001Ms. Rosa, can you please start the recording? Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the May 12th, 2025 Academic Achievement Committee meeting. I'm Jamal Jongo, Chair of the Academic Achievement Committee and a student member of Prince George's County Public Schools. I would like to welcome our committee representatives and board Committee members and board representatives, Dr. Tiffany Anderfel and Ms. Vakia Goins McKance. A special welcome to Dr. Judith White, Chief Academic Officer and Superintendent Designee, along with her team. Who will be leading presentations tonight. Before we begin, we will introduce Before we begin, we will have introductions starting with the board members administrative staff and board office. Of course, I've already introduced myself as board chair So any board members that would like to go on next Good evening, everyone. I'm Dr. Tiffany Anderfel. I'm the board
002representative from District 1 Good evening, everyone. Zakia Goins and Kantz, and I proudly represent District 8. Good evening, Kia McDaniel. I am sitting in for Dr. White. I am the director of curriculum and Instruction. Good evening, everyone. I'm David Reese Jr. Representing the work of the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Belonging. Good evening, everyone. Victoria Holmes, Coordinating Supervisor for Language and Literacy in the Office of Curriculum and Instruction. Good evening, everyone. Leona Smith, Innovation Officer for Transformation Leadership and Continuous Improvement. Good evening, everyone. My name is Rosa Lopez. I'm the board administrative secretary in support for this committee. Good evening. Yeah, I think that's everybody. We have two more people Oh, are you guys more people, huh? Good evening, everyone. Sorry, I'm Melissa canney the supervisor for the English Language Development Office. Good morning, afternoon,
003sorry, Jamie Bowers. I'm the Director of Testing Research and Evaluation. Good evening, I'm Simone McQuage. I'm the elementary reading language arts supervisor. And do we have anybody, everybody now. Anybody else want to add? Come on, are we good? Good. Great. For those unable to join us live, a recording will be available on the PGCPS YouTube channel and board docs. Now we will proceed with roll call. You know that? Mr. Jungle? Dr. Anderfel? Presently. Present. Ms. Goins McKans? Present. There are three board members present. Three board members and our president and we have a farm If there are no adoptions, the committee shall adopt the May 12, 2025 meeting agenda. There being no objections, the meeting agenda is object. If there are no corrections, the committee meeting shall approve the March 17th meeting agenda. There being
004no corrections, the meeting minutes are approved. There are no public comment speakers this evening. So we'll move on to item 3.0, discussion items. The committee will receive one presentation from the administration tonight Followed by discussion for each presentation. I will now yield to, okay, it says Dr. Judah White, but… I believe it's Dr. Kia McDaniels. I can take it from here. And Mr. Jongo, just for your safety, we know that you're here. But we see that you're driving, so feel free to turn your camera off and listen in. Because we need you to be safe. All right. But we know you're here and then come on and ask us any questions as we get started. Or as we wrap up the presentation. But good evening, everyone. We are excited to be here with you all
005this evening. We want to take this opportunity to just reflect on all of the lessons that we've learned throughout the year through the data and information that we were sharing with this committee. And so we have some very specific updates, again, around those lessons learned and what are our next steps for next school year. Based on the data that we shared with you, updates that we've already made. And our conversations with this committee, how we're going to be moving forward. So we'll be providing an overview in a variety of different areas. First, we'll start with equity and special education. Move on to our comprehensive support and improvement, our CSI schools and specifically The OGAT project that was shared with the committee, look at the support we're providing to our multilingual learners through family engagement. And
006then dig into our DIBELS data, where we are now and our benchmark data, and just how we plan to move forward. So with that, we're going to get started with our presentation. Rosa, if you can bring up the slides for us, and I'm going to turn it over To our first set of presenters Dr. David Reese and Ms. Tranelle Bowman. Yes, we can see the slides. And if you would not mind advancing. Are you able to see the slides? Perfect. Thank you for handing over the baton, Dr. Mcdaniel. I am David Reese, and I am going to be speaking on behalf of Chernel Bowman and myself and our offices in the school system, and she'll be available with me to answer questions at the end of the presentation. And so the theme of the day
007would be lessons learned from the school year in the spirit of academic achievement. And if I could title this presentation, the six minutes that I'm going to share with you, I actually wrote it down. I would title it The Power of Deep Inclusive. Collaboration among departments in PGCPS. And I say that because you all can see what's behind me You see Tranelle Bowman and one of our students who was in the eighth grade at the time, Tristan. Who participated in a really powerful interview of the superintendent of our school system. So Tristan was leading and then Trenell Bowman was his anchor to support him through the process where they had a really powerful conversation around What does it mean to be a student? With disabilities because the superintendent shared his story and then talked about
008what it meant to lead for everyone, for all students in Prince George's County. So we got to hear that story that day. So that's what I'm hearkening behind me here. So when you see lessons from the field, we talked about the power of building strong ongoing structures for collaboration across departments And how that really helped us optimize learning for everyone. And this was our equity office's first time partnering as intentionally with another department in the school system. So we all came together And we met and we had to do a lot of organizing in order to be able to support the vision Of the Department of Special Education, which meant learning more about their strategic plan, the goals that they were focused on. And then we were able to really put forth a really powerful
009professional learning plan for a day that then catapulted learning for the entirety of the school year. The second bullet that you see there, the small micro bullet talks about feedback loops. I would really urge anyone who's engaging in this deep collaboration to be really intentional around how you collect and read survey data from participants about their experiences. So we heard from over 5,000 of the staff members directly Through a survey around what their professional learning experiences were like and the support that they needed in order to Be better at their jobs to support students. We spoke to students throughout the year about what their learning experiences were, and we did a lot of deep work really connecting with members of people who are advancing special education through IEP meetings throughout the system, really helping to
010Sharpen our focus around how you're providing support and information to families, which we'll talk about more when we think about our next steps. And then third, there was this idea of co-creating goals and actions. And there was a lot of public accountability around how we designed the actions that we were going to take and we held each other accountable for following through. For checking in and then consistently through organized meetings talking about the learning that was happening and the impact that was happening in the system. The second big bullet on the lesson side talks about SBELs, and that stands for School-Based Equity Leads. And they're the people who are funded by the system through my office to lead learning connected to equity goals at schools. What we learned was that we had 206 schools in
