056facing dashboards for this school year. Uh that was you know is available to um any member of the public. It's just live on the website uh or anyone who wants to use it including staff members. Uh but one uh enhancement we really wanted to do was as we're having more uh school-based staff and central office staff use the dashboard to kind of have a a little one-stop shop of um useful metrics to kind of keep an eye on what's going on in in an individual school is that um right now it's only public facing. So it's it's really nice to see the big summary level data. Uh but if you're a school-based staff trying to drill down deeper and and kind of get to that next level of uh specificity about um you know an
057individual student for example it's not going to be there on the public facing one. So what we are building is we're going to build an internal version uh for employees only uh for folks that have the right security uh access and all that to be able to drill down in different ways and especially to see those that that student level information in that dashboard. Um furthermore, we're going to continue to focus on our specialized subgroups. uh multilingual learners and students with disabilities are kind of two of the big rocks that I know um our district is focused on right now. Um those two groups do happen to have higher chronic absenteeism rates on average than other students. Um so they're important groups to keep an eye on as we continue with this work. Um they're
058really some key performance indicators for us. Uh and also, you know, we're going to continue integrating this data together, the GR course grades and attendance um and continue to monitor this link between attendance and core content pass rates that we had discussed earlier. Uh it would be great to get to use these things to kind of provide early warning and and a a you know faster heads up for schoolbased staff in particular to be able to see if a student's grades are dropping or or if we see um attendance slipping for that student. you know, how can we see those developments happening uh in real time early on and and be able to put in interventions in place uh to help kind of get that student back on track. So, those are some of the
059things we're working on. Thank you. >> Thank you all. So, as you heard, we have lots of lessons learned um this year that will carry over into our work for next year. So we can take um any questions that you all have. >> All right. Thank you so much um Dr. McDaniel and thank you to the team for the presentation um and just the thoroughess of it all. Um board members, if there are any questions, please raise your hand and I will acknowledge you in the order of your raised hand. We'll have two and a half minutes for the first two rounds and if there's a desire for a third round, we'll vote um and then we can move forward with that. So are there any questions? Um, board member Oliva. >> Thank you so
060much, Chair Briggs. Um, thank you everyone for the these um really uh in-depth presentations um that I really appreciated. I had um one question around the references to synergy/parent view and the um I wanted to make sure I was understanding correctly that um am I understanding correctly that IEPs and or 504s and those accommodations are now uploaded into synergy for all teachers for the students teachers to to see those kind of as a a one-stop shop. Um, or did I misunderstand that with the references to synergy and parent view? >> Vine, you want to answer or you want me to answer? >> Let's say for the >> I think it was uh for the 504 offices. Um, >> okay. Yes. >> Yeah. Everything for our we now use synergy SE and so for synergy SE
061uh all the 504s are uploaded through uh synergy. Teachers can see it if they go to their attendance when they go to attendance roster it is say 504 and they can actually click on it and see the uh actual 504. And we're currently still waiting for the roll out for parents. Uh hopefully by next school year parents will be able to see the 504 too through parent view. Um this school year we've been able to do parent view like signatures so they can actually sign electronically through parent view and not having to uh you know all of them would like come into the building and sign. So hopefully by next year that it'll be rolled out you know where they can see it um parents can see it uh on parent view but for as
062of now 504s are all on synergy SE. >> Okay. And are IPs there also? I know that's not you, Dr. Thompson, but who who would Dr. Miss Bowman? >> Hi. No, not at this time. It's on it's still on the Maryland Online IEP, but there is a review taking place statewide to look at the Maryland online IEP. And one of the >> major drivers um was from the blueprint uh special ed recommendations and from our family community about being able to access Maryland online. I know that's one of the pieces that the state is looking at as they look to continue with the current system we have or if they're going to make changes to it. >> Okay. So, um I'm sorry. Do um Vice Chair Briggs, do you mind if I go over and
063just do a follow-up question? >> No problem. >> Thank you. Um, so my understanding, Miss Bowman, then that that is a a state decision for the IE for where the IEPs are housed and not necessarily our we would have to to move those over also to Synergy. We would need state permission to do that. Is that my understanding? >> Yes, because the U Maryland State Department of Education pays for the Maryland online system that we utilize. >> Thank you very much. I appreciate that. >> Okay, that's all. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you so much um student member of the board Ajakay. >> Yes. Thank you. Um and thank you so much everybody for creating like this wonderful presentation. My first question well it's more like just like a suggestion really um it's concerning
