001to the curriculum committee of the board meeting for February 9th, 2026. Um, is there any public comment out there? No. Okay. Uh, that being said, I would like to pass it over to Mrs. >> Thank you very much, Mrs. Epstein. Uh, good evening and welcome to February's curriculum committee of the board meeting. Uh for our public that was here last month and our board members, this is a repeat a little bit of last month's agenda except we are working with our elementary um instructional leaders tonight. So we will be reviewing again the future ready comprehensive plan the overview for that what exactly the future ready index data is and most importantly our school improvement plans and the highlights from those plans that help us understand um our improvements for the future bay. So we're looking
002forward to that this evening. Again, I need to remind everybody our federal and state regulations as we go through this evening and we talk about why we are looking at this future ready data. Uh at the federal level on your left there, the Every Student Succeeds Act was signed into law into 2000 in 2015. It replaced our No Child Left Behind Act. Uh ESSA provides states with more um accountability, flexibility in designing their own accountability uh for our educational systems. But it always had a focus on improving educational outcomes for all students. The future ready index is Pennsylvania's answer to ESSA. So, Pennsylvania's accountability system is designed to provide a more comprehensive assessment rather than looking at one data point from the state assessments at the spring. It includes various indicators, academic achievement, growth, career
003readiness, graduation rates, and other metrics related to uh whether or not students are going to be prepared for their futures. So, we're going to be hearing a lot about some of those indicators this evening. Pennsylvania Department of Education also asks every school to participate in comprehensive planning. Uh, many of you were part of our future ready comprehensive plan. So, you are already familiar with the strategic planning and some of the practices that we'll be speaking about this evening. And these are our comprehensive plan measurable goal statements. You will notice that they are written over a span of three years. Um a lot of these goal statements are by the conclusion of the 25 to 28 future ready comprehensive plan cycle. Each school district writes a comprehensive plan to cover the span of those three years.
004Um, again, we understand the importance of continuous improvement and we are glad that the state just doesn't have as many of these planes one city here for various reasons. Um, but you're going to hear more about that this evening as well. But in a nutshell, you can go. Thank you. You're going to notice consistent data protocols, established guidelines for the collection of that data, the evaluation and the analysis of that data, and our administrators are going to speak to their school improvement plans. You're noticing the mention of interim targets. That has been a large focus of all of our comprehensive planning and will be through 2028. uh you are going to notice evidence-based professional learning opportunities aligned with these priorities as well specific to the data and especially for subgroups that are not meeting those
005targets yet. Um this is the how up top is the how we are doing it. Down at the bottom is our why. That's our mission. Uh our mission is for students to learn, grow, and contribute to a school community that is welcoming for all. Again, this is why we are doing everything that we do. We do believe that our students will meet their interim targets and every subgroup will grow. Again, we talked a little bit about the planning for continuous improvement. Every school has a school improvement plan. Pennsylvania does require certain schools to have plans. We are not a district that requires a plan. We also acknowledge that we are a wellperforming district. However, we also have areas to work on. You are going to hear more about those opportunities from each of the buildings
006this evening. We know that we have areas to improve upon. Excuse me. And that is what drives school improvement planning. their focuses this year. Focused sense of belonging, honoring students dignity, the measurable goal statements that I just reviewed with you from the future ready comp plan and their own school's opportunities based on multiple data sets. We have your bookmarks back this evening that you will see in front of you. These are the icons that the state uses to measure our progress over the years. On the right hand side, you will see the arrows going up or down. This informs the school community whether or not there was an increase or a decrease or we maintain the same performance from the previous year. And then you also see different colors. You are going to see blue.
