i would especially like to thank all our district leadership team building the ministry central administrator for all the hard work that they've done on this data from all our standardized testing i am going to forego with the pledge of allegiance since we did that at the previous meeting for finance so i would just like to move straight on into the education committee meetings dr french or you started  us about our contributions to student learning that looks at using a child's prior performance how what did that show do and grow as compared to the rest of relation to distribution in the state in terms of how well other children  to this is a joint effort so we're going to talk about each school's data and then have a response from the administrators regarding how they're addressing this data and just in though this data is history we miss is from last year at least our efforts i'm not going to read all this but this slide is just to talk to us about the elementary schools we take the p s a is in the third grade most important piece you're going to see up here is that historically r p s is a exams have been a y and using the legacy standards very different than excellence at the college or pro level same vaal same core same roles but the expectations for excellence is very different and in short what we're what we're trying to say is that we want to hold her children to higher standards we expect more because when they leave us they're going to be asked to perform in a world that is becoming increasingly technological and complex though one of the reasons that you're going to see we're going to present the data against state data we do this because with changing standards you can't compare apples and oranges what we really have to do is make sure that we're benchmarking against against the state or against another entity so that if there is a change in test we want to make sure they were maintaining our position against our benchmarks i guess that's why we go to such great lengths to show you both the state data in our data because in anticipation we're going to have this this year's test scores are not going to be able to compare historically backwards anymore to new tests new standards but we will be able to benchmark against the state and mr fisher is now going to present the third grade data claire  so that's why we need to benchmark for growth data you will be able to control for the variations because it's looking at a child's historical test data and projecting into a future test and they last year that does that mean there was a difference or or no with attainment data because there are different cohorts different groups of children we have an expectation that they're going to be similar but when you get a pretty high proficiency levels different cohorts of different groups of children just may be different and so it's very different in high high percentages to do the comparison that's why we're going to talk about growth data we have to put the two together to get a picture and most will talk about that when we get to the performance diagnostic part of us dr french before we go on because we've looked at very high attainment in this district for many years are you saying that you are focusing more on the growth data now and if so can you give us sort of a layman's term of what you mean by the importance of the growth thanks so in a district this district has  children are doing in each proficiency level the growth rate allows us to say even though the majority of our children are performing meeting the meeting and exceeding the standards are we contributing an adequate amount of learning each year you know  one thing and we say that the p s essays are always the floor and that's how we get the performance data you'll see only look at our growth data and the growth rate is not new it's these are pretty historical trends that we there are certain groups of heart of our children depending on the grade level that we've not grown to the gross standard or to our expectations and what we do there is look at are we scheduling appropriately and we have the right materials we you know instruction we look at all of those factors to see how do we push growth  just i'm sure i understand this whole concept of growth is that if the child is doing well any individual child is doing well and testing well you're seeing the growth measurement really is how much expectation if you continue an adequate amount of learning you're going to be if you advance in the fourth grade you're going to be again advanced in the fifth grade higher standards it's very difficult and hard work to make this maintain being advanced but advance is a pretty big range so if you are at the top of advanced in fourth grade but you slipped to the very very edge of advance in the fifth grade that's going to show up as as a negative for your growth indicator and that's what we see that we are moving or fluctuating within our vance in those bands and really to be it to be able to get a positive or adequate growth of what we're asking is that you maintain your position in the distribution in that band is the simplest way to say we know from year to year it takes more energy and effort and education to score the same to stay in that distribution so you need at least what we call i'm trying to stay away from a year's worth of of learning because there is no such thing there's an expected growth standard so again we're just looking to say that if you whatever performance band you're in it's not about going from below basic to basic and you know that that's not the growth that we're the been problematic for us it's maintaining or exceeding our elementary building data and i just want to let you know to reiterate what dr friend said it was june nineteenth and it's going to say something about me that i remember the day that we received this because we are in this conference room and we are in a training and we receive the data and  work started that day we received it so all the work that we put in this year to take a look at where we were and where we want to go is all developed in our professional development plans and principles and i will go through the th ings that we've done to achieve what we have and where we want to go as our vision moving forward so if you just take a look up on the slide i'm going to move through these rather quickly if