064like the benchmark data. So um we take like students also take uh what is it called national exams such as like the college board AP exams or like the SAT and the ACT. And usually like one of the questions that is asked at the very end of those exams is like oh any feedback or any um anything that you'd like to like say at the very end like whether it's about the questions, how much time you had, things like that. So, um I know the first bullet point for like adjustments for the next steps for next year was like training for teachers about instructional implications and providing student feedback after AI scoring. But, um also like to suggest that we ask students how they're feeling about these MCAP exams or the questions and the trainings
065that they're receiving during the year to prepare them for the exam at the end. And then my other um like question or more so suggestion for the presentation for next school year. So we heard like all the things that were learned in the field this year, but um to better enhance the presentation like it would be helpful to see what the goals were for the you know current school year to like the lessons that were learned in the field and like the outlook for the future as well. Um that's pretty much it for me. Thank you so much everyone. >> Thank you so much. And I'm not sure if anyone had something to say back there. It sounds like it was a general um statement. Um, board member Boozer Shrether. >> Yeah, thank you so
066much. Thank you so much for the presentation. So, I think my my questions are jumping around to different presenters. So one um is around special education. The now that we have the OMBbudsman's office, I wanted to get clarity on the communications pathway because for the last year or so, we've had this very helpful specific form to have communication direct to the special education department um to to get parent support. and I wanted to understand how those two two are intersecting now and what the communications pathway advice is. Um that's one question. The other is under community schools. Um I'm still experiencing a lot of variance in the schools. Um, and I could speak to district three around kind of what what the intersection of the around this whole concept of shared leadership around the parent
067engagement assistant community schools coordinators and the parent parent teacher organizations whether those are formal or parent leaders who are highly involved. how how they're intersecting and how they see themselves supporting each other or some who feel like that they have zero intersection. And I was wondering if at some point this could evolve into having more public documents that explain how it should look in a school. So if you're a new PTA leader, you would understand how the these are all intersecting and what the roles are and how to work together. Um and then the third is jumping to Dibbles and elementary school, the use of Chromebooks. Um the the reduction of screen time. There's definitely continued surge of elementary parents, particularly K2 3 that want less access to those Chromebooks and iPads. They don't want
068them as a reward to spend like when they have extra time. They don't want them use during recess. They just want less screen time because they believe it will help improve literacy. And so I was wondering if the some feedback on that as well. Thanks. Those are my questions. So I'll take the first one just around how the unbudsman office is interacting with the department of special education. So um Dr. Wilson has released information about the embuzzman's office and kind of a chain of command that um families should follow and also how to log concerns. when she gets a concern, she is if it's around special ed, depending on what it is, we are working collaboratively with our family support center to triage what that concern is and determine what those next steps will be
069as well as um the area office, other stakeholders around the system. when she brings on her um specialist that will be coming on board pretty soon hopefully. Then we'll have a followup with our family support center because that is a line of communication that we need to um really tease out in terms of what the concern is. When does it go to the unbudsman office? When does it go to the family support center? We have our person in place. We're just waiting on that second person to get to the unbudsman office that will have a focus on special education. Once that person is on boarded, then we will release um additional communication out to our families around what that engagement looks like, what that follow-up process will be and then how we'll engage. Right now,
070anything coming into the unbudsman office is being triaged and then that office is then communicating to the department of special ed if follow-up is needed. So, they have had several meetings with our family engagement uh staff to provide support. So, it's going well so far, but we definitely need to release that communication on a website for our special ed families in particular. >> I'll take the second one for community schools. Um, thank you for that question, board member Booster Shrethers. Um, the office of community schools is beginning to collaborate with the department of family and school partnerships with Dr. Sheila Jackson um to we're we're working together and making plans on having the parent engagement assistants work collaboratively with the community school coordinators to talk about how their jobs are not different but they're the
