001Okay. So, good evening and welcome to the December 15, 2025 academic achievement committee meeting. I'm Jonathan Briggs, District 2 representative and chair of the Academic Achievement Committee. It is a pleasure to welcome you to our meeting. I hope everyone had a great weekend and is ready to get started tonight. >> We are pleased to have with us this evening Dr. Judith White, chief academic officer. Dr. Douglas Strader, chief of accountability, Dr. Kia White, Dr. Dr. Kia McDaniel, who is clearly very popular tonight, uh, director of curriculum and instruction. Dr. Jamie Bowers, director of testing, uh, research and evaluation. Mr. Anthony Whittington, instructional supervisor for elementary, uh, reading and English language arts. Uh, Mr. Benjamin Levinger, data management and accountability uh, strategy lead, and Dr. Lori Maselene from the Office of Research um, testing and evaluation,
002who will be leading tonight's presentation. For those unable to join us live, a recording will be available on the PGCPS YouTube channel and on the Diligent website. We will now proceed to the roll call. Miss Johnson, please call the role. >> Mr. Briggs, >> present. >> Miss Boozer Strer, >> present. >> Mrs. Olivo, Miss Goins McCay, >> present. You have three present. >> Thank you so much. A quorum is present. Uh we'll move on to adoption of the December 15th meeting agenda. If there are no objections, the committee shall adopt the December 15, 2025 meeting agenda. There being no objections, the meeting agenda is adopted. We'll now move to the approval of committee meeting minutes. Um, so if there are no corrections, the committee shall approve the November 10, 2025 meeting minutes as distributed. Okay,
003there being no corrections, the meeting minutes are approved. And for this evening, there are no registered public comment speakers. Um, but of course, we always welcome you to join to share uh because your voice is very important in shaping our policy outcomes and our academic uh instructional practices. So, always want to say that um please, you know, sign up and share your uh your your testimony with us. So, with that being said, we're going to uh start our first presentation, which is beginning of the year dibbles and benchmark one data review presentation. I will now yield the floor to Dr. White, chief academic officer, to introduce agenda item 6.1, beginning of year dibbles and benchmark one data review presentation. So good evening everyone and happy week before holidays as we countdown. So this night tonight,
004you know, twice a year we take time to look back at our data of where we are at a snapshot in that moment in time. So tonight we're going to start with our benchmarks, go a little bit into our dibbles data and then the amplify tutoring. Um then we'll take questions and then we'll go into the second part of our data. So with that I turn it over to Dr. Jamie Bowers. Good evening board members. I'm going to share with you um two separate um presentations all part of one slideshow. We're going to talk about our beginning of year dibbles student performance and we're going to talk about our preliminary benchmark one student performance. Just to share some participation rates. Uh we did end our beginning of year dibbles testing at the end of October
005and we had a 98% completion rate. Just a reminder, this assessment is a state required assessment as used by our uh district for to satisfy the universal screener requirement for the state. So that's why we always have a very high participation rate of all schools on this assessment. We had a total of 36,893 students that completed and over 35 of our elementary K to8 schools had a 100% completion rate. In our district, we also administer Elector, which is the Spanish version of our Dibbles assessment to three of our immersion schools. So, we had a 100% completion rate and about 631 students at those three schools take the Elector Dibbles version. Looking at our beginning of year performance, this is year four for our district administering Dibbles. And just as a caveat, Amplify, who is the
006vendor that uh has the Dibbles assessment, did change um data reporting platform this year. So the reporting does look slightly different. However, um it's very similar to how it's been in the past. So just as a note. So if you look at all of our grade levels, we are approaching for our number of students who are at or above benchmark that 50% mark with our students in grade two and grade three being very close at 48 and 49 percentage points respectively for students who are at or above the benchmark in those grade levels. Following up with grade 1 at 46% of our first graders either at or above and then 43% of our students at the beginning of year who are at or above. Looking at our 2-year trend comparison, we did see a slight
007decrease in the number of kindergarten students who were above the benchmark. Um, which is not unusual. Um, we have new kindergarteners um coming into the building, some of which had not been in a formalized schooling. So um only seeing a 1 percentage point drop is not um a huge drop but an average over time of our kindergarten rates we have seen an increase of about six percentage points over time with our kindergarten students at the beginning of year pres uh dibbles for grade 1. We saw no change um respectively. We had about the same number of students who were in both of those at and above uh performance levels at the beginning of year. And then in grades two and three we did see an increase in uh our above uh performance levels which is
008a great thing to see. Specifically in grade two we saw three percentage point increase of our second graders and above. And then in grade three we saw an increase of our students who were at and above. And both of those uh percentage points for our um at and above students. Looking at our electoral again, we had about 630 students. So you can see the number of students by each grade level that were at and above benchmark. So each of those uh grade levels are above our 50% mark. Um and our kindergarteners impressively are about 71% of those students achieved at or above on the lector dibbles beginning of year assessment. When we look at our students um by grade level who um composite scores, we did see a slight decrease in the lector in our