011PGCPS, and there were a lot of schools where we really saw school-based equity leads fully integrated into the work of the leadership team at the school. And they were really able to connect to what was happening with school performance planning goals that's led by the Division of Accountability. And then we learned that there were some areas to increase that intentional collaboration at the school level to really support advancing the goals. And that will allow me to slide over to the right side What we're going to speak about our adjustments for next year. So in full transparency, we are undergoing a bit of an organizational restructure connected to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Belonging. It is now going to, it actually now, as of a couple of days ago. Is now reporting to the Division
012of School Support and Leadership. And it's leaving the Division of Human Resources. This is significant because our system has a laser focus on supporting school-based personnel We're strengthening their skills and capacity to support families and students with disabilities. And moving the office closer to schools and what's happening in the area offices will give us direct connection with systemic professional learning meetings for principals and assistant principals and will allow us to do the work of supporting the school-based equity leads With being more integrated in the work that's happening at the school leadership team level. So we're continuing our equity focus next year. For the first time in five years, we've decided to not pick up a new equity focus, but continue with this very special topic because you made a lot of ground. We've broken a
013lot of ground. Have a lot of deeper understanding around inclusive practices and really want to make sure that we leave with full understanding that more of our families and students have experienced a better PGCPS as a result of our work. So we'll be collecting lots of data Through family surveys, through the Department of Special Education about their experiences in the IEP process and adjusting along the way. Second, the Department of Special Education and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Belonging are going to go deeper in our focus with elementary schools because that is the place where most families first are first learning about the disabilities that their students have That's where many families are being introduced to PGCPS. And we really want to make sure that we catch them early and then build really strong
014relationships as the students matriculate all the way through graduation and PGCPS. So area one means elementary schools. And we have a plan that's linked Where we're going to do a lot of intentional work with school leaders from the elementary schools And last, PGCPS will shift our emphasis from raising awareness about disability. So that was our big goal. Making sure that more people were aware of the impact that disabilities have on people, on people's lived experiences, et cetera. But now we want to move more towards making sure that The awareness leads to a shift in practice from district personnel and school-based personnel so that we can actually see the school performance goals moving. I know that we're going to do a lot of work with meetings around data, and you should expect to see a lot
015of new information coming to you about how teacher teams are collaborating in the service of data connected to students with disabilities. So thank you for hearing this part of the presentation. Thank you, Dr. Reese. So we'll turn it over to Leona to walk us through her lessons learned in support of our CSI schools implementing OGAD. Thank you, everyone. I'm so glad and pleased to follow. Oh, I see there's a hand. Should I keep going or? Take the hand. I am just wondering if for um If Committee Chair jungle would permit a slight change to our normal our normal rounds and if we could maybe ask questions as you all go through just so we don't lose them. As we're writing them. Rose, am I allowed to? You're speaking to have a discussion per presentation. Yes,
016I think that that can be visible. Yeah. To have a discussion. Is that just if an objection? So I'm thinking the whole presentation, I mean, it has different components. Or that motion? Correct. So I think as a whole like they're trying to just have, you don't need a, I don't believe you need a separate emotion to have a discussion, you will just break it into small discussions. Okay. All right. If it's to the superintendent's team, is it… Okay, if we ask questions of components. No problem. Yeah, that's okay if you like to go that that's what um Ms. Goins McKenz would like to have a set of discussions after each presentation. Only if that will work better for how everybody else works. Dr. Anderfel. I don't know the full on full agenda, but how many
017how many It looks like we're following a pattern of just doing some lessons learned over all of the different presentations that have happened this year. So how many will there be there? Okay. Yeah. Do you mind if we do it that way? There are five. Yeah, we can do it that way. Otherwise, we're like taking notes and then kind of circling back and it might okay Perfect. Yeah. Board members, do we have any questions? And Rosie, you'll just be mindful of the time. Okay. That is correct. So you basically have two rounds of 2.5. Each. Do we have any questions for the first component? Can we go back to that slide just so that we can have that up. I believe Ms. Coins-mackens. Yeah, I see it. I was just waiting for them to put
018the slide back up so that Yeah. And we need to go back to the equity plan. Yeah, she says, oh, can we… slide, whatever, you know. Give me one moment, please. Okay. It. Okay. I'm getting ready for these questions now. Okay. Are you able to see the slide? I think she's waiting to be acknowledged. Yeah, we can see the slides. Ms. Goes McCask. Yes. Thank you so much. So thank you all so much for your presentation earlier and for putting this together. Part of, well, the first thing I wanted to ask is this second year focus are you all adding anything new or you continuing the same thing and doing the shifts that you spoke here? Spoke of here. I'll start by answering and I'll let David jump in. So this year we did have
019three areas of focus that we wanted schools and districts to look at, which was family engagement. Specially designed instruction and inclusive practices But those were from the lens of more of an awareness of as we think about students with disabilities. And now, as we talked about the shifts is to really go deeper into those three areas. And then I'll let David give his perspective. Absolutely. So one of the big, we had some resounding feedback from a number of staff members who were school-based who said we really learned a lot about disabilities that we did not know before. And these are a lot of General educators and special educators. And what they told us was We now need to have more hands-on practices using the tools and using some of the programs or supplementary materials that
020we have for students with disabilities so that we can actually get better at it. So that's one of the adjustments that we want to make so that the professional learning is hands-on and relevant to what they're doing in classrooms with their students. And then my only other part is the only other part plan to increase family engagement in the special education process for the rest of the time. If you all could give us a bit of a a bit more of detail about that. I… Absolutely. Let me give you one major highlight. So I am… And there's some work that's really important to me that's about helping schools improve. It's called SystemWise. And one of the grounding tenets of it is about being radically inclusive. And so we know that we've heard from a lot