you have questions i can answer them but just looking at our heels reading data they are currently at ninety one point nine and as you can see there was a slight regression but if you look at the states trend to as dr french had mentioned earlier that is all as we're following with and the distribution that we're not you know we're not being an  to that so there is a slight regression on the state testing as well moving forward to the math once again probably a little a little larger regression and that one as compared to the state but  as we will reveal when we talk about what we've worked on and the plans that we have in place we'll talk about how we're going to address these areas and then we have pleasant valley reading maintained very very sl maintained the ninety six to ninety five point eight and in math once again ninety six to ninety five point eight again right  perform very well in comparison to the state but we've also recognize that we've had some decline in both reading and math over the years about our hill so there's a variety of things that we're doing to respond to that data as well as some things that we're continuing about our hill to the support the needs of our students starting with the implementation of our new math curriculum which is aligned to the state standards which will help support our kids and meeting those needs that that they have on the p s a scores with that math comes adding more instructional time to the schedule of our hill for students in math in grades k in grades k one in two and three along with that we have a new assessment tool the share in k to three that we haven't had previously so this is something we've been very excited about to use with our students because it's live data that shows us where students are that's called the measure of academic progress or you'll hear referred to as math frequently and it's administered three times a year in the fall in the winter in january and then again in the spring and a lot to see where our students currently are the progress that they're making throughout the year as well as lets our teachers know how they need to respond to their students data where it is right now and how they need to differentiate that in shock in the classroom each and every day with that new assessment we want to provide and we've been providing professional development opportunities to our teachers so they can learn how to review that map data as well as providing them time with dibble state and we've had that was for says several years in the district here and devils tells us who our students are with their early literacy skills in k through three another thing that we've done it by our hill in response to the data is we've restructured the focus of our instructional support and it's provided more times for instructional support teachers to work with students in specific areas of need in addition to that we've also increase the frequency of how often are in shock tional support team is meeting with teachers so what that does is that allows our teachers more time to get together each month to collaborate and to talk about what students needs are and where we need what we need to do that month to help students make gains another piece that we have is restructuring special case loads so teachers are able to focus more on a grade level instead of being scattered throughout grade levels that allows them to focus more on third grade or on k one or two additionally we've also had our support team our support staff instead of having a morning duty where they go out and stand at the sidewalk on bus duty their morning duty is now to support specific students or to support specific classrooms based on what their current data is showing and what the needs are in those classrooms or with those specific children some things that we're continuing a supporting  attendance through our guidance office and promoting that perfect attendance for our students as well as supporting the enrichment program at power hill along with that we've also provided and will continue to provide professional development opportunities for reading strategies because we know that that's what's best for our kids and that's what our data shows that we need to continue to support the strategies in reading and then our kindergarten team recently had an english language arts night in november where they focused on the early literacy skills for kindergarten and they invited parents in and they shared with parents how to support your child at home to compliment what they're doing in the classroom and they also infuse a little bit of fine motor because that plays a big role in kindergarten and then the final thing that i think kind of brings everything together our hill the teacher effectiveness work that we're doing right now and it pretty much mainly focuses around fluid building fluency in our students which also leads to building comprehension that's an area that our double shows as well as that map data showing that our kids really need and we know that early literacy skills is where we need to focus for our children to be successful throughout their years thank you very much any board members have any questions i don't have any questions but i want to thank you because i've come to these meetings over many many years and until last year was the first year where we did have here's the lives and so when we talk about scheduling the bill we talk about providing a large uninterrupted blocks of time so the teachers can teach are going with arts in our math but also giving time to instill interventions to help kids who may not be making  the benchmarks or the growth that they need and also providing enrichment opportunities for kids who are showing the need that they need some enrichment so just talking briefly around math you know giving us core instructional time to make sure that you know we're promoting number sense in our students and that they can they're able to communicate their answer i think that's the greatest new aspect of this program is not only are they were detaining facts they're actually learning skills and they're be able to explain their work and the one  unintended consequence of this new program is the fact that there fluency is building the teachers that i had an opportunity to work with on our math facilitator committee are showing that we are making a lot of