009students in grades K in the above and then a slight decrease in our students in first grade at the AT benchmark. But again, like our um traditional Dibbles 8 assessment for our district, we saw an increase um in our grade two and three and our students who were at and above. Looking more specifically at our two student groups that we're focusing on in the district as part of our big rocks, we have our students with disabilities. Uh looking at across the board um our composite score, we're seeing about 32% of our students who have been identified as special education and are at or above. And then you can see below the breakdown of that. We have the highest number of students in grades K that have special education as an identification who are in our
010at or above categories. uh and then secondly would be our grade 1 and then grade two and grade three. Also looking at our students who are identified as multilingual learner, we have about 24% of our students who are achieving at or above uh in the beginning of year at and above for dipples. And then if you look at a breakdown of our grade levels, you kind of see an opposite trend. Um, which is probably not surprising as you know, our students who are coming in at kindergarten and grade 1 um are probably more um less fluent in English. And so as our students are going um are experiencing more and more um open, you know, instruction to English. And so you can see as the grade levels go up, so do our students in grades
011two and three in their at and above performance. Looking at our students who are in that yellow band or those students who are just on the cusp, who are not quite at benchmark but almost there, we always look at our students who are right on the cusp with six composite points or less away from being um at benchmark. So if you look across the grades at the bottom, the numbers and percentage points that are highlighted in green are showing growth over the last three years that we've been looking at this data. So our kindergarten students and our third grade students are u moving closer to having more of those students at the cusp and almost at uh the benchmark. Our first grade students again are remaining pretty um stagnant, not a whole lot of change.
012And then our second grade students slightly declined from the year prior but it was only by one percentage point. So looking at uh first grade uh second grade we have between you know 46 and 64% of our students. So almost half of our students who were on the cusp um who we would hopefully see at our midyear point um either being at benchmarker or much closer to that at benchmark. Lastly, looking at our highlights from dibbles from this time last year to this time this year, we saw increases across the board with the exception of our oral reading fluency at grade 1, but again, that was a very slight decrease of one percentage point. And I did want to highlight that for the last couple years, we've seen a decrease at the beginning of year
013for kindergarteners and phenemic awareness. uh and this year we actually experienced a two percentage point increase uh with our kindergarteners in their phmic awareness or their phone segmentation and that's one of the uh subtests that our district has specifically been looking at and targeting with our early readers. So as of now we're seeing a very good um snapshot of how our beginning of year uh early literacy readers are performing. Jamie, just before you go on, can you name um just so that we have it on the record in case someone's listening, when is our beginning of the year and when do we do our next administration? Like what's the timeline? >> Sure. Let me go back. Um, so our beginning of year window is from September 22nd to October 16th. Our middle of year is
014from January 12th to February 10th and our end of year is April 27th to May 29th. Thank you. Sure. >> So just one piece before um Dr. McDaniel um and Simone share some information about our tutoring program um and our interventions. We have many schools that are really getting excited about data in their schools and building their data literacy. So I did want to highlight two schools um Hills and Edward Felagy who had some really nice um goal walls established for their dibbles data. Uh and so at Crity Hills, they're looking at the different um four performance levels for students and kind of charting how students are moving from beginning of year to end of year. And then on the right hand side, you'll see that they had individual students writing some of those goals
015out for themselves as they move along that continuum. And then at Edward Fellowy, they actually have classroom goals. You can't see those in little pocket charts, but they had um teachers writing goals um with their groups of students and looking at how they're moving um from those lower performance levels of um well below and below to um having more students in those at and above benchmarks. So, I just wanted to showcase those two schools who are doing a great job keeping track of uh data with their students and parents and families. And I'll turn it over to Dr. McDaniel. >> Yeah. And so along those same lines, data literacy is really important when we think about um our dibbles data. Not only for our students to know their own data and families to understand where