021of parents via CCAC meetings and other spaces around some of their hopes for how PGCPS can improve. So this year, when we kick off our summer learning, for example. For five years, our equity work has been focused on helping staff members engage We're bringing families and staff together at the same time during the summer to learn and hear from one another together in a collaborative space. We're pushing ourselves because we know that families come with a lot of emotion and a lot of hope and sometimes pain about how their students are being serviced. And in order for our students to get better served. We know that we have to have those conversations where the tension might be high Learn from one another and then get better as a result. So you should expect to see
022more of that type of collaboration as we move forward And then the other thing I would add is a more cohesive approach around Dr. Jackson Shop, who has parent engagement assistance. We also have resolution partners in our area office. And then we have the Special Ed Family Support Center. So those three bodies coming together to be intentional about what is the survey results saying to us and where do we need to go deeper around family engagement strategies. At targeted schools, but then also bringing to bear and highlighting those schools where we have great outcomes on our survey, what are they doing? And be able to learn from one another in that space. Thank you both so much. All right, Leona, you're up. Unless we have other questions. We do. Dr. Andifel? Yes. So you mentioned
023the shifting of where the office will be placed and you spoke to That's one of the as highlights or things that you're most excited about with regards to the shift is that you'll be closer to the work of Work that is more closely aligned with families, if I heard you correctly. Can you speak a little bit more about the shift and decision to move move the location of this office and move the office and if there are any other benefits or things that you see that would really be Again, just what would be beneficial to this move and any other rationale for the move? Absolutely. I'll try to get as detailed as I can in this space. So the move really just happened Last Monday. So it's relatively new. So when we actually put this
024presentation together, that shift had not happened And so the idea is that I am now the associate superintendent for Transformation Leadership and Continuous Improvement, and there'll be several offices That will report to me, which is inclusive of the equity office. So because I will now be seated at the table with the area office leadership. It means that as we're having our collaborative conversations and dialogue. That will be the core team that I'll be working with most prominently, and that is the entry point into school. So I think that some of the rationale was around moving equity from human resources to the place where we want to see the rubber hit the road more dramatically. And that's where children are. Okay. And I have a minute and 15. Okay. And then the proposal that you linked
025here for so for bullet point two on the right hand side This plan to increase family engagement in the special education process, the proposal for elementary area one principals. I know Board Member Goins McKance asked about this. I'm looking at it And I guess I'm just wondering, I'm assuming that you've already presented this. Is that correct? You've already presented this? Yes, the Department of Special Education in my office presented it to the Area 1 team to get the feedback so that we can kind of build and co-create from a draft. Okay. That we want to then move forward with. Did you receive any just what was the reception to what was shared? They were really, I think the area one principal supervisors and other people in that office were really excited that we had a
026vision for how consistent school leader professional learning would um would happen so that we could actually support them with the learning that they needed to advance the goals. I think that's the short answer. Would love to talk to you more about that sometime. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Board members, are there any other questions? Okay. I don't have currently any questions, so we can go to the next component. Great. Well, thank you. I'm so pleased to be following the equity conversation because it really is aligned to this next part as we think about the instructional needs of our students as well. And that's an additional part of our equity work is ensuring access and opportunity To high quality instruction that our students are doing well. And as you may have
027recalled that we have 24 schools that are identified as comprehensive support and improvement schools. From MSDE. And actually, many of them have been identified in needing to improve outcomes specifically for students with disabilities. And so the work that Mr. Reese and Ms. Dr. Reese and Ms. Bowman were talking about really is integral to that. So in support of our CSI schools and our principals, there are many, we pull the leaders together to do professional development. There are tools, templates. But really, part of the work is also ensuring that our teachers that we are building their capacity as well. Our students have access to wonderful interventions and supports. We also want to ensure that we are bringing our teachers along to build their capacity to think differently and deeply about how students are performing. And so
028this year we implemented the ongoing assessment project or OGAP. And it is a professional development around how we look at student work in four domains. And that's addition, multiplication. Fractions and proportional reasoning. And so over 150 teachers participated in four days of professional development. In which they dug deeply not into the content of what they teach. But the pedagogy, meaning how they teach it, so that when they're looking at student work. They have a math progression of how the brain learns math to understand what they might teach next. And so we are pleased to share that when participants were given self-assessments as we're closing up the year around this first initial year of the project. 90% of those who completed our survey have shared they have a much better understanding of how to teach math
029content. They spend the first full day of those four days really just learning math. And when you think about many of our elementary, particularly teachers. Their degree in elementary education is a generalist degree. So they learn a little bit about everything. And so this gave them an opportunity to dig more specifically into just learning math content. 85% of them also shared that as a result of working through these They feel more confident that they can take a piece of student work, analyze it next to a progression. And a progression means like a step. In which the way you learn a skill or learn math, that they know how to plan what's next. 76% are saying they are seeing improvement in their students everyday work. We don't have our end of the year assessment data yet,
030but they are seeing that day-to-day improvement. And then 60% of them have reported that they would love to continue if there was coaching available. As part of this project, in addition to those four days. All participants receive some level of follow-up. Small group coaching, one-on-one coaching. We had the coaches from the OGAP initiative in the schools at their collaborative meetings. So they all had some additional touch points to have a thought partner and give them feedback. To support this work, we also pulled our principals together multiple times to ensure that they understood what to look for in their collaborative planning meetings, how to monitor this work. Most recently, they all brought their math leaders with them as well. In surveying our principals, 63% of them said that they saw an increase in math achievement I