strides with our math fluency in our  basic basic skills and then taking a look at reading is really the focus on our data meetings to drive what we do we allow the data to tell us what how we're going to respond to kids needs and taking that  communicating it to parents but not only communicate to parents but letting the kids know where their strengths are where their weaknesses are and helping them be part of that plan to improve what they're doing so it's a it's a true team effort as mrs frantic said and that kate if we were really focused on you know those early literacy skills and blue building that fluency so that's our ultimate ultimate goal and where we're at with our data and mr marcus is going to talk about moving forward you mr fischer obviously a lot of great things have happened and a pleasant valley over the years in is mr fischer said there are a lot of things that we're going to continue to build upon specifically in the area math going to continue to support the implementation of the envisions math program  in order to further develop the conceptual understanding in the deeper thinking and we do that through the collaboration in planning amongst our staff and the area reading mr fisher said we're going to continue to utilize the data to drive our instruction and support our students capable of we're going to do that through focusing on close reading strategies and text based evidence and essentially what that means is we're going to help our students interact with text more deeply through conversations and written expression we're going to students in reading more informational text and allowing them to make connections with the stories that they read and we're also going to help students cite specific evidence to support their thoughts and ideas about what it is that they  so helping them with that transition to the upper upper grades helping to build these strategies with them now will help them later in life and is as we mentioned before our students are certainly capable of that they have strong foundations in place already but helping them interact more deeply with text will be something that that will be of great benefit to them much of our p d or professional development moving forward will focus on these areas and will definitely be heavily considered when we start to write the new  and learning to cite specific information does that mean you're focusing on critical thinking not just believing what floats by you in the year which yeah i think it's some helping students to again understand more deeply what it is that they're reading not just teaching them to you know identify the characters and identify the setting of the story but what does that mean and how does that really affect the story in and of itself so we're looking at more than just skills we're looking at ways to get children to talk about text to write about text to cite evidence to support their ideas in their thoughts as well and as you know the new common core standards you know helping them in presenting them more informational text and helping them with with more fact based stories that will help further you know the other stories that they're reading that the fiction stories that may be part of their base or helping them make connections between the two great thank you stuart and all the respect to what mr marcos just says that's distinctively how i was taught to learn when i was younger and so my concern is  i appreciate that response i really do but isn't that what we have been suppose we should have been doing all along and and i'm not saying we didn't i'm assuming we we did do that all along and i guess i'm just wondering how are we going to do it more because that's not a revolutionary thing to say we're going to teach kids how to you know interpret the text shouldn't be an education at least and so i'm just wondering how that's going to positively affect you know  say age is a factor you have just a little bit really if you do in life and really the answer this is an analyzing the text we've been asking our children to engage with and if you do an analysis of the tasks that were required under under true the legacy standards  the the the balance of fiction versus nonfiction was very unbalanced we are now adding more nonfiction taxed more complex text instead of asking children to be able to recall from stories was it a you know a blue toy or read toy and how many soldiers were asking them to be able to think deeply about that tax related to something they may know in their personal experience and be able to write about it or speak about it might want to what is the author trying to tell us those are things that  not required of children it could have been happening we could have done those but those were not the things that were readily assessed in the on the former p s a tests but i can tell you this that every view of our materials  that we have used in the past are no fault of anyone on these words but what was required we are aligning our work to the standards was very much focused on nonfiction and not so much on and i was focused on our fiction and not nonfiction not on critical reading and it's true that the difficulty of the text that's increased that's for sure and so that does change it to ok thank you mr marcus i really appreciate it one that we're talking about today the students and fourth fifth and sixth both took the reading math and fourth grade they all took also took the science exam and in fifth grade they had a separate test that took the writing the test is changing however and the e l a or the english language arts will be infused and all of the english language arts assessment there will be a separate writing assessment that's a difference and k to three and it's also going to be a difference and four through six so that will be want to just meant to the test the fourth grade will h continue to take the science exam all right and just taking a look at a grade for reading take a look at that line graph there was increase from eighty five to ninety one in fourth grade reading and grade for math we won from up to ninety three point two when my eyes are getting bad and what this is the first thing we want to pay attention to are that the proportions within the circle of the proportions what we notice here is that the majority of our students are scoring in the advanced in the advanced