071same and we want the same things. We want to ensure that our students and families are getting all the services they need. So um we're going to be working on that that alignment or that I job my job your job and our job this summer. And then we're going to also be incorporating them into our professional development opportunities for the upcoming school year. Um the part about families and having more voice in that shared decision making that is another focus of our summer series working with the community school coordinators and throughout the school year next year to work with their um principles as well. So working on how do we get parents to come in? How do we get their voice and where's that what does that documentation look like for family voice too? So
072that's a work in progress for us and we are making plans this summer to help incorporate that into our community school strategy. I can respond to the Dibbles question. So our Dibbles assessment is a paper pencil based test. So, the four subtests are four one minute uh time tests that a student will have a paper um in front of them or the teacher will read uh whatever the subtest is allowed to the student if they don't have the paper in front of them. Um but as far as less time on devices, um we've definitely been speaking with our uh intervention, our tutoring and intervention uh vendors and working on uh you know less screen time, less time on an intervention and more time in working with an actual um person as in a coach or
073an interventionist or a tutor. Um and then I'll also let uh Dr. McDaniel um highlight any of the specific vendors that are moving towards more of a uh person-toperson coaching or intervention model as opposed to a online intervention model. >> Yeah, one of the things we're really focused on um within intervention and the classroom is really truly balanced instruction for our students. So both those high-tech and low tech ways of making sure that we're reaching students and that we have the opportunity for um teachers to understand when to use each and really have that great balance. Um many of the partnerships that we're exploring are to bring in actual tutors like actual physical people into our buildings to provide that high dosage tutoring. And so we're looking um at a couple different partnerships that hopefully
074will pan out for beginning next school year to really serve as that additional support to our students. So, not only will they get um support from the interventionist within their building, some both high and low tech um components of the interventions that we purchase, but also through our partnerships with different organizations and universities of actually bringing physical uh human tutors into our buildings. >> Okay, I think those are all the question. >> Great. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Okay, thank you so much. Um, board members, other questions? Okay, I had a really quick one. Um, and this was more for So, I heard from community schools about how innovation fits into their plans, but I didn't really hear, and maybe I did, and you can correct me here if I if I just missed
075it. I didn't really hear it in the other ones. And I know I love the idea of variance not being a thing, right? We're standardizing and saying every school is getting the same resources. But I guess also I'm thinking philosophically schools are going to be different because the demographics are different right the students and the challenges that you face in one region is going to be different from the other regions. Um and also I think variance I was thinking sometimes is a good thing because it leads towards innovation right when you have those uh differentiated tools or resources that you are implementing you get um data back that says these things work here and can we expand or scale those things and advance best practices. So, I was just curious like with some of these
076plans as we're thinking about variance and moving forward with that um you know that philosophy, where does innovation sit within that that realm? >> Thank you, Chairman Briggs, for that question. Uh the office of innovation and performance specifically is working closely with the community schools office to really think about how to leverage the resources that schools have access to to think about how to support the highest needs um in their buildings. Um we're very fortunate that that resource and that through line exists. Um but we're working closely thinking about you know in what ways can they leverage those resources to support the big rocks that we've created that are aligned to um that have been birthed from the data that we've um been able to disagregate and likewise in alignment to the big rocks that
077our interim superintendent has articulated for us through the year. Um so we're looking at um accelerated academic access for each and every learner. Um so oftentimes we see um opportunities or resources coming in where our principles are looking at afterchool programming um uh beyond just interventions where we have the the um tutoring that's happening throughout the school day but likewise what are um extension opportunities where we are increasing it for students who are performing at high levels already. Um the second area is around chronic absenteeism. We know that that is an issue at all three areas, elementary, middle, and high school. And so what are some possible partnerships that we can leverage using the community school resources as well as our community school specialists to help us think about how to mitigate that. Um, one