031will say lessons learned from the field as we think about like anytime you implement something across multiple schools. Who's leading the project really is impactful. And so when the school team launched with a full math team and the math lead was the person who also received training alongside the teachers. We saw a significant difference in maybe the implementation of the work. And so we're thinking about that as we adjust for moving forward. So moving into next year. We will really be focusing, as Dr. Reese shared, on looking at weekly data meetings, how we're using data with our collaborative teams. And really digging into pulling out those student math progressions, using group planning protocols, looking at data work. In terms of OGAP, when we're continuing this work, we want to ensure that it's aligned to our
032curriculum so that our teachers know exactly where things fit in. And then many schools have been reaching out to say, how do I get additional coaching next year? Our teachers feel so efficacious. They feel like they can teach math well now. And we want to keep them having contact with the coaches if possible. And then finally, many people on this call are working collaboratively to design and launch district school support teams that will help with implementation not only of OGAP, but really of all supports of how we monitor instruction. How having math walkthroughs and that coaching support. So we're really pleased with this first year of implementation. We had a lot of success, particularly from the teacher perspective. And as we move into next year, we want to ensure that access to coaching and really
033that weekly data meeting and that district support team. So we have all board members. I think it was Dr. Enderful first. Yes. Thank you for sharing this information. I remember And when you came, you all came and gave the initial presentation. So great to see the lessons learned here. I'm just wondering. So I see that over 150 teachers participated and that the the data that you're showing here is of those who self-reported. What's the sample size here? How many participants actually completed the survey? It was about 70, about almost half. Okay, perfect. Thank you. I'll probably run around too, Jamal, if we can. Okay. Mr. Going-manks? My apologies. I didn't realize I hadn't turned my camera back on. Thank you all so much for this presentation. I guess my question is a little bit off
034of the concept and more on the overall section. How did you all get to, and I know you gave us some of some of this information. But how did you all get to OGAP as the concept for addressing our CSI schools? And do we have any sort of I know it's not, we are not coming up on a designation year. And so our CSI schools are not cycling out right now, but do we have um alternative ways of seeing that our CSI schools are closer to getting out of status and how do you all know that this particular program is helping with that? Thank you. I'll first start with your first question. So MSDE provided a list of some research-based practices, initiatives, and approaches that they were saying these would be good ones for you
035to explore. And so OGAP was one that was listed on there. Additionally, there were several members within the executive leadership team who had had personal experience Utilizing this approach in other districts and saw significant gains, particularly when done more than one year, right? The first time you implement something, again, I think if you saw my lesson learned, having that math leader was key. There are things that make it more impactful. Your question around just how are we ensuring that we're making an impact? So we have a couple of things in place. There are new quarterly monitoring reflection tools that our schools are are using to say this is what happened this quarter and looking at data and reporting on that. You also are correct that this is not the year that they can exit out.
036They have to show improvement this year. And next year in all of the groups in which they were identified in order to officially exit this status as well as not be in the bottom five percent of all schools ranked across the state of Maryland. So there's quite a rigorous process. So we do have our benchmark data. We have our school-based data, and then we will have MCAT data. It's going to have to be members of this group, area teams to put triangulate all that together at the end of this school year to see where we are so that we can recalibrate for next year. Thank you so much for that additional context. I'm really excited about the integration of weekly data meetings. Is that happening in all schools or? All schools, all subjects, or just
037math? That's a great question. So we are very excited. It will be all schools. Our principals are getting professional development. On Wednesday, every assistant principal is getting professional development so that when we launch. We have lots of people that feel like they can lead that work. And then every school is also identifying a teacher leader. That teacher leader, we are requesting that it is someone who does math and or writing about the work. So if you think about our MCAT data. Often in our benchmark, it's the writing portion in which students are sometimes not engaging in the writing about their work, whether it's writing about math. Writing about literacy. And so next year when we launch weekly data meetings, schools will have a choice with some coaching based off their data of whether they want
038to do it specifically around math or writing and or both. Thank you so much. Okay, Dr. Enfield. I think second round, right? Yeah. Sorry, that was actually what my question was about. It was about the weekly data meetings. So I made an assumption. And so correct me if I'm wrong. I assumed or I thought that there were already weekly data meetings happening. Across the district. And so if I'm wrong about that, can you tell me how these will differ? I'm wondering also. You know, like I know there are a number of organizations I previously worked for Relay Graduate School, that institute, you know, that had a really great, you know, way of leading weekly data meetings. I'm just wondering how you all are going about doing these, if you're using any specific models. You set
039me up perfectly, Dr. Anderfel. That is what we're doing. We are launching the relay version of weekly data meetings out of the Relay Graduate School of Education. And so you're correct. We have I want to make sure that the public and everyone knows watching our schools are working really hard. They are using collaborative meetings every week across the school system. What we are trying to do is to get some cohesion, alignment, and some fidelity to a specific protocol to ensure that we're really leaving that meeting All crystal clear about what's my reteach next step. And then coming back and checking on it. So we are very pleased to be partnering with the Relay Graduate School of Education to ensure that all of our school-based leaders have a common protocol, common language, common way to look
040and unpack Some work and look at data and then also bringing along our teacher leaders. So that's what makes it a little bit different. Right now, we have a wonderful collaborative framework here that we use. We're just digging a little deeper in, pulling out either the math and or the writing. That is fantastic to hear. I previously served as their vice president of partnerships. I'm very familiar with the weekly data meetings and I've actually seen it be extremely effective in a number of school districts. So excited to hear that that is the model you all are Going to proceed with. Excited to hear it. Thank you. Let's go in my cats? Second round Thank you. I'll just give both of my questions so you can have the time to answer it in the division. With
041the weekly data meetings and that shift specifically to the relay model. Number one, how are you all addressing the I guess, concerns about how that looks different for high school And then the other question is, so does this mean as a system we are moving away from data wise completely or is there some sort of hybrid or I guess phase out period Great questions. And I may not have a full answer to your second question, but for your first question. The Relay Graduate School of Education model really is a K-12 model that can be applied for any subject. And actually, I think parts of it work well with secondary because many of our secondary teachers are such content experts, right? They went to school for math. And then they added on maybe the teaching degree