range so that's the great news that's a great part of th so majority of our students are scoring advanced and and proficiency significant majority when we break down each one of those groups as performance levels the color tells us how well we're contributing to student learning in each one of those categories so for example if we look at the mathematics you see we have white in the below basic what that just tells of the warm enough students that's a great thing if there's not enough students the even get a measure that means very few of our students are scoring below basic you look at the next time the sliver for basic we have a green that what that means is that we've there's evidence that we've met the growth standard the way we are contributing adequate amount of growth to our students in the are predicted to score in the basic level based on their prior test history and for a profession in advance all those children are meeting the standards were doing well by the standards incredibly well by the standards that growth measure is just a push to us to say hey you can be doing better and what you when you're going to you hear you go we're hearing from the principals who spoke so far will be the  growing our students in this performance levels and this is something growth has been around for a long time we just never really paid attention too much attention to it you know where you go on can i ask a question in that what you're saying is because i did you know the growth scores were down but we're just saying is that lack of growth happened on that advanced in profession category what we can say is in the advance for mathematics and grades for the there was moderate evidence of that that that group did not meet the growth standard that does not mean because in that group that's doing is taking each individual child in based on their past testing history that's why we don't have the search third graders they don't have a past testing history what this does this took the reading and mathematics their grade scores looked at how they did in their projected how this the children would perform and put them in a performance level so these are this is a performance diagnostic not a value added they're slightly different so what is this is saying for all those children we thought should be in the advance range based on how well they did before they just did not maintain their hen under by two you're plus one and it shows that would justify the whole group because again this is pretty diagnostic this is not for accountability this is diagnostic for us to say ok in that growth and that advance let's run all the children who did not meet the growth expectation let's look at their schedule let's look at their early dismissals let's look at their attendance let's look at the that they happened to have mathematics last period the day and they left for x y and z that we look at the so have a certain  were they all lumped in a certain that a team of teachers were there's a whole number of things that we go through to figure out really what's contributing our theory of action was that when we looked at this we did not have enough time in our core subjects remember this is mike murray from last year and we analyzed it we were getting thirty thirty minutes here thirty minutes here that's the huge red flag and that's what i'm going to stop because that's what mr starr is going to talk about how this change and dr french is going to talk about the growth and again we're going to go through each part but the big takeaway is here the overwhelming majority of children are advanced in meeting the stand there and so this is their over ninety five percent proficiency of the little green and white represent sixteen students and you can see again there were not even enough students in the below basic to even garner a score and the children who were who were historically not perform were performing below standard the gross standard according to these measures as a whole and i have one question again about comparison because i wrote some notes for myself and i hope it's accurate when i compared like i took the asp p p printout from last year and compared it to this year and if you look at the growth school for that we got last year say in math was in ninety two and this year was a seventy three is that ok to compare or no we say that again you know how you get it  or for growth you get it or when it when it comes out like last year we got a ninety two which i assume was in ninety two percent of the kids kno equate to no and who and growth really is above far above or below you are with the growth standard and it depends on whether or not you can say that there are any other different in any given year they give you a band of come with these little whiskers things a band a confidence and unless you're little whiskers are well above where you were last year to say that we have confidence that they're different you really can't compare them and the data that you used in the p p is slightly different  this report this is a performance diagnostic not a value added and so it's slightly different it's used for diagnostic purposes not accountability purposes so when you see you're going to see this little bit maddening to look at the metrics and i'll give you one number you look p's whether or not they include pass or don't include passive data there's an a lot of figures whether or not they use four year versus not four year for accountability so as long as they're in the ballpark you're never going to get them to align so don't ever really don't ever try to make them aligned they'll never be  the stanford dr french so we see different colors now for the first time and what this tells us again the majority in the mathematics are advanced that's fantastic the majority in reading is not but the overall great news here in this is where we want to be higher taining are growing and so this is a really good story but we have work to do because our brain not we'll in advance kid can you please just tell us why this is a good story what that means so the good story here when we turn to blue is that we have moderate evidence that the that the children and everyone moderate or at least some evidence for example in the case we have green children who are predicted to perform  these performance spans are maintaining a position of this tribunal are