007You're going to see green. You are going to see red. Those indicate whether we met or exceeded statewide goals. We see I'm sorry, we met or exceeded the interim targets which you will hear about this evening more. And then whether we are not meeting the statewide goals or interim targets. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our amazing instructional leaders. And we're going to start with uh Dr. Kyla Phillips. When all of our principles come up, will you please introduce yourselves to our public and our school board of what buildings you work? Sure. Um, good evening everyone. I'm Dr. Penny Phillips. I'm the principal of Plymouth Elementary and I'm going to kick us off this evening. On the next four slides, we're going to be looking at achievement. So, the percentage of
008students who are scoring proficient or advanced on last year's uh state assessments in Pennsylvania. But before we get into the indiv individual schools, I want to just kind of level set for everyone, for you, for the public, how the state defines success. So these comparisons that you're going to see are made year after year. So last year's third graders compared to the third graders from 2023 2024. So as educators, we know that each cohort is a completely different group of children arriving with unique challenges, strengths, needs. Um, so while the state treats this like a consistent comparison, we do understand that a dip or a jump often reflects the students in front of us at that moment in time. So this is the state's official yard stick and we absolutely use it, but I thought
009it was worth mentioning that we do interpret those results with that context in mind. Um, the other thing that you will notice is that some schools may not have reportable subgroup data because the number of students does not meet the state's minimum for public reporting. That state minimum is 20 students. So even so, interim targets do still exist for every subgroup in every building. And through our school improvement plans, we monitor those students closely and build supports to ensure progress towards those goals whether or not the results appear on the future ready index. So I'm going to go on to our first school. Kcha Hawkins results are really quite exceptional, especially in math where 90% of students reached proficiency. That's more than double the state average and already beyond the state's 2033 target. Reading is
010also very strong at 78.8% um reflecting consistent highquality instruction across grade levels. You will notice from Pon Hawen um is or that insufficient sample for many of the subgroups and that simply means again fewer than 20 students were in that category. So the state suppresses the data to protect privacy. Next we have Plymouth Elementary School. So, at Plymouth, math continues to be a strength for us with 75% of our students proficient or advanced again meeting the state's long-term goal ahead of schedule. We are particularly encouraged by the upward trends among our black, multi-racial, and economically disadvantaged students. Those upward arrows tell us that the cohort outperformed the same group last year, suggesting that our supports are making a difference. Oops. So, sorry. Go back for one minute. Um, in reading, I want to be very
011transparent here. Um, proficiency came in at 63.9% which is below our interim target, which was 71%. So, we do see that, we own that and it's a major focus of our school improvement work. And later in the presentation, you will hear the specific strategies underway to strengthen literacy outcomes. Next is Ridge Park. Ridge Park posted solid math results as well with 77.8% also exceeding the state's 2033 goal. Reading proficiency was 61.8% and like Plymouth um Ridge Park is prioritizing literacy using the data to refine core instruction intervention and progress monitoring. And finally, we have White Marsh Elementary School. White Marsh has also surpassed the state's 2033 math benchmark, reaching 87.5% proficient or advanced. In reading, again, we see the district pattern that at 72.7% um that performance is strong yet slightly below last year's class.
012Um which is why that arrow is pointing down. And um to maintain momentum for every learner, the team at White Marsh is taking a close look at the outcomes particularly for students with disabilities and adjusting supports to ensure consistent growth among that subgroup. So in summary, math achievement across the district is a clear strength with all of their schools already meeting the goals the set the state set for 2033. reading tells us where we have to sharpen our focus. But again, remember that this is just um a snapshot of that moment in time. And so to understand the fuller picture, we look at growth and how much progress the same students made over time. So at the K to3 level, since we only have one year of state assessment data from our current third graders,
013we don't have PEOS as a measure of growth. So we use the link assessments to measure growth. So at that point I'm going to turn it over to Eileen who is going to walk us through the growth data. So good par principal of G Park Elementary. So as Kylie mentioned what we looked at with the PSSAs is one year yeartoear two different sets of kids. What we have up here for you to look at is actually the growth of the students over the course of the year measured at Lincoln. So they take Lincoln in third grade three times during the course of the year and this is a wonderful measure for us to be able to see how kids are progressing and specifically where they have needs during the course of the year and adjust
014our instruction throughout the course of the year. Um so as you can see though some of these disorders in ELA may not have been um to where the state wants them yet. The growth that our students are making is stellar. We've have growth in all of our different areas. And if you you can look at each of them, but um particularly if you look at our special education population, their growth from 28% to 45% over the course of the year, 17% growth and our multi-thnic students 22%. Which is huge. Some of that I think we attribute to obviously interventions. Over the course of the last few years, we've shifted inter interventions for our special education students. um and they directly align to the state standards and we find that that is partially the reason for