016their children are, but for schools to be constantly using the data to improve instruction and know where students are instructionally. So Lquita Reed, who's on the call this evening, she is our literacy data coordinator. And so she um sends out data emails to principles individually um after each administration so that they can see their data and um how students are performing. And so she sends out those emails um to principles so they can see how their students are performing. And then the instructional directors in the area one office get an overview of how their cluster is performing so that they are able to um see what how their students are overall and have instructional make instructional decisions around how students are performing. Jamie, can we get back up our um let's see our literacy data
017slide. I just want to show a snapshot of what schools are receiving from slide 22. Yeah, we can go to the next slide. So here you'll see this is just an example of a graphic image that's sent to each principal as it relates to their individual data. So they get lots of training um from Jaime's team, from Simone's team. Uh Simone is digging in with her um teacher court, her reading specialists on how um students are performing. But this one snapshot really gives the full picture of how students are performing at a a place in time. So you can see here at the beginning of the year they could see how many students were above at level below and below well below. We use the same coloring system as the um individual assessments use just
018to keep it all similar and familiar to them. But this providing this graphic gives them the overview in one place of how their students are performing and they can have these discussions in their collaborative planning as teachers are um they're having discussions around how students are doing overall and then just the instructional decisions they are making um within their school. So Simone's going to walk us through um amplify high impact tutoring and um how that supports our doubles data as well. Thank you. So this year we are excited that we're able to continue with Amplify um high impact tutoring. Amplify tutoring is aligned to MClass Dibbles um or Amplify MClclass Dibbles. the students who are participating this year. We have a focus on first, second and third um with most of the students uh sitting
019in first and second. Amplified tutoring takes place um at least three times a week for 30 minutes a day. Uh the students the tutoring is done virtually and uh the students have a certain time that they log in with their live virtual tutor. Uh the within the tutoring um sessions, teachers are able to actually do learning walks to see exactly what is happening during tutoring. Um, this program is something that we currently have in 30 of our schools this year, uh, with two additional schools, um, focusing on first and second in our lab classrooms. If you go to the next slide. So, this year, as I mentioned, our tutoring is focused on first, second, and third grade. And our focus is in looking at those students who are well below benchmark and below benchmark. So
020you could see from the red shadings here that uh we have that is our targeted population and those are those students who are currently receiving services. And with that I will turn it over to uh Dr. um >> it's me again. Oh yes to go over the benchmark results. So I wanted to just briefly share a preliminary review of our benchmark results. So this is year six for our um reading mathematics benchmarks that we've been administering in our district. Uh we administer uh for grades grade three through high school. For reading and mathematics we administer um in grades kindergarten through high school. Um our performance levels have not changed. We still report in four performance levels uh are emerging, developing on track and advanced learners. This year we had about 164,000 reading uh and mathematics
021benchmark assessments that were completed and that's about an increase of 400 um for this time last year uh and about 2,300 from two years ago at this time. So for our reading uh benchmarks, we also are utilizing the Pearson um artificial intelligence scoring engine this year for the first time uh to alleviate some of our reading teachers from the uh hand scoring that we've been doing. So our constructed responses each reading assessment consists of one constructed response. So each of those constructed responses were put through the Pearson automated scoring engine which is the same scoring engine that is used on our MCAP state assessments. And so each of those relay tests had one constructed response that was scored using that automated engine this year. mathematics. Uh Pearson is still piloting a program to look at
022our um mathematics responses because our modeling and reasoning um have multi-parts to them. And so Pearson um currently doesn't have a platform that's able to score those, but they are working on that. And hopefully we will be to a point next year we'll be able to utilize the automated scoring engine for our mathematics as well. So just a high level overview of our results. Uh we did show improvement across both reading and mathematics um from the year prior. Uh which means that we're also showing um a really nice increase from two and three years ago on our benchmark programs. So in reading we had improvement across all of the grade levels and courses and reading. And mathematics we were able to show an improvement across most of our courses. uh we had about a 5.1
023percentage point increase in language arts and we had a 5.7 percentage point increase in mathematics. So really nice um growth that we were making gains um for the year prior. In our reading we had the most measurable gains were experience at grades 3 5 7 8 9 and 10. And then in mathematics, our most measurable gains were grades three, four, five, seven, eight. Uh, and our high school mathematics made some really nice improvements in geometry, quantitative modeling, and algebra 2. So, we did see positive performance on both the constructive response items in reading as well as mathematics in the modeling and reasoning. uh and we know when students are have improved writing um passages on their benchmarks that that is going to significantly increase our performance as a whole in a district on our benchmarks.