exceeding their put their former position so they're doing better than expected based on their past testing history so from a simplistic standpoint when right moving out to the fifth grade writing topped off at eighty five point one percent for an advanced profession according to the standards and again now when you look to writing like the thing that jumped out at me when i looked at it was and i think this moves on into district w the very low percentage who are scoring advanced in writing because when you look at our advanced in other subjects it's very high and it's only nine point nine one percent at i don't think it's fifth grade in and of itself is it or is it that the only grade it's writing is or whatever it is that's just stuck out struck me as you know boy that's something we might want to work on yes in my degree of action yes it is and we don't want to get better this has to do with how much time or having children write our expectations for writing how much the complexity of tax reporting in front of him and also has some bit of function i look i want to compare us to how we're doing against the state's percentage of advanced and i that's why i said it seems to be a little bit of a loose elusive that there is not a high percentage similar percentage of advance in the state but that does not not mean that we can't do it especially this is especially concerning for us now that writing is going to be embedded in reading to come out with an e l a score to the expectations in a big part of moving to the p a core standards is about writing writing writing writing writing that at the end that's going to be something that we are we need we know we need to do more the last grade level for the elementary is grade six and eighty eight point two for reading is an increase in their pants or profession students and looking at grade six math another increase that was ninety one percent advance professional just to make sure everybody got the colors we put every color into this last line to make sure that you know what is the way to get the good news here majority of students are getting high attainment they know the standards they're exceeding the standards really good news is that we're doing a great job with our child going our students who are who have historically score below basic in basic but again the work for us is any time you see rather it means work so our work is really trying to move on students through more time teachers have had the opportunity to distribute their instruction responsibilities differently and so by doing so they be able to become further experts in the cork on to areas of english language arts as well as mathematics and so by refocusing  their specific teaching responsibilities and then being able to teach those things to their students multiple times throughout the day we structure our entire professional development across the entire school year in those specific areas so those teachers are working on those specific areas more intently throughout the entire school year we've also acquired additional personnel to work with our students that are struggling in the areas of fluency in comprehension so that she can provide me i'm sorry targeted interventions for those children throughout the course of the year and we experience a tremendous amount of growth through this point in the year and last but certainly not least improving the manner in which we offer our enrichment opportunities for our children making sure that they're of high interest and challenge to our children and making sure that we structure portions of our day to be able to provide theirs in reaching opportunities for students to grow those children in those red vans across the advanced and profession areas there are any questions from any of the board members i  have a question because when you say that there was a focus more on each way and math and and i see that the growth in science wasn't that great too but is that when you crease p when i used to look at the overall big picture and mcmurry the science there are ninety five point five percent proficient in advance and these the science growth measures there was not there was not a science test prior to this was based on projections from reading in mathematics so again this does tell us something it told me something right then i have to get that but it's again it's not something i am going to choose to push in the area of reading in mathematics and believe that it's going to impact science so long as i've had adequate time for science instruction we have appropriate materials i don't have anything right now that would lead me to believe the the i have any other lever although we are doing a very thorough k to twelve analysis so there are a whole of all of our stem activities so i think it will come with that so that's not something we want to run after right now we're going to reading in mathematics and be a little bit more deliberate with miter thank you dr you're welcome we'll be looking forward at the seven to twelve data first starting with the middle school as all of our students in k to six students in seven eight are also continuing to outperform our state averages on the p s a exam one thing to note that's a little different this year with the p s the same math scores are eighth graders also mostly took the algebra keystone exam so this is something new and we'll see this data when we look at the keystone exam just to reiterate again the eighth graders always took a writing test but like grades three through through six the writing will be embedded within the test for both seventh and eighth grade students and i know mr six course he will talk around their focus around writing moving forward these are our scores for seventh grade reading nearly ninety six percent advanced or proficient again pretty consistent with where we are formed in maintaining with what occurred in the state seventh grade math nearly ninety seven percent perfection advanced all the the state dept we pretty much maintain looking at grade eight pretty much maintained where we've it's very steady i mean look over across the five years it's it's pretty maintained what we've been doing achieving in grade eight in reading and math it's a little bit more of an uptake  very small uptick from last year but again fairly consistent with where students are attaining achievement in advance