015our growth along with everything that the teachers are doing within the classrooms and what we're doing. Um so the other part of this is um sorry the proficiency for this for in math is huge. We went from 50 to 81%. So that is that whole grade level went from 50% think they gain 31% um in growth which is really like a huge blow for our teachers. We celebrate that with our teachers and our students. Um this year some of the teachers are having their students graph their results so that they can see their own growth so they can own that a little bit and see like look what I'm doing. Look how great I'm doing. So wherever they're starting they're moving forward. Um, and again, if we look here, one of the two areas I
016think um really are notable to celebrate are are black and African-American students who they went from 18 to 60% but they exceeded the growth of the grade level or as a whole. So the grade level as a whole grew 31% where our black and African-American students grew 50 42% and our multi-thnic students grew 46%. So their focus on our subgroups is extremely important. is something that we find as we're looking at the data, we're seeing the growth that we want. They may not hit those targets of the state yet, but they're working towards getting there. And it's this individual growth that we see within um the dayto-day that is most important because wherever they're starting, they know that they're moving in the right direction towards success. And next is Mr. Pris. >> Can I ask
017a question? >> Sure. Sorry. um this benchmark data that covers special education students does the um the previous the PSSA does say special education students as a separate sub cohort as well >> they they're a subgroup in some schools it depends on the number of students so >> my my question is then because I like I like this because you're comparing apples to apples the same students right so when it comes to special ed students you have a different cohort every year so you have different IEP needs different things. So, how how how do you even interpret those results for >> PSSA or benchmark >> PSSAs because the benchmarks it's the same kids moving along. So, you can but from the cohort third grade cohort you know last year and the cohort the year before
018totally different kids they're they're learning I would I would assume because it's individualized they're all learning at different levels and different um topics within the the different levels. So how how is that assess like how do you look at that? >> So I think what we do is we look at those individual students when they move through the grade levels in our buildings. So we use the data that we have. So we may look at our students with IEPs whether they're kindergart first second and we look at that vertical articulation how they move up. So we say that okay these are IEP students and this is how they're performing in first grade where we need what are we doing for them in second to third. And though it doesn't it's not reflected in the PSSAs
019because that is the same cohort. we have that data to look at over time within our school. >> Okay. So then on the other side of that, how does the state look at those scores when it comes to funding and and assessments of the district as a whole with regards to special ed students if they're looking at different cohorts of different numbers? Because obviously you could go wide wide spread between, you know, cohort to cohort, but what does the state see? What do they what do they say about us if that when that happens? >> Am I making sense? Yeah, >> we we do realize that um our students who are taking these assessments and um may be somewhat at a disadvantage because we certainly are assessing students who we know to be behind grade
020level. Hence the reasons that they became eligible for special education services. But our goal is always to give our students access to the general curriculum. So we want to see them improving in the general curriculum um while we're working with them on the splinter skill deficits that they may have. So it's really important for us to assess this and make sure that our students are given ample opportunities to access the curriculum. So the state is looking at it like we are. >> Okay. So they're not with like basing funding on PSSA scores different. >> They are not basing funding on that. >> Thank you. Yeah, you're wrong. And I think just looking back at the benchmark again, the success of our special education students as far as growth and where they are exceeding in um
021ELA, they're exceeding the growth of the other students, which is incredible. And they're very close to a similar growth in math. And if I can just interject real quick about our pass assessment. So, when we go over all of these assessment scores, at the top of them, you'll notice that it said proficient or advanced on Pennsylvania state assessments, the future ready index does take into consideration our students with modified curriculum and therefore take a modified uh state assessment called the PASA. So, those students uh scores are also attributed into our future ready index. Thank you. >> Let's uh talk about math. As they speak to math, they'll first present their overall data for second third grade from beginning of the year to end of the year for 20 24 of the school year and then
022our 2025 2026 from beginning of the year obviously to just the middle. >> Thanks, sir. Mr. Caruso, could you introduce yourself? >> Oh, I apologize. I'm Dave Caruso. I am the assistant principal at both Ridge Park and White Marsh Elementary. Um, so as I said, we're going to look at math and as we move into this next phase of our work, we our focus remains centered on growth and we keep you'll hear growth a lot throughout this presentation. Growth every student in every building. We don't simply look at overall performance, which is important. We do take stock in that. That is the beginning of our focus. Uh, but we break down our data intentionally and systematically. We examine every layer. um grade level trends, sub performances, standard level strengths and weaknesses, and individual student progress.