024So we were able to see a nice um improvement in how students were responding both to texts on the reading and on the modeling and reasoning items in mathematics. Looking at our reading performance from school year 25 to school year 26, you can see that um we showed some really nice improvement not only in our advanced learner, which is our um top performance level, but also some really nice movement in our students who were on track. Uh and very nicely, which I like to see is a decrease in our emerging learners. So, we want to start moving more students away from that emerging learner category. And you can see over that three-year trend that we are definitely starting to do that um across most of our grade levels. Um specifically, I want to point out
025to you in grade um English grade 9, we made some really nice increases in students moving almost half the students moving away from our emerging learner. And then we moved a lot of students into our ontrack and grade nine. uh and grade 10 also had a very nice improvement in our students who were on track. So um our district is focusing on writing this year. uh and I think it's too early to say that it's having you know a very strong impact but I think that we can say at this point that we're about 3 months into the school year that we are seeing um a really nice increase in that um in intervention time and that's classroom time that we're spending on writing and our reading benchmarks and mathematics um very similar trend we
026are you know you can see some grade levels are significantly moving students out of that lowest emerging learner um performance level into our developing learner. And then we had some very nice movement in middle school math. Um over the last several years, we've been pretty stagnant with our middle school math. Um and this past year, we saw some really nice improvement in our math grade 7 and our math grade 8 of students moving into that on track and advanced learner. Uh, and then like I said in our high school courses, geometry, quantitative modeling, and algebra 2, you see that we had some really nice movement um of students into our ontrack learner category. Just as an example, looking at our writing, I'm going to pull out just grade three. So, um, each of our reading
027benchmarks consists of the one constructive response. uh we did use that automated scoring engine and then our reading benchmark um constructor responses have two scores that students get assigned. They get a score for conventions and they get a score for expression and those are based on um MCAP rubrics that align to those. It's the same type of scoring on our state assessment for reading. So, if you look at grade three over a 2-year period, uh you see that there was a decrease number one in the students who earned a zero on a writing item by about 10 percentage points, which was a really nice improvement. That means that students are either um writing something in that constructive response box or they are writing more in alignment with the points assigned on the rubric. So that
028is you know obviously a trend that we want to see and a 10 percentage point um gain is you know is something that we will you know look further at and see if we see something similar for our benchmark too. In mathematics again we have one constructive response that's dedicated to modeling and one that's dedicated to reasoning. Again those are still human scored. So the teacher of record is scoring those items uh and they are aligned with either three or four point rubric. again which is very similar to the rubrics that are used for our MCAP. So if you look down there at the third grade again we see at the modeling and the reasoning we saw an improvement in number of students who were earning a zero um decreasing. So from school year 25
029to 24 we saw almost a 10 percentage point difference and then uh for reasoning we saw about a five percentage point four four percentage point difference. So again moving in the right direction. So our district focusing on writing seems to be preliminarily on benchmark one um having some positive return. So we will continue to monitor this for benchmark 2 to see if we see a similar pattern or trend. And then this year we also are utilizing our mathematics grade kindergarten first and second grade benchmark in a different way. So we are giving one benchmark form for students in grades kindergarten uh first and second grade. Kindergarteners do not take the beginning of year benchmark because they are also taking the kindergarten readiness assessment which has a mathematic component and we didn't want to double test
030our kindergarten students. So they will not have data until benchmark 2. But looking at our mathematics for grade 1 and two, students are getting the same test form with the same items on the beginning of year, middle of year, and end of year benchmark 1, 2, and three. So they're going to have the same items with linked to the same standards across the whole year. So we can now measure growth over time uh as opposed to looking at different standards and different items um over time. we we needed a more diagnostic assessment for our early numeracy students and mathematics and so we we made that shift to our benchmark program this year. Uh it does measure standards taught throughout the school year. So students will have the ability to show growth as they receive instruction