or professional levels i just say you see increased advanced corporate and i understand that but i think when you look at that kind of a graph and you see i'm shooting at the moon here but i'm looking at probably ninety percent of the kids are in advanced and you're saying to me that we're going to grow that you know i just it concerns me a little bit because statistically speaking it's virtually impossible for ninety percent of all the students to be in advanced in the you know the plethora of gifts and talents that these young people have and while i'm all for trying to push for a hundred percent investment you're not going to get it i'm sorry i mean one of the things that we pride ourselves on is you know if we haven't failed lately we're not trying hard enough so you know what i am we're going to run after and if we list looks the same next year i'll be satisfied but i won't i will i will be satisfy a but i won't be as satisfied as if we were really moving that advance and i mean it is doable when you're in the classroom and you can we have phenomenal teachers and working really hard to improve their practice it is possible it is go look at may look at the growth we do have the opportunity to below i do worry and i'm going be very transparent with the change in standards this we are going to i believe take a little bit of a hit that standard is again a member told you we've been playing and we've been playing high school basketball and now a new standards put us into the big leagues be very interested to see how we perform and we'll just start all over again trying to chase this but why i appreciate the growth data this is very good news but again to the concept that ninety plus percent of our kids are you're telling me that there's only ten percent of kids that either you know struggle or are just proficiency that's a tremendous statistic and when a cure obviously we have to carry that through as you see through the earlier grades i mean this is wonderful information but i just when i hear this concept that we're pushing for perfection i'm all for it because perfection is the standard but we have to realize we're not going to get perfection that's my only thing and say to your point where we put our energy doesn't mean we don't try but we're not going to chase this is the same vigor that we are chasing fourth grade reading in mathematics or other grade level reading mathematics that is sure we look at it that's why i said i try to distribute my craziness i'm not going crazy about this looking on to science very similar to reading a math maintaining relative same attainment data over the past five year project set of data writing is a little bit different of a story there was about a four percent dip this is definitely something the middle school we're talking to us about in their report it's an area we want to focus on especially since writing is definitely an important part of what the changes  are again the only thing i want to point out here even though the this goes back to missouri where you were talking about we had a dip in proficiency because that's attainment data different cohorts but you look you're solid growth because those are individual students testing is three against the current performance so you can have a dip in attainment because that's remember that's how volatile attainment is different cohorts of children that's why i also don't get very crazy about those above ninety ups and downs i do not run after those and don't want to be a crazy person about that because you can show monster growth but have dips in the cohort attainment data in this graph also kind of goes to the point that you mean mrs anderson around the smaller number of advanced kids looking at that graph there is a smaller number advance kids and it's very similar across the state it's how the test is great i mean we can make all the predictions but we're pretty much in line with the difficulty it is to achieve advanced on that old writing test now and to mr hannigan everyone good evening everyone and i'm really loud good evening and thank you for that grace not to stock murphy i had the exact same reactions to the data that dr hardy did so i'm going to have a  just joking so first i would be remiss if i didn't first recognize the hard work of both the students and the staff last year because when you do look at that data it is really encouraging and it makes you feel like some really great things happen and i will say that you know the staff at the middle school has created a culture where the expectation is to exceed the state standard for growth and i think that that's a better within the school culture and  that we're going to continue to to to to meet that expectation and continue that forward you know i heard dr french just a moment ago say that you know she's expecting take a little a little bit of a hit but i take that as a challenge that we're not going to see a little bit of a hit at the middle school because we're going to be proactive in terms of how we're going to be preparing for these new standards and i want to talk about that just a little bit here because mr hennig and i continuously express and have conversations with staff that if we continue to do only what we've already done in the past if we just continue to do to remain status quo with our practices we are going to see a hit we're going to see a dip in our data so we need to change our practices and we need to increase the rigor within within our instruction and within the task that we're exposing our students to so i take that as a as a really good meaningful challenge there so one of the piece of the data that we did see that that we're not one hundred percent satisfied with is when we look at our seventh grade students scoring within the advanced ranges for english language arts and i should state that i'm going to respond and react to english language arts while mr hannigan is going to respond to mathematics and then we'll collaborate for a response to science but a we specifically look at english language arts within our seventh grade especially our advanced level students it's telling us yeah we're we are reaching the attainment but within that range  that we talked about just a just a bit ago we have opportunities to reach our highest kids to push them even even higher that that is a real possibility so one of the ways that we