042where sometimes elementary, not all, some of them maybe have the elementary piece, but maybe not the math. And so the protocol really leans heavily on you having content knowledge. So we actually anticipate that many of our secondary teachers and leaders will feel very comfortable with the content piece. It's the part of pulling it together. To your question around data wise, we do have an implementation team that is launching sort of what's our plan around this to ensure that we're thinking through all the pieces. I'm thinking through who needs professional development, how we're monitoring implementation. And that team is still right now processing through that. So I don't believe we yet answered your question, but I'll make sure we take that back. I'll go ahead and take a quick stab at it. You can't say data
043wise and not have David Reese comment, given that I'm Doing a lot of work with that process. So DataWise is really about, it's a way of being. It's a way of collaboration. It's a way about looking at data together. And whereas there are eight steps to the process, we really are encouraging people to use the aspects of DataWise that work for you that help sustain your practices. And there's a lot that can be integrated. Thank you both so much. Okay. I had one question. So I think this is my first round. I was just kind of wondering… I think it was, I remember going to McCann, or I think it was… Dr. Angel. Either way, they said that from the 15 about only 70 um ended up actually I guess having their detailed report. So
044I was wondering what is the um Initiative that we could be able to do or strategy we're going to be able to do to try to get at least 100% or at least maybe not 100%, but maybe like 90%. You know, for next year. You have asked the magical question that we ask ourselves all the time. And actually, one strategy that seems most effective and moving forward as something is that we have to get that feedback right there. So if we've got the teachers there or we're together in a meeting, we have a much higher rate of response than when we say we send it out and say, please complete this. So most recently, when the teachers got this, they're all out. We did not feel it was appropriate right around MCAT testing to pull
045them all out. To do an assessment when they're all, you know, however, that is something we're going to be mindful moving forward that when we get feedback. Together in person and we provide that work time right there to do it, we're more likely to get a fuller picture. So we'll keep that in mind as we think about how we're going to monitor next year. That's great. Sounds great. Thank you so much. Board members, do we have any other questions or do we want to move on to the next component? No more questions. Okay. Okay. Good evening. Tonight I'm going to focus your attention on another aspect of educational or educational mission, and I apologize I'm losing my voice from a cold. But I'll do the best I can. And we're going to be focusing on
046our family engagement of our multilingual learners. As we all know, family engagement is the cornerstone of student success. But it takes an even greater significance when we look at our multilingual learners. They often face unique challenges, including language barriers, cultural differences in navigating unfamiliar educational systems. And so as we've prioritized this group, we're not only focusing on our students, but we're helping to empower entire families and their communities. And this year with our family engagement specialist, Ms. Santos She's been doing amazing work. She's unable to be here tonight as she's leading the work with our parents in the International Parent Leadership consortium. And so with her in that role, we have been doing many things. So if you look on the left-hand side, there's four key things I want to talk about. Through our collaboration
047with various stakeholders, we focus a lot with our English language development teachers to make sure they meet the needs of our multilingual learners. We've enhanced our collaboration with the Principal Parent Engagement Assistance, and community school coordinators. And we felt that that's helped to foster family engagement. And it helps the schools to be more strategic and goal-oriented with their family engagement efforts. And so this year, schools have hosted 39 family engagement events, keeping in mind that this is all self-reported. And when we shared the schools that had reported, we had a lot of schools add to that list. The other thing that we've noticed is that our parents in the leadership groups, we have the international parent leadership consortium and our Family Engagement Steering Committee. Those families that are in those two groups, they feel more
048empowered. They're excited to share their voice. And they're excited to take leadership roles, not only for their child's education. But for their school and their families within their school. And so right now we have 27 families that are engaged in district-led leadership opportunities and that are excited to grow and lead in the district. The other thing we noticed was that translation and interpretation is essential. And that allowing parents to participate in engagement efforts in a hybrid model help them to participate better. So we had the family English literacy program, which was a recommendation of the board. We started it this year with two schools as a pilot and we've actually increased to four, which was not our intent, but schools were excited and started on. We found that having the translation interpretation was essential, but
049also that allowing them to come either in person, virtually or blended allowed more families to participate. So, so far this school year, and we only started this spring, we've had 56 families participate in the family Literacy program. They're starting with… Excuse me, component one. Give me one second. Didn't want to clap in your ear. And then we're starting to write the curriculum for uh levels two, three, and four. The other thing we noticed was that having customizable templates or PowerPoint presentations as well as resources for our schools made it much easier for them to host events. A lot of schools were scared and didn't know where to start. And so we've created resources and they're just eager to provide events for our families. So some of the things that we've learned and that we're hoping
050to improve upon next year and even as we continue into this year So we really want to move our schools from posting events to involving our parents. So we want them to be a part of Helping to plan events, plan things for the schools and leading sessions and not just attending a session and saying they came. The other thing we want to work on is though we had 92 schools participate in our professional development. To lead family engagement, you can see only 39 reported that they held engagement. So we're looking at ways that we can provide additional support to the schools that didn't actually Provide an event by coaching or peer observation. And then we're actually looking at the schools that didn't even come to their professional development and how we can get all schools
051involved. And then the other thing we noticed is that our families engaged in the International Parent Leadership Consortium really feel empowered and want to lead in their schools. And so we're looking at the ways that we can move it from having a district-led international parent leadership consortium Creating something at the school level. Okay, okay, sorry. My volume went down for some reason. Well, I was going to say board members, if you have any questions, Ms. Go ahead and chance. Thank you so much for the presentation. My only question was going to be about what the plan is in terms of moving from that district to school ownership of this international parent leadership consortium is that like Is there a concrete plan for that or are you all currently just in the start stages of it?
