Board of Education receives Steering Committee update

The USD 490 Board of Education received an update from the District Steering Committee (DSC) during their meeting Monday evening.

“It’s been a busy year," said Rod Luehrs, DSC member. “It’s been a productive year. We are looking forward to things coming next year."

He explained the work of the committee began in August when teachers returned to their classrooms.

“We finished our meetings with everyone, then reported back here, and the first thing we looked at was achievement data from this past year," he said.

They saw the gains made and some areas where they still had weaknesses.

Because it had been a couple of years since they created the District Improvement Plan, they decided to take another look at it. When the plan was created it was reactive because of their low test scores.

“The comments we’re hearing in the district are we need to be proactive now," he said.

He said things were working and they just needed to do fine tuning now.

“What are the things to get us to the next level?" he said of what they were considering.

They looked at demographic, contextual and perceptual data.

“We did notice some things that we wanted to address," he said. “One of the things that we’re working on currently in our building is the differential instruction."

They addressed needs for additional support staff for that.

They took the challenges they saw and prioritized them.

One of the priorities is their Smart Goal, which looks at reading, math and graduation rates.

“These are the goals that are still addressing things we feel we need to hit upon in our district," Luehrs said.

These also needed updated.

A lot of the changes in the plan were just to make the wording consistent, although there are some things that are slightly different.

“This now looks more closely like the MTSS (Multi-tiered Systems of Support) plans that our schools have to put together," he explained.

In the plan, the Reading Smart Goal for spring 2011 was that 86 percent or more of all students and subgroups meet standards of excellence.

In math, that was 83 percent and graduation rate was set at 92 percent.

In reading, one major change was adding the utilization of differentiation to tier 1. They also added screening and diagnosis to tier 2 and individual modifications and accommodations based upon progress monitoring to tier 3.

In math, they added screening and diagnosis to tier 2, and instructions delivered with individually determined modifications and accommodations was added to tier 3.

As for the graduation rate section, they added Positive Behavior Support to tier 1 and the early warning matrix for identifying students in danger of dropping out to tier 2.

The action steps under each of the three areas also were updated.

“These are more specific action steps under each goal," Luehrs said.

In reading, they are going to implement AIMS Web screening in grades K-8.

“This is going to give us more diagnostic tools to identify kids and where their weaknesses are," he said. “We added that in as an action step."

They also included the application of differentiated instruction techniques with targeted completion in spring 2011 and the 6-12 reading curriculum resources research and purchase was pushed back to fall 2010.

Under math, the additions reflect the screening and diagnosis teachers will make in targeting instruction to meet the needs of individual students.

For graduation rates, they implemented PBS, added the Work Ready certificate program and included an early warning matrix as a screening tool in building MTSS and SIT meetings.

“The thing I really like about the District Steering Committee is we really address things the data tells us," Luehrs said. “Staff training occurred this spring at the knowledge level, with more training in the fall at the application level."

One other thing they are looking at is peer review.

They believe each school needs an external team to review the implementation of the District Improvement Plan (DIP) in that particular building.

The DSC formulated external teams for each building and a peer review was conducted during the last DSC meeting, allowing the building principals to share how the DIP is being implemented within that building. The review team then could question them on specific pieces of the building plans.

“It is a working plan," Luehrs said. “It is what drives us."