031covering those tested contents throughout the year. And then for this first year only, the results are going to be reported in percent correct only because we haven't had a standard setting to look at the items and how students did. And then next year we will move the results to be reported in those four performance levels as we have been in the past and as our other benchmarks have. But looking at our first time of administering this benchmark for our first and second grade, we had about 38% of our first grade and 37% of our uh second graders have percent correct um on that first benchmark. So, we will report back for benchmark 2 how that's looking because again, we're going to be looking at the same items, the same test form. So, we'll look to
032see um what improvements we see in grades one and two for mathematics and that is all I have. So, I'll stop sharing and I don't know if Dr. White, we're going to stop for questions at this point. Would you like to um board member Briggs, you want to stop here before we move to looking at grades and attendance and ask questions here? >> Yeah, I think it might be uh information overload. So, let's pause here. >> Okay. >> Want to thank you all for the presentation. I want to open the floor for discussion. Um and there will be two rounds of discussion, two and a half minutes each. If there is an interest in a third round, then we'll vote for that. Um but board members, please raise your hand and I will acknowledge you
033in the order of your race. Okay. Uh, I'm also without questions right now, Dr. White. So, it looks like the consensus is that we can move to chronic absenteeism. >> Awesome. >> I want to yield the floor to you for the um 6 point item 6.2 chronic absenteeism and core content pass rates quarter one presentation. >> Sure. So, I'm going to turn it over to um Dr. Whittington who will walk us through that data. We always like to come and not just give the instructional side but how are our students performing and what does absenteeism look like? Those things that we know can impact what happens in the classroom. So Anthony, >> all right, good evening board members. Thank you for this opportunity to share just a few data points that we feel are important
034in moving our instructional program for our school and our school district. Um, first thing I want to discuss is chronic absenteeism. And let's do a little level setting. Defining chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is simply identifying those students who are missing 10% or more of their membership days or we'll consider them school days that they're enrolled at a school. For example, if there are 30 days that I'm enrolled at a particular school and I miss three days, whether excused or unexcused, it doesn't matter. I am deemed chronically absent. This measure is super important because it's an accountability item for our state report card. This measure is significant as it counts 15% for our total accountability scores on every school's Maryland state report card. And I can be chronically absent in multiple schools within the same school
035year. As long as I have 10 membership days within a school, I count towards their state report card. First thing I want to talk about is chronic absenteeism trends that we're seeing within our school district. and we're just focused on comparing school year 2025 at the end of quarter 1 to school year 2026 at the end of quarter 1. So, we're comparing apples to apples. Now, we're seeing an increase in chronic absenteeism across grade spans for quarter 1 um last year in comparison to this year. The first slide references elementary school. In elementary school or the grades span would be kindergarten through fifth grade. The chronic absenteeism rate has risen from 17% and that's why 25 to 19%. Moving to middle school slide. the middle school. As you can see, we have increased uh our
036chronic absenteeism rate from 12% of the population to 16% of the actual population in middle school for quarter 1. And then in high school, we move from 25% quarter 1 for SY 25 to 28%. Now, one caveat here that we need to take in um context is the chronic absenteeism calculation resets every single day of school because it's simply uh numerator over denominator calculation. Now, when we provided these slides, it's at the end of quarter 1 and more time has passed. So we give uh an update to our exec cabinet and at the end of um let's see quarter 1 ended October the 31st but at the end of November these numbers look slightly better. So the next time we're able to present we can also share those with you and you can also find
037that information on your um district performance dashboard. Next slide. All right. Now, it's interesting to talk about chronic absenteeism, but how does that align with our core content grades? Well, the next illustration show the direct negative correlation between chronic absenteeism and student performance in our core content areas. First slide looks at grades two through five. Now, students who were not chronically absent earning an Agrade, A being the bluish color there, um as much higher rate at 39% in comparison to those students that were chronically absent at this grade span at 25%. And if you look to the opposite side, the failing grades D and E, chronic absenteeism students receiving a grade of D, which is 12% and E, which is 7% at a combined rate of 19%. Which is significantly higher than the 8% combined