023Each breakdown helps us better understand not just why what the data says, but why it says it. Um we are deliberate about analyzing all subgroups within our buildings. We carefully monitor trends, identify areas of opportunity, ensure that no group of students is overlooked. When we identify gaps, we respond. Um we when we see success, we build on it. Our goal is not just improvement is sustained growth for these students. That means continuously refining instruction um adjusting supports and providing meaningful opportunities for every student to succeed from global patterns to individual learners. Our work is rooted in the understanding and responding so that all students experience measurable growth. Um so this is our overall so we can break it down a little bit. Um our overall goal understand is understanding each student's current skills skill level
024and using data strategically to drive that growth. We begin by meeting students at their current skill level. We identify individual strengths and meet areas of need. We analyze data globally to look at for patterns across each grade level. Um we look for inconsistencies as well. Um we from there we design strategic sports supports which I'll go into more detail about. Our goal is to measure that growth for those students. And while each goal each school may have um specific priority areas or consistent themes across the grade levels um so let's look at what that means. Um so frequent analysis um for subgroups data uh we look we use our data meetings or PLTS curriculum meetings and SST as needed for students not making our growth targeted students support for students at at the bubble level.
025We have students, we have small group instruction, gain support and and uh task for ownership of strategy and perseverance. After reviewing all this data on a global scale, we intentionally narrow our focus. We begin by isolating both our areas of success and our areas of opportunity. From there, we drill down to the individual student level. We identify subgroups, which you can see some of our subgroup performance, and there are some highlighted out there because there are areas that are not meeting our expectations that are all student growth average. We try to build our each level to meet that across the three levels. Um so from there we drill down to the individual student level. We identify subgroups and analyze their specific growth patterns determine where targeted support is needed. We look for trends. For example,
026grade three um we have identified weaker performance in those standards of exploring and developing an understanding of fractions and understanding properties of multiplication and the relationship between multiplication and division. Those are areas that we see across across our schools. So we then notice those patterns and we respond strategically. We build in our game groups. We focus on in our sit plans. Those are areas that we make our priority. Um we for underperforming subgroups we begin by examining individual student data to look for those root causes, the root cause of struggle. From there we provide systematic supports through small group instruction, game intervention, skill-based instruction online to identify those gaps. We utilize multiple data sources including our link benchmarks. We look at our delta math data. Um we also have our own diagnostic in inventories. Our
027work does not stop at application though. We conduct frequent progress monitoring and hold regular PLT meetings, curriculum discussions, SST meetings and also grade level um giving them time to meet as a group. We dig into the specific skills highlighted in the data and use targeted tools such as Delta and Dreambox to re reinforce those skills. For students who need more foundational support, we incorporate concrete physical augmentations, vertical progression to ensure prerequisite skills are being solidified. Finally, our teachers and staff collaborate collaborate to determine appropriate accommodations and modifications so that every student has access to success. Most importantly, we adjust frequently. Our goal is to promote growth and not allow stagnation. I'm going to hand it off to Megan. >> Mr. Cruz, before you do that, could you explain to everybody what bubble means? >> Bubble.
028Absolutely. >> So bubble is one of our favorite terms especially when we're looking at our data because our bubble students are those students who are meeting the proficient requirement with uh within our um within the breakdown and our raw scores. However, they're at that tier that they are close to basic. So it's that in between where they have scored proficiently but they're on that verge if they don't make that adequate growth they are going to fall into that basic they're going that proficiency will decline. So we have them as a focus of ours because we know they are on that taring point where if we catch them now and early we can provide that support to p push them to that top that higher level proficiency. >> Thank you. Yeah. Now they're gonna go to
029Megan. >> I'm Megan. I'm the assistant principal at Plymouth Elementary and I'm going to speak to the ELA growth data. Uh if you look at the screen, the kindergarten and first grade level are showing you Dibble's proficiency for both 2425. So that's beginning of year to end of year. And then our current growth right now from 25 to 26. So just to be transparent, you're looking at two different things when you're looking at two and three. So speaking about kindergarten and first grade, we focus on dibbles because it's foundational literacy skills which are a main focus of the K1 curriculum. As you see in the pie charts, the blue increasing is advanced um and we call that core plus or core support plus in dibbles increasing which are students that are above benchmark. The green