052So the International Parent Leadership Consortium is something that Dr. Love started many, many years ago and something that other districts have. Modeled after us. And we took a little break post-COVID or during COVID and post-COVID, and we just started again this spring And it's just a lesson that we learned this spring. So we haven't formalized the plan. But I believe it would probably be very similar to what we created the templates and the resources. So that the schools have exactly what they need And then having the coaching from Ms. Santos. But I don't have it finalized yet. And then your office would still support the individual schools as they are navigating that. I'm thinking about like staffing and all of those things. Yes, so the schools are eager and they want to host their own
053events. And oftentimes schools have the funding And then we would also still need to have a central office International Parent Leadership Consortium for the schools that aren't able to Do it at their school or may not have enough interest. Thank you. Yes. So my question was somewhat along the lines, or at least nicking about capacity. So understanding that, you know, I think across the board, there's an interest to expand everything. That you've piloted this year. Can you give us a sense, and perhaps he spoke to this last time. About what the capacity is or what the capacity is what staff is needed, both from administration, from individual schools. Can you give us a sense of Right. Like how many people are actually needed to successfully, if it's just in hosting one school. Just what is
054the need and where are we right now in terms of our capacity to support? I host the International Parent Leadership Consortium at the school level. Is that what you're asking, Dr. Green? That and the family English literacy program, just like what is our role in supporting and what is our capacity look like to expand further. So right now for the family literacy english literacy program, a lot of schools were already hosting family literacy programs. They just didn't have a structure. And so we've created the structure and made it easier for them. They currently use staff and provide them with workshop pay or their hourly wage in the evening And it usually takes one or two teachers and it's about a 10 to 15 week session. And a lot of schools are interested in doing multiple
055sessions. So we're working to create that curriculum. As for the International Parent Leadership Consortium, we right now have two people leading it and it takes about six sessions And so we're just thinking about whether who would have a school do a fall session and a spring session We haven't really looked at how many people would be involved as we just started that plan. But those are great questions. Thank you. Thank you. I just like to note that Dr. Candy's partnership with the Sheila Jackson's team with our parent assistance, some of the positions that we have available in the community schools are really going to serve as partners in this work as well of just getting it getting A structure, as she mentioned, to other schools to be able to model and implement with their parent
056populations. And so many of our schools do have the staff. They're doing individual programs and really want some support around how can we Really formalized this and have that repetition and be able to really continue to have parents as our partners in a variety of different ways. And so they'll definitely serve as a support in this area as well. That's great to hear. Thank you. I was wondering, you know, were there, you know, if capacity was an issue, we're trying, if the goal of sustainability, had we thought about, you know, partnerships or just how are we going to scale? So that's great to hear. Thank you. I do not have any questions for the multilingual learners. I think the board members kind of answered mine. So is there any other questions or do we want
057to move on to the next component? Yeah, I think you guys are ready for it. I think we're ready for the next component. Good evening. So I'm going to share the left side of the lessons learned from the DIBELS assessment. And then Simone is going to share some next steps for next school year based on the data. So we are currently in the window of when we're administering our end of year DIBELS data. So based on our beginning and middle of year, we're looking at students who are being identified for at risk And then our end of year DIBELS data is what we submit to the state for overall how many students we deem at risk for reading difficulties. So this being through your trend We're looking at an average of about 3% of growth
058across all four of our grade levels in DIBELS since our start three years ago Looking at the trend in early literacy rates in comparison to Prince George's County across the nation. The number of Prince George's County students across grades three K to three in the well below benchmark remains consistent at an average of about 42 percentage points. Which is about 12% higher than the national average of all other students taking the DIMBELS assessment across the nation. So we've shared in the past the four identified areas that we have targeted in DIBELS for kindergarten, our phonemic awareness First grade, it's our letter sounds or nonsense word fluency Second grade, it's our reading fluency. And third grade, it's our reading comprehension. And just to speak a little bit more clearly about those in depth. And looking at
059our kindergarten, we have about 61% of our kindergarten students performed well below. On our phonemic awareness subtest on DIBELS. And in comparison, we're also administering the iReady assessment and about 50% of our kindergartners performed one or more grade levels below in that same category. And that's why we identified that as an area of need for our kindergarten students at the middle point of the year. For our first graders, we looked at letter sounds or word fluency and a little more specifically on our DIBELS assessment, we had about 45% of our first graders score in the well below subtest. Of word fluency. And in comparison on our iReady assessment, looking at that same skill type, we had about 63% of our students in first grade score one or more a year below grade level. Moving to
060second grade, we identified reading fluency as a challenge. And looking at our DIBELS data, we had about 44% of our second graders who are scoring well below at the middle point of the year on reading fluently. And in comparison on our iReady assessment, about 60% of our second graders. And so there is a little bit of a disparity between those two data points, but They're not exactly aligned, but when we're looking across both assessments and we're looking for the biggest gaps or challenges, you can see that these ones that we've identified Are highly challenging based on the data. Then finally, our last for third grade is our reading comprehension and looking more specifically at our DIBELS data, we had about 56% of our students scoring well below on reading comprehension. And about 70%. Of our
061students achieving one or more grade levels below. And we'll talk a little bit more about our third grade students when we talk about our benchmark data. So I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the adjustments or next steps. As we worked over the course of this school year. There was an evolution in The way we looked at our ongoing scoring support. And so what we want to do next year is to continue to provide scoring refreshers. Prior to each testing administration. To ensure fidelity of scoring. What we found is that these sessions provided teachers an opportunity to address some of those scoring challenges that they had. It clarified any updates to scoring protocols And it provided them some guided practice with exemplar student data. This wasn't something that we just
062did. These quarterly scoring refreshers we also implemented the same kind of practice during our professional learning communities. We believe that these sessions truly are catered for our new teachers as well as our experienced teachers. And we're doing them in a variety of ways. So teachers can come to in-person workshops. They can participate in virtual webinars. And they can also participate in some of the recorded modules and resources provided to them on the DIBL site. We have two Dibbles coaches that work with our schools across the district. And although we have utilized to target a lot of our schools with that we're lacking reading leader support. Or coaching support. We want to next year target those schools that are not experiencing the expected growth. During these coaching visits, the coaches do a variety of things. They
063conduct on-site data reviews and talk about some of the root cause analysis. And they provide customized professional learning. For the teachers, the reading leaders or And then talk more about some of the instructional adjustments. That need to happen. We are also looking to provide professional development on planning for focus group instruction. So when we talk about that differentiated small group support that happens over the course of that reading block we want our teachers to use formative, their formative assessment data. And they get that information through their progress monitoring data. As well as the formative assessments from some of their DIBELS information, but also from their really great reading. Platforms. We're looking at our students I'm sorry, during our professional development sessions We're looking at student learning gaps we're Going back and looking at our resources.