038rate for students who are not chronically absent. Let's look at middle school. grades six through eight, there's a distinct or a stark difference in when we're seeing these students that are chronically ab absent in the grades that they're receiving. Chronically absent students had a combined failing rate of 30% and I say failing rate, I'm counting a D as failing. So D and E 30% of these students um were chronically absent or in that particular category. This is nearly three times the failing rate of students who were not chronically absent and those uh students had a combined DE rate of only 12%. If we move to high school, a staggering 45% of chronically absent high school students received an E or a failing grade in at least one of their core content rates cont in in
039their one of their core content subjects. But in contrast, only 11% of students who are not chronically absent received an E. So basically students who are not chronically absent earning an A grade is at a rate of 32% compared to only 10% of those chronically absent students. And then the next section which will be our last section is simply looking at the core content pass rates after quarter 1. core content meaning next slide mathematics, English, language arts, science, and social studies broken down at each level. And then we're also going to look at the two big rocks that Jamie uh shared earlier, our multilingual learner and our students with disabilities. In elementary school, again, which we were looking at grades two through five, the pass rating was extremely high and consistent across the board in
040student and service groups with nearly 97 to 98% of those students passing their core content areas. In middle school, grades 6 through 8, the pass rates are generally strong as well. 93 to 98% of those students are passing all of their core content areas with the lowest passing rate being our Hispanic student group at around 93%. And in high school, this level shows the most significant variation. uh with our lowest grade being our Hispanic group again at 72% passing their core content area. Our highest rate is with our Asian group at 91%. And as a whole overall all student average for high school was about 80% of the students passing their core content areas. If we look at our the two big rock designation our service groups multilingual learner and students with disabilities elementary schools
041passing rate was 96% and students with disabilities was 95% remaining close for all because all students was roughly about 97% in elementary school. If we go to middle school it starts to widen slightly. multilingual learner was at 91% and students with disabilities was at 93%. And as overall was at 95% and then in high school the level is a lot larger or I'll call this as a critical need area. Our multilingual learners pass rate has dropped down to 67% which is 13 points below the all average of 80%. and our students with disabilities is at 77% still below the overall average but slightly and if you need any additional information of course I am Anthony Whittington and Ben Levenger is our supervisor in our data department. Thank you for this time. >> All right. Thank
042you so much Mr. Whittington. Um, want to thank you and the team again. Um, so the floor is now open for discussion. Um, again, we'll have two rounds of discussion, two and a half minutes each, and then if there's a third round, we'll vote for for that. Um, so I'll be looking for those raise hands if there are any questions, and I'll acknowledge you in the order that raise hand. While we're waiting for that, I did have a question, Mr. Winningington, and um, I think you you're probably equipped to answer this. So the one of the things that I've discussed with principles at schools in my district is that there's this kind of transition period that happens during the holidays for uh a number of our students that are um coming from, you know, maybe
043different communities, different countries, leaving and then being unenrolled for more than 10 days and then having to reenroll when they come back. Is that still an issue? Is that something that we're addressing kind of districtwide or are those just kind of disperate situations in schools across the county? >> Um, our administrative procedure states that unexcused absences 10 or more consecutively. We are supposed to start the withdrawal process for that particular family um as opposed to letting them remain on our um school role. So, it just depends school by school and how they handle the cases. But with the chronic absenteeism, no matter what the situation is, if they're missing school, it's negatively impacting the school data for attendance and then they're continuing to increase their number for chronic absenteeism. So, the percentage once it gets
044over 10%, it continues to rise the more days you're missing out of school. >> Okay. And I think really the question I was getting at was just like is that is that an issue that's kind of plaguing us as a district? I know that's really more for our ESL schools or multilingual learner larger population. >> Yeah. From what I understand um well in my conversations with school this used to be more of an issue for us but not as much recently with students moving uh leaving going outside of the country for a period of time and then coming back. We have less of that as an issue than we had in the past. >> Okay. And then the last question I have is just like is ICE impacting any of the chronic absenteeism? So I