030is students that are at that um core support, which means they're right where they need to be for their grade level. And then you can see the yellow and the red are strategic support and intensive support respectful um respectfully. Um those two are ones that we're really focusing on. So you can see them getting narrower as you go from 24 to 25 beginning of year to end of year and also beginning of year to middle of year. Um, that's what we want to see. But we're also monitoring those kids that are proficient. Are they staying proficient? Those students that are performing at that above benchmark level. Are they staying above benchmark and then adjusting supports as needed? That's an important part especially at that foundational literacy point because as they get to two and three
031which you'll see the link at benchmarks below where those are comprehension expectations and measuring comprehension for the most part they need those foundational literacy skills in order to be able to access the text that they're reading. So when we move down to two and three you can see that the link benchmarks are like what Mr. Russo was speaking about where you have that orange pocket that's bubble, the green that's proficient, and the blue that's advanced. Then on the other side is the yellow and the red which are basic and then below basic. We're monitoring those categories closely, not only for overall proficiency, which is what you're seeing here, but also for targeted students and support. Who are those students that are proficient? who are those students that are in that bubble category where we need
032to monitor closely to ensure they maintain proficiency. So you can see on the 25 26 part that's where we as instructional leaders look at the middle of year are those kids staying consistent or growing at the rate that we'd expect them to and if they're not we're adjusting our whether it be tier one instruction if we consider that that is um an area of weakness or targeted supports depending on which students they are and what supports they're receiving. So what does that mean closely for subgroups? So when we look at subgroups, this is where we're talking about those targeted students and making sure that no matter what um the students are in front of us and the subgroups that they're identified as that they are making adequate growth across the board. The ones in red
033that you see on the side are students that currently last year 24-25 did not make the growth that the all student group made. So, when we're looking at our economically disadvantaged students, our students um our L population and our black and African-American subgroup, those are areas of focus that you'll hear about in our um SIP plans because currently they're not quite at that 15% that all students are making as far as growth. So, not only are we looking at overall proficiency, which of course we want to look good and and you know, make sure that those students, but are those students in each subcategory doing the making the growth that we would expect. We do have some positives here too that our special education population like you heard about before is growing above the all
034student average although the proficiency that overall proficiency of 45% is lower than what the interim target is currently. So there is success there but room for growth. Same thing with our multi- um ethnicity. You can see that they're growing at 22% which is above where we'd expect. And if you look at the proficiency 65% not quite at the interim target but getting there. That's the same for those red ones too of our L population and our black and African-Americans. Um this is where we start to think about what are we doing about this. So we identify specific standards. That's one thing because if we're talking about tier one support, what our teachers are doing day in and day out, these are two areas where we've identified across K3 that there's a weaker point. This is
035an area for growth. So, we consider um how we can support that. These are also higher depth of knowledge standards which um Denise will speak to in just a minute of what we're doing about that and what we do to support those. Another example is when we're looking at our kindergarten students, one thing we noticed if I go back to this slide, often we're seeing a slide from kindergarten proficiency, if you look at 2425, that they are at 80% and then they come in at 58%. So this is an example of where we as instructional leaders look and say what's happening on this assessment or what's happening with these students that we can support. One thing that we identified is the assessment now in first grade includes oral reading fluency. That's a perfect area where
036as teachers and as leaders, we can build that into the curriculum in kindergarten to make sure they're exposed to the oral reading fluency. So hopefully we see a higher level of proficiency in first grade. So they're not starting at such a deficit of going from 80% to in that 50 range. Um like Mr. Caruso spoke about we are doing frequent analysis of progress monitoring especially those historically underperforming subgroups and considering what supports and things we need to put in place to make sure that they are getting adequate growth and whether we need to adjust our instruction. There's also targeted support for students at the bubble level because when we're looking at overall proficiency, historically we're seeing the bubble students start to fall out. And when we lose those bubble students, if you look at this
037again, our proficiency dropped significantly. So if you look at 24 25, if those bubble students in third grade were included and at 12%, our proficiency is a lot higher. So what are we doing to target them? Some of the things that we consider are small groupoup instruction. Um, different buildings have different resources such as read naturally for fluency. Everyone has access to foundations intervention lessons and Lexia lessons targeted to identify areas of need. Um, there's also ELA gain support, which is small group support that we're so lucky to have through our reading specialists and our interventionists. So, we consider all of that when we're looking at these proficiencies. All this will be discussed in just a minute as I pass it over to Denise to talk about our school improvement plans. Okay. >> Hi everyone.