064Just to help teachers understand how all of those things align. And we found that in our professional learning communities. It gave teachers not only confidence, but more clarity And so we want to continue doing that for the upcoming school year. Last but not least, we provided high dosage tutoring this year, and we want to continue that next year. Looking at our targeted students who are well below. Or below benchmark on the DIBELS assessment. We are also planning to implement M-Class intervention to deliver targeted skills practice. So in class intervention will be new to and accessible to all of our comprehensive schools. In the fall. The other piece with that high dosage tutoring is the ongoing monitoring that takes place. So we'll be able with our With our partnerships, with our tutoring companies. To monitor the
065student progress and adjust those tutoring plans for those students. Who needed and those students who are able to exit out So that we can provide those services to others. Any questions? Board members, do we have any questions? Ms. Goes McGance. I'm going to wait for you to say it next time before I hit the button. Thank you so much for this presentation. My question was kind of, you talked a little bit about the district dibbles coaches. So are they Reading specialists, what's the training that our DIBELS coaches have? To be able to support schools in this manner. And then the providing professional development, can you talk more about how that's offered like is that virtual? Is it in person? Do teachers opt in? What does that look like? So we do a combination of things.
066First with the DIBELS coaches. We are able to have amplified Debbles coaches so they're specifically These two individuals have worked in their previous experiences have worked in schools implementing DIBELS. Have also worked as coaches In their schools, training teachers, and now they work for Amplify providing those services specifically to the teachers of Prince George's County Public Schools. So we have our two coaches that work They kind of split up. The schools across the district. When we talk about our professional learning. It is varied. Right now, we offer those opportunities, many of those opportunities After school. We tried this past year we tried to look at our professional learning community with a session during the day. For teachers who had who had substitutes and were willing to come out. During the day, during the afternoon, early
067afternoon. And then we had a session in the evening. And so… And there were teachers who were not able to get subs. And they came to the evening session. We have looked at doing some of these sessions virtually. And we have them scheduled throughout each and every quarter. In addition to site-based sessions. So those sessions with the coaches can vary based on the needs. And they have provided professional development at some of those sites. In addition to we have Our elementary literacy support teachers, which are coaches who worked to work here in the district. And they've been also providing professional development at their schools. And they're assigned schools. And they work to support the teachers during collaborative planning and data analysis. You're welcome. Did we have any other questions? No other questions? If they… Let's
068say if there's an opportunity for a second round, I just had one question about the high dosage tutoring. Yeah, we can do it a second. So with the continue to provide high dosage tutoring specifically around Dibbles, is this offered in the school building, like during the school day or is it vary depending on the partner We, for Amplify tutoring, it is offered during the school day. So our schools are able to coordinate it with their schedules so that Tutoring takes place at a time when it is not direct instruction for the teacher. So it may be While the teacher is working with small groups. And students are working on different tasks there. Their tutor is virtual. In that instance, we have two other tutoring companies who are working. Within the district at select schools. And
069so One of those is… Actually, I think they're both face to face and those in those situations The tutor is set up outside. That grade level or outside that classroom and the tutor goes to pick up the students that they're working with. Some of the other high dosage tutoring that we're doing in the district are individual. As opposed to small group tutoring. Got it. Thank you. And just to add, the tutoring that Simone is discussing is paid for with grant funds that we have this district-wide with schools that she's targeting But then we also have individual schools that are using their funding, whether it be through Title I or community schools funding a variety of different funding. Where they're working with different partners to have high doses tutoring during the school day as well. Thank
070you for that additional context. Dr. Adifold? Yes. So I recall asking questions about the high dosage tutoring during the board meeting when you all shared out. And I guess what my wondering is, and given what you also just shared, Dr. Mcdaniel. I'm very familiar with high dosage tutoring and what are the specific components that make it effective. It sounds to me, if I recall from the presentation that you all gave previously. To your point, there are a select number of schools that were receiving it because we know of its effectiveness. Obviously there's a hope that we will be able to offer this to many more schools. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole at the moment, but should a school have additional funds for, you know, perhaps you know the community schools dollars
071or things. How could they go about, is there a way that they could go about contacting someone to say, hey, we're interested in this. We don't know where to start. Would you all be able to connect them to Amplify or any of our other partners? How would they go about doing that? I'll let you start and then I can follow up. So to answer Certainly. So one of the things that we did was to share, we created a flyer With information, actually, if I go back, we also had information sessions Over the course of the school year, open to any principal who is interested in learning more about amplified tutoring We were able to present a little bit of give them an overview of the… of the program and our data. At the last at
072the i want to say March principals meeting We created a flyer to put out into the Area 1 updates. And the area two to be shared with the area two. Administrators to give them information about amplified tutoring. And the contacts for our sales rep and information around the cost. With the community schools there is they've reached out to my office to kind of talk through some of the tutoring that they are considering so that we can all be on the same page. And those community schools. Are given opportunities to learn more about those additional tutoring companies that they could take a look at. For the upcoming school year. Dr. Mcdaniel. Yeah, I was going to say exactly that. The community schools office actually has a rfp out for tutoring companies so that we can standardize
073the tutoring options that are open to our schools and better utilize our financial resources so there aren't these individual contracts with each individual school. And so we worked with them and other funding partners, our Title I office. And in some cases, our CSI schools to kind of compile this list. And so they're wrapping up with that that RFP now to make sure that all of the standards for tutoring are aligned to the national student support accelerator to make sure that it actually is high dosage tutoring. And supporting our students. So we hope to have a list of six or seven vendors that are able to support our district, support our schools. And then work as a district around the contracting process so that we can maximize the use of funds through targeted vendors. And then,
074of course, Simone oversees elementary reading, but there's tutoring in other areas as well that sometimes people want to look into. And so making sure that we have multiple content areas available And that they're able to support our student populations, those schools that have higher multilingual learners, our students with IEPs, and just making sure that they're a good fit for the individual schools. And if I may really quickly add, community schools is one of those new offices that will report to me as well. As of Monday. And so we'll be in close collaboration about following through with this. Fantastic. I think I have a question out to them. So. Received. All right. Do we have, are all questions done, I think? Good. Okay. Um. Is this the last component or the next one? Next to Lance.