045imagine that since the you know the the new administration has taken office this would be our first time really looking at the data and the influence of kind of some of these federal actions on um actual student you know attendance. >> All right. We did we did uh some preliminary work on that last year and early part of this year and we haven't seen um that as a significant impact in our attendance for our students. >> Okay. So, no unenrollment or other kind of unintended consequences because of >> No, we just have less students enrolled um in our school for uh ML students this year than we've had in previous years. But as far as missing significant amounts of time due to that for students that are currently enrolled, we aren't seeing that in compared
046to last year. >> Okay. So, no stark contrast. Um board members, other questions here about chronic absenteeism or about dibbles and I'm okay with awkward pauses, but um I do want to say in the interim, Dr. White, if you want to just kind of interject anything. I know this is like the I know this is the the the committee meeting before the holiday. I know we're all kind of, you know, approaching holiday mind. Um, but I do want to, you know, bring the obviously the the importance of this discussion um before we make that transition to the new year. Any additional just pieces to kind of add in there um for the community that weren't necessarily shared? >> No, the only thing I will say is so we, you know, this is just one moment
047in time where we stopped to come and provide data for you know that our schools are looking at data non-stop. I think one of the messages that you heard the team say is that um they've sent out every month um to every principal their data. We also have performance specialists in the area offices that are looking at data. So data is something that we're doing constantly every month. This is just that one um moment in time. The other thing I would just add is that Simone talked about amplify, but know that for any child on Dibbles that's not performing well or at risk that they are also in an intervention um to prepare them to get them going and then we'll test again. You heard starting January 12th. So, we are constantly looking at data.
048These are just our moments in time when we get to you to say what's happened up until we get to you. Um you know, we get to January, end of January, we're going to benchmark too. So, by the time we come back, um I think it's April, we may come back and we'll have like how things ended, what we can compare within this year in preparation to get us to um state testing. >> Okay. All right. Thank you so much. I see board member Ber's hand. >> Yeah, thank you so much. And I um am I think also we're multitasking end of the year. I'm multitasking the Northwestern High School jazz band concert at Joe's Movement Emporium, which I'm very excited about. Um I did want to um I want to ask about interventions of
049when an individual when when is there an advocate or the appropriate role now that we have more roles for interventions through the blueprint funding. So, when you have a high school student where by this time of the year you've got grades plus absences as a as data points is what is what what happens next? like what how is that student um mess you know called in for a meeting talking about root causes and then having wraparound services and the individualized attention that the data clearly is calling for like so I'm really interested to hear how you know what a family should be experiencing by this time of the year if the if that's the data the combined data of grades and absent absences Thank you. Thank you. >> So before my team jumps in, I'll
050I'll simply say, well, we know that every school has a pupil personnel worker and a professional school counselor. So when we talk about chronic absenteeism, the schools that are part of their metrics are looking at um absenteeism. We try not to wait till a student gets to 10 days before we start communicating. However, when you see um that you have a situation going on, we need to be checking in with the family because if it's if it's medical, which some of our students are, we need to ensure that they're understanding about home and hospital, how to apply if that's the case, and if not, how to pro provide support. Did they move and we not know? Um are they in a situation where they may need our homeless office and we didn't know. So, each
051school again has assigned pupil personnel work and they're looking at that data. uh what my school could potentially talk about in terms of academics is that as we chase blueprint, you know, we're chasing um preCCR and postCR. And so in that in that CCR mindset, our schools are looking at that data quarterly. They have a team that comes together to examine where students are. We have a couple of lab courses, especially in English and mathematics that's wrapped around our core content course. So you could potentially see students in their algebra 1 class and in the algebra one lab as we try to bridge some of those skills. Um we also have interventions at our middle and high school level as well for when students aren't doing well. And all of that's a part of that