038I'm Denise Marks. I'm the principal at Kaka Elementary. Nice to see you all. We've just been talking a lot about data and a lot about subgroups and a lot about our school improvement teams. So, just to refresh you, our school improvement teams are comprised at each of our buildings of grade level representation, special education representation, um, reading specialist, guidance counselor, but all of our school improvement teams begin with our sense of belonging and student dignity, which if you go back to the slide that focused on planning for continuous improvement, it all the umbrella comes from our future ready comp plan. And so if you take a look at this slide, what we do first and foremost in our buildings is create that sense of belonging. And if you read the list down here of the
039things that we are all doing, we all do them a little bit differently because our buildings are different sizes. And we may do the same activities implemented in a different way. Um but we all take action in the first priority to create that sense of belonging with our students. Um, we all participate in the building level EIB meetings and then participate in turnaround training. We all do no place for hate initiatives um in each of our buildings. I know we just finished our second no place for hate activity um where we are spreading kindness through the community. Um so you can stop by coffee shop and pick up a cup of kindness. Um but different buildings have different projects to do their um initiative of no place for heat to celebrate diversity and anti-bullying. Um
040the bias of incident training that is new this year I think has been a huge impact on increasing our belonging and student dignity in our buildings where we all delivered the same exact training to all of our students on teaching them how to use and kind words and kind language and kind actions equated to a traffic light where green is kind inclusive makes you feel good. Yellow doesn't make you feel good. You have to say you're sorry. And then red words and actions are unacceptable. And we very clearly break that down with our students. And we all held climate meetings at the beginning of the year led with our guidance counselor and administration and then again the new year to revisit with kids. And then we're also looking at tracking the data of what happens
041in our buildings. Um, we all have positive behavior support systems and great activities to promote making good choices and we also talk to each other. You know, I learn from my colleagues all the time. Um, surveying families, what do you do? Oh, we're going to try that idea next year. So, it's great that we can collaborate about what each other are doing. to maybe take something and apply it the next year. And so all of us in our school improvement plans incorporate climate and what we're going to do to maintain our student belonging. Then we dig into we think about all the data that you just heard about small groupoup instruction, SST, progress monitoring. So then we again coming from the future ready comp plan, we take a look at those big focus areas which
042are listed up here, monitoring the implementation of small groupoup instruction, um implementing comprehensive and consistent data protocols, utilizing targeted supports, interventions, progress monitoring, and then our professional learning with a close focus on our subgroups. And again, we all have little nuances to our buildings, but overall, we are all implementing data procedures before, during, and after testing with our students. We actively analyze our benchmark assessments with our school improvement teams and then again with our grade levels which really look student by student by student at the progress they're making the interventions or enrichment that they are seeing and then we look at their student growth beginning to middle of the year and then middle to the end of the year. And then I believe Megan touched upon the resources that we have. Um we have resources
043in Dibbles called MClass, Lexia, Vocabulary, Umatic, a new one, Compass Digital Coach. So that's part of how we grow in our school improvement teams in targeting the needs is identifying what are the new resources and talking to each other and seeing that we're all now implementing different programs with our students to target those areas of weakness and then integrating um depth of knowledge questioning into daily lessons. Um, and then this year to address our ELA goals, a very strong focus on writing and grammar. And now any questions? Okay. Now, I think before we move on to Columbia Elementary School, does anybody have any questions about K3? It was a lot of information that was just given to you, which is why we shared it ahead of time, but I know it's still a lot. >>
044Okay. >> Dr. Robert and now our fantastic team at Colonial Elementary School. >> Hi, good evening. Uh, I'd like to thank my name is Rose Rock. I'm the principal of Columbia Elementary School. I'd like to thank the K to3 colleagues for doing the heavy lifting for us because even though we're separated out as K3 and K to 5, we consider ourselves a K to 5. And so many of the things that you've heard that we're not going to repeat because we're doing a lot of the same things again. So, what we're going to do is highlight what CVS does differently as uh differently. And so, one of those things um when we're looking at our uh state data, um this is our math proficiency for Colonial Ele School. Um as you can see, all subgroups
045are trending up or blue or green except our ELO learners are proficient in advance are already outperforming our 2033 goal of 71.8%. So we had some really exceptional um math growth this year and if you one of the big differences between the K to3 and the other schools is that we do have PE staff the Pennsylvania value added there and this shows the growth and that's really what we focus on here because when we meet with the state and we have little professional developments with the folks at PAS because Dr. loves PAS as much as I love. I really do because for me it's all about the growth. It's are they growing and um and and growth will bring proficiency, right? And so, as you can see, all of our subgroups did fantastic um in