078of the things that we've done this school year beyond the school readiness assessment is particularly in our ATSI schools prior to the um, insight to impact days, we had um, quarterly milestone um, data sessions at the schools um, and our community school partners are present um, and we're thinking about, you know, in what ways can we tackle this this bear of sorts around chronic absenteeism. we know that that's directly aligned to student engagement. Um so we're thinking about ways to leverage our community school resources to to impact that. Um the third piece is around talent management which we talked a lot about already. We've seen a lot of the resources there um around um professional learning in the schools. We know a lot of our principles have um contracted with partners to help them think
079about how to strengthen PLC's, how to strengthen instructional leadership teams. But our work um is to really streamline that so that while there has been some variance as I spoke to before, how can we create an opportunity where there is a clear vision around how we define instructional leadership teams and what are the specific parameters that we're looking for? Um and so you know again aligning professional development, ensuring consistency, monitoring strategies, um clarifying and communicating expectations are all those areas that we're looking at. And then the final piece is the exit strategy. um community schools has done a really good job with helping us to think about um you know while we do have these resources in play we have to be very clear that it's all toward this exit strategy um and sustaining um
080being out of this designation um so I'm happy to to pass it to Ingret a little bit more to expand that but you know our framework around accelerating access um for high quality instruction, chronic absences and talent management and um a strategy for ex designation has really been the frame that we've been leveraging to work closely with community schools to support each of our schools in the innovation performance zone. >> Okay. And I think I got with the community schools piece like the p right piloting I'm thinking is we're going to test it out. We're going to see what works, right? And we know that everything that we test is not going to work. have assumptions and so I kind of was looking for something analogous to that if that were happening and I know
081that that doesn't fit necessarily with all of the context of the different departments but um Dr. >> Faison >> yeah I would just add one another example is the um consideration of everyday labs so Dr. Ingred and our office and Dr. Gloucester. Um we've um worked this year to really look at everyday labs and see if it is a viable solution. Um a couple of years ago we had all here um and it was a platform that utilized um AI to communicate with families our messaging around attendance. Um it also allowed families to have that birectional conversation back with the schools and say this is a barrier that's a barrier and allowed us an opportunity to extend the arms of our human capital. And so we've had a couple of presentations with Dr. Gloucester and
082some of the schools in the innovation zone and Dr. Ingred as well to see if this is an innovative um platform that we can use to support um those schools around reducing chronic absenteeism. So that's just one another one example. >> Thank you so much. Um and then Dr. Williams. >> Thank you board member Briggs. Um I'd like to also thank my colleagues for lifting up community schools. Um we also not just work together and collaboratively with one another, but when we do experience um vendors or partners that would support the innovation that is occurring in our schools, um we have weekly and sometimes bi-weekly opportunities for vendors to speak specifically to the community schools about what they have to offer in order for them to match whatever the school's needs according to their uh
083needs assessments as well as their implementation plans. Um and I can also speak to we have gotten um to the RFPs. So the schools can look at the uh the vendors and the partners that have um participated in the RFP and try to align them to the work that they've been putting forward or what they're looking to do as far as not just academics but the whole child model to ensure that our children and our families are successful in their community. So they have that opportunity as well. member breaks, you're muted. >> Thank you for that. Um, thank you to everyone for um your responses and um board members, any other questions. >> All right, seeing none, um we're going to move to adjournment. So, I'd like to inform the public that the next virtual
084academic achievement committee meeting will be on June 15th. um at 5:30m. Please continue to check the Prince George's County Board of Education website for meeting information and updates. I want to thank you all for the great presentations and your attendance. To our viewers, thank you for watching. There being no further business, the time is now 6:44 p.m. and the May 11, 2026 academic achievement committee meeting is adjourned. Thank you so much again for coming. >> Thank you.