052team that comes together and looks at CCR. I'll turn it over to my team to see if they want to add anything additional to that. >> All right. I see I see no comments. So, I think you might have answered that adequately. Uh, and uh, board member Ber, your time is up, but do you did that answer your question? >> Um, I I I think maybe I'd have to hear from the high school principles to talk about sort of the how exactly that that works, the the pathway of identification and the resources. But, uh, definitely thank you Dr. right for talking about the I I appreciate the point of that we're not waiting until the data is like a point of of you know difficult return you know around >> progressing in the grade right
053or the course you know summer required summer school or whatever is needed that now would be >> when the intervention should be happening so thank you for that >> correct and the only other thing I'll add is you heard our team indicate that we have a writing plan and so part of that is looking at student work when we're coming into collaborative planning and looking at student work. It should be to chase that back to the classroom so that you're knowing not just the assignment I gave at how my students are doing overall, but I'm taking time to look at individual students and how to fill those gaps. What I would also say about our seniors is that this is that time of year if a parent is watching that you'll start getting those contracts
054and signing and understanding where your child is on that road and track to graduation. So that they have to be schools have to be looking at those schedules now in case there's something that was missed in case we can put a child in another course um as we march our way down um to getting them here. The goal isn't to wait until July to start thinking about summer school for someone that needed it. it's how can we assist before we get there to make sure that when we get there it was like trying to really get students to um accelerate or students who may have tried their hardest and we want to try to reclaim a credit all right so uh and are there any other questions uh that board members have okay so and
055Dr. White, I think what I hear uh from you and the team as far as the key takeaway goes is that this presentation is initial data points. We're at the start of the of the year. We're looking at and comparing those uh data points to last year's data to see whatever progress we've made. We know that the summer impacts outcomes. So, there's something called the summer slide that um sometimes doesn't continue that enrichment and learning instructional practices that happen. Um but as we come into April and into the the new year um we'll have more insights into this school year and have have more to report back on there. >> That is correct. And the last thing I'll just add is while this is just a snapshot of systemic data, there's other data metrics and
056points that our schools are using to impact student instruction. That's the cycle assessments, the milestones, the common assessments. There are other things done in our curriculums that teachers are using for those daily exit ticket checkpoints. This is just that summitive data when we get to an end of a point or that pre-data, right? So when we look at some of our our dibbles that was you did nothing. We gave you no instruction this year. This is hey first day of school we're going to test you see where we are. So that then when we give you intervention and we teach you how do you how do you adjust and when we give you more how do you adjust? One last thing for parents to understand that that marker is going to move on dibbles all
057year. So while we expect kids to grow, the expectation of where they should be hitting, that's growing at the same time. For us, it's about yes, we absolutely want to hit that marker, that normed marker, but we want to close the gap on where our kids are. So are they getting better? So are they hitting that trajectory, but are they getting better? >> Okay. And and I think, you know, one of the things that last clarifying point here is that to your point around the summitive piece, a lot of this should be formative, too. So I think the uh board member Boozer Strruther was saying how are we using the data now to help >> inform instruction >> practice. Yeah >> that and that's what that's what schools are doing. Correct. >> Okay. Great. All
058right. Well I want to um thank everyone uh for the excellent presentations for the context that I think is always helpful because no one here is you know or all of you all here are education gurus but our viewers we can assume are coming in with a level of understanding that makes it accessible for them. So really appreciate you doing that. Um, our next meeting will be scheduled for January 26, 2026 in the new year. Um, there being no further business, the time is now 5:30 and the December 15, 2025 academic achievement committee meeting um is adjourned. Thank you so much. Wishing you all a happy and safe holiday season and we look forward to seeing you in the new year. >> Thank you. Good night. >> All right. Take care.