046that. Um again, one thing that I'd like to for those new to the game with PEOS, it's kind of instead of looking at a single test score, it's kind of looking at what they how they grew for the year, right? So, um and with our black static subgroups, we're at 93 and 94%. Um but we received a full academic growth score of 100 for math. So, that was pretty fantastic. Does anyone have any questions about math? I'd be happy to answer. >> I just want to add one thing, Dr. Rock, that when we talk about PES, the reason Colonial Elementary School has PES and not the K3 is because you need three years worth of data to give an accurate PAS prediction. So they track it in third grade, fourth grade, and then our fifth
047grade teachers have the advantage of having a PAS score. Okay, moving on to ELA. Um so same trend as with the K to3s. We definitely have some opportunities in ELA. Um a lot of our subgroups um are trending down overall in overall proficiencies. However, we and of course we have to own the fact that we are not meeting our statewide 2033 target either. Um but we have a couple years to get there. So we feel very encouraged. However, um if we look at our growth uh with our students, um we see upward trends in growth in all subgroups. And we're looking at our students with disabilities, our black students as well as our economically disadvantaged. They're in the mid to high 70s. So, we know that we have work to do and we know where
048our intensive targets need to go. So, that is extremely encouraging, right? So, the growth is is very good. All right. Okay, now I'm going to turn it over to Miss Dell Roz to talk about our link data. >> Hello, I'm Danell Bratz. I'm actually the teacher on special assignment at CES. So, this uh chart kind of looks familiar and in ELA for the first part. This is from our fourth graders from last year. The glaring is the is the red for the EL population. Our EL population here was about 11 students. So, with this information, we knew that we need to make a change. So we are now incorporating more of a pushin model with our e students um which is seems to be helping which you'll see on a future slide. In math we
049make growth in all areas and all of the subgroups made growth equal to the grade level average if not above for fourth grade. And then with our fifth grade data um you can see it's pretty similar. We made growth in many areas and the e students which in this in fifth grade was eight students maintained that uh percentage of 34 from A to C. And they also restructured the EL program in fifth grade as well to include more pushing. But in math, many of the subgroups grew more than the grade level average for fifth grade. And this is our current fourth grade data. And you can see that we are making growth in all areas here, which is great news. So it seems that our EL restructuring seems to be helping. We hope that continues.
050And all groups have made that growth. And the same for fifth grade. So for fifth grade, everyone's made the growth. And in our math group, you can see that the black African-American subgroup made almost made 10% more growth than the grade level average, which is really important for us to see. And Mr. Cer's going to talk more about the specifics of our school improvement plan. >> All right, good evening everybody. Um, I'm Mike Dar. I'm the assistant principal here at Colonial Elementary School. And so I'm going to talk about our school improvement plan as it relates to climate, culture and belonging, ELA and math and science. Um so one thing and some of this you you know you did hear with the K3s because we do try to align a lot of what we're doing
051as it relates to climate and culture is we've also adopted the common language around the traffic lights. It's something that we rolled out in the beginning of the year when we had our climate meetings. We had all fifth grade, all fourth grade together for an assembly and then we did the same thing with um fifth grade and that was been very successful and something that heard the students used throughout the year. Um we also had staff training on the pyramid of paint and proactive strategies about responding to bias incidents. Um, and so the ADL, you know, we did the same training that the K to3s did as well. And we've had a lot of very strategic conversations with our staff and talked about some uncomfortable conversations and when you do um run into instance of
052bias like how do you respond? So we've done a lot of work with that with our teachers this year. and um horny meetings is something that we've done year after year and over the past couple years um we've really started to have focus on various observances to really try to bring awareness to our student population and try to increase student dignity and sense of belonging. some core initiatives and things that we've done year after year. We try to refine each year. Um we continue to be a no place for each school. Um we use student ambassadors here. So we give um some of our students here opportunities for leadership. And so they led our kickoff this year and we had some other fifth grade students who were not student ambassadors uh helped create a video
053as part of that initiative. Um, so you know, something that we think that as they get to the four or five school, giving them a little bit more leadership and a little bit more independence is a really important thing here to make sure that they have a voice in all the things that we do. Um, too good for drugs is a prevention education program that our counselors deliver to all of our classes. Um, just like the K3s and all the uh, schools here in the district, we have our EI leadership team who has been attending trainings with the district and then doing turnaround training with the rest of the staff. Uh we just recently did our great kindness challenge. So we had a week of fun activities and opportunities for students to learn and to