075This is the last one. Okay, okay. Yes. Okay, I'm going to quickly share an overview of our lessons learned from our benchmark assessments this year. So this is our fifth year that our district has been engaging in the benchmark assessment program. We have been looking at The growth across our five years We've shown about an 8% growth across all grades and all courses in both reading and math and our benchmarks. More specifically, when we look at how consistent we are. Reading and math. We are still lower performing than we'd like to see on our reading benchmarks at this point in the year. However, we still have experienced an average of 7% growth across all grades. So some of our grades and contents that have shown growth this past school year in our benchmark one and
076or benchmark two. Looking at mathematics or kindergarten, our primary grades one and two are grades seven and eight, as well as our high school mathematics courses. And then in reading, we're looking at our middle school grades and our high school grades have experienced growth on our benchmarks. More specifically, focusing on where our areas of challenge on our benchmarks were Very focused on our writing. At this point in the year. And we've talked as a district and planning for next school year. We plan on Looking more closely at writing and focusing in on that skill. So in our elementary grades and grade six, we're focusing on written conventions. Grades three, four, and six on our written expression. Grades two, three, and five, and our middle school grades on modeling constructed response items And then grades one,
077four, six, and eight on our reasoning items. More specifically, we want to focus in on our third grade. On the slide prior, we talked about a challenge for third graders and comprehension. And so that challenge also expands onto our benchmark assessment program. So at this point in the year, our students in third grade, benchmark one. 53% of our students were emerging learners, and that's actually an increase from the prior year. Of 63% of our, I'm sorry, 43% of our students on emerging learning. Our benchmark two, we had about 34% of our third graders who were emerging learning, and that was actually an increase from the year prior. Of about three percentage points. And looking at specifically writing We're looking at about 27% of our students in third grade meeting expectations on benchmark one in writing.
078And 35% of our students in third grade on benchmark two writing So, you know, that's definitely a challenge that we want to address next year. And we will be meeting over the summer With our office and the Office of Transformational Improvement and Academics. And planning on how we will help support our schools and our teachers and professional development on writing. Thank you, Jamie. And so in looking at the adjustments for the upcoming school year. We have… what are called constructed responses that students have to to answer We will continue to hold scoring sessions. Around benchmark scoring. This will allow our teachers to Ensure that they're effectively scoring their student constructed responses. We want to provide more opportunities for students for teachers, I'm sorry to discuss the more of their norm scoring decisions we talk about
079our scoring done and collective groups. So it's not just the teacher sitting and scoring them all by themselves. We want to, through these scoring sessions, include training on identifying patterns. Talk through some of the instructional planning so what we're seeing in the way our students are answering the questions, what are some of the common areas of weakness? And looking at where that reteaching needs to happen. We are also planning to revise the scoring guide. With sample constructed responses to further support our teachers and to use that scoring guide for professional development opportunities. We plan to also, we've heard writing a couple of times This evening, so we're looking to offer targeted professional development. Focused on aligning our curriculum, instruction, and assessment. With an emphasis on improving student writing. Through a deeper dive into an understanding
080of the writing expectations at each grade level. So really, really looking closely at that standards alignment Talking about strategies for designing lessons. And again, providing that ongoing training on how we use that data. And with that and the revised scoring guide will continue to provide professional learning opportunities Within our professional learning. Communities over the course of next school year. Any questions? I just said board members. Is there any questions in my mute. I was muted. Board members, are there any questions? Ms. Going McKance. I know you hit on this briefly at the end of what you were saying, but specifically, well, when you all brought this before the full board, we had a lot of questions around writing and we did get to speak with Dr. Bowers about what this looks like and how some
081of these assessments are, the numbers of our students who aren't completing the assessments. Do we have anything specifically in the professional development or plans in general about how we're strengthening students I guess their stamina, their capacity, what we're doing in general about them specifically being able to get through the writing portion. And I know you hit on it a little bit earlier, but specifically around benchmarks, because this is where we had that question. One of the things that we plan to do is We've emphasized the reading and the writing, but helping our teachers understand in a sense. The time element that's needed and The scaffolding that is needed within their lessons in order to continue to teach writing. I think what we are being, what we've heard from a lot of our teachers is they
082need more direction on that explicit part of it. They're doing a great job with a great job modeling some of the aspects, but just further support on the explicit instruction and the scaffolding. Providing more support to our teachers so that they could support our students. And we were looking in our curriculum documents at how we can strengthen the language within with models and explanations. For our teachers to further support their students. And also with the focus that Leona mentioned within those weekly data meetings. That will also be on writing. That will ensure that we're talking about writing, that we're looking at student writing and giving feedback on student writing. So if we keep it as a focus both there and in the curriculum and in our professional development. We know that our students will have
083just more exposure and our teachers as well. One of the things that we're working with Dr. Bowers on and Simone and her team and some of the other content area teams. It's just making sure that teachers are scoring the writing that students do. And so those reminders That that is a portion of the benchmark that does need them to give feedback to students and to use that feedback to tailor their instruction to meet students needs. And I would just add that we are after each benchmark assessment. When it's time for scoring, there are scoring sessions for professional development where they're able to calibrate their understanding of the rubric as well as looking at samples scoring together so that all participants are utilizing the rubric and understanding how they are aligning what students are writing with.
084What the rubric requires. Thank you all so much. Well, remember, is there any other questions? No other questions for me. Okay, I think this was the last component. Just want to make sure. Okay, thank you again. His presentation was insightful, learned a lot. Thank you so much again. I just wanted to make sure to say that. Shoot. Find the… Okay, so we will now be moving on to Is it 3.1? 2.1. Oh, wait. Nope. Oh, I think it's a German, yeah. I don't think there's anything else to discuss, right? Thank you for the great presentations. Any follow-ups from tonight's meeting will be shared upon receipt. As this will be my final meeting serving as the honorable role as the Academic Achievement Committee Chair. With my term as the student member of the board soon coming
085to close, I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to serve. It has truly been a privilege to work alongside all of you in support of our students. There being no further business. The time is now 6.57 p.m. In the May 12th, 2025 Academic Achievement Committee is now adjourned. Thank you