054celebrate ways that their classmates were being kind. Um which was really great because it wasn't them talking about what they did themselves but times when their classmates were kind to them. Um also SST and uh game uh where we look at all the data and try to target our supports and make sure that all the students are receiving um everything that they need. Um, trail wizard days is something that um, you know, we do year after year and those are fun activities that we have every six to eight uh, weeks and those are really ways of honoring the students. We're trying to meet our expectations of being respectful, being responsible and being safe. Um, so with our ship plan with uh, ELA and action items um, something that we recognize through the data that we
055really need to strengthen is um, key ideas and details, crafting structure and conventions. So um some instructional shifts that we've uh made is uh what nurse is a program that we use here. Um but we realized that um we really need to talk about the questioning that we're using in all during shared reading um amongst all of our classes. So we created question stems and we printed them out for all and laminate them for all of our teachers to use um and also for our specialists as well um to try to make sure that we're really having a a focus on that. But we've also been explicitly teaching the reread strategies for graph and structure um and strategic grouping. We've been building skills based groups using link data and using uh utilizing story works in
056game for targeted literature uh focus uh routine practice. So that's with conventions. We've been implementing at daily edits for grammar conventions and infusing PSSA release tax uh tasks in our to our game periods. And lastly, I did touch upon that, but um our specialists, we really do value them as literacy teachers. All the teachers here, we value them as literacy teachers. So, we've included them within our SI plan to make sure that when they are going over text that they are also utilizing the same question stems that our ELA teachers are using, the math and science are actionable items. Um so during our gain periods uh we saw that with our data showed that there was some gaps in fourth grade with word problems and in fifth grade with fractions and volumes. So all teachers
057have a weekly review resource that they've been using during that game period to try to fill some of those gaps. Um curriculum alignment. So we've been using um luster of math. And so one thing that our teachers recognized in going through the data and going through the program is that in fourth grade that the geometry unit wasn't aligning exactly with all the PA standards. So they've been doing a lot of work to try to fill in those gaps and to try to meet the PSA expectations. Um and lastly, our science inquiry. We've been implementing the claim uh evidence reasoning framework to support rigorous student thinking and discourse in science and specialist class. And so with science that we know that, you know, it's there's a lot more discourse that needs to happen. The students need
058to really be able to talk through what the problems are and um and the 3D uh I apologize uh the new skill standards um and the 3D science that we need to uh to. And so in closing um our core strategic priorities um that trying to align our goals with actionable steps for continuous improvement. So uh falling under the buckets of data driven interventions uh maintaining inclusive environment and making sure that our professional learning is systematic and meeting all of the needs of our students. Thank you guys. >> Thank you Mr. Chalker. Uh, one of the things I hope that was very evident this evening when we have all of our buildings refer to their school improvement plannings, we make we make sure that climate and culture comes before our academics. Um, especially now that
059we are having a focus on our suburbs and the continuous growth. We do understand that we want all of our students to be certain that they belong in the Colonial School District because we know that if you do have belonging uncertainty, you are not going to achieve the potential that you could achieve. So hopefully it was noticed. I want to thank all of our instructional leaders for all of their hard work and explaining this to the board. Um do we have any questions? I just want to say you guys uh first of all you did an excellent job of explaining it to us um and really breaking it down because I think you we know you're looking at data all the time and it's just nice to hear that you're looking at the bigger picture
060but you really are focused in on each individual student. Um and that just really came across. Um, and I love the fact that you're getting the kids involved in tracking sort of their own progress. And I love that the focus is on the growth because we all know um, that's really the most important things for our students to grow and learn and feel like they belong. So, thank you. Please tell your teachers. We see that they're doing a really excellent excellent job. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Can we let them go home? >> Yes. You are meeting and over again. >> I can just I can tell you that just to add to what Mr. Drew said. Um, you know, I mean, we've been doing our midyear reviews with all of our administrators and
061we are really blessed with some dynamic elementary principles on top of the data. Uh, They know the data like the back of their hand. You can walk down the hallways with each of these principles. And in every classroom, they know the children in the room. They know who needs a hug. They know who needs a little extra help here and there. Uh and it's really impressive. So, thank you very much for your dedication uh to our kids and our staff. Thanks,