want to do that is we're looking at our gifted our gifted teacher and our gifted support services to really collaborate with seventh grade english language arts and so and consequently some social studies to really look at leveling of activities and leveling of text complexity that we need to put our highest achieving students in front of text that is rigorously challenging for them and and you know when dr harvey was talking about reactions to text i thought to myself a phrase that that we often communicate is now it's the expectation is that you read as invested as an investigator and that you write as a reporter and that oftentimes we used to respond on a personal level in terms of you know there would be a story where you would face adversity in the problem might to talk about a time when you faced adversity and write about it and want to not anymore it's not just so much about personal response and says it's about talk about how the author crafted the adversity within the text and what is the evidence within the text that supports how the character responded to that adversity so it's digging a little bit deeper as a real quick quick example to how we're pushing students a little bit further within that which is called text dependent alice and with text depend analysis were exposing students to reading text but also writing in response to text at all times within all content areas so when we look at our writing scores and we see eighteen percent of our students are advanced in writing that's not an eighth grade problem that's a seventh and eighth grade problem that we need to address because writing needs to happen in all content areas and at all grade levels so we're betting a lot a lot of  specifically through nonfiction text because we know that the common corps is increasing their exposure to nonfiction bras or training our teachers for strategies in dealing with the common core and teachers learning the  in terms of math we talk about response to the data and really what we're looking at is almost into supporting the data if you look at the math right now there's no red targets for us to shoot out so we need to look at the core standards and look at what's out there anticipate what could possibly be those red targets in the future and that's what we're doing when we look at the shifts and one of the biggest shift in the core standards is pursuing conceptual understanding and understanding of math in terms of how you apply the equations you've had some of those low level questions you would see on a test well we do the students to be able to develop multiple strategies to attack problems so the idea whenever they have a focus activity or a problem you want to give students a tool kit to be able to say here's this world world problem you have three strategies in your arsenal which one are you going to choose and that's really what we're looking at in terms of math so that's part of problem solving that  using a lot of those types of problems were included finally this fall we got from the state in the reference documents an item of scoring samplers from a state where they actually told us here are some model questions here are some common wrong answers and one of things that  teachers are doing is after meeting with them over these documents every single question and the sounds an eighth grade practice exercises they've given will be given to students either as focus activities the beginning of class as  problems or as practice exercises and they're really immersing themselves in that i know that because i like to go into law the math classes and try to focus problems whenever they're you know starting to get in a class and they're really doing this and the students are noting the increase in terms of the problem solving skills they're having we're continuing our math lab and this is one of the strategies that we use this is the expanding excellence grant that we receive for the middle school where we are identifying the students who have the greatest need in math trying to give them focused one on one in small group instruction and still enabling some students to be able to have the flexibility to stop and get math support as well from from certified math teachers and this is a practice we want to continue because the data revealed of the twenty nine students these are still have the greatest needs in math the twenty nine students who are scheduled either every day or every other day and math lab twenty eight of those twenty nine were prof that we're really committed to it as a staff since i'll be leaving is there any question specific to math that anybody has at this point  last spring was a great conversation with mike murray our sixth grade teacher and seventh grade teachers in science one of things we discussed was when they were looking at how they were using their time they said you know whether it's some it's really difficult for us to fit in in our teachers were saying you know what we do that you know on the environment that's a great fit for us so it's a good example of collaboration that hopefully freed up some time for mcmurray but also just a more natural fit for our science teachers in terms of how they are using their time in eighth grade and that's have a communications really beneficial for all of us as we are expanding or our opportunities to have the students be successful and using our time most efficiently so much turn it back over to mr is is incorporating detailed lab reports so it's not just conducting a lab and answering questions based upon that lab but you're continuously writing about the experiences within your lab and seventh and eighth grade we've always done it with an eighth grade but we've dropped down to seventh grade now where you're writing as a scientist and that's key that because you need to learn how to write within different content areas what you're writing as a scientist in regards to what you are what your experiment with and secondly our science teachers are embedding they have objectives for each students in terms of how students are going to be performing on quarterly quizzes this is new so each quarter they're going to be using specific p s a focused  areas scoring samplers questions every quarter and we're going to be assessing how students are performing based upon the content that they've learned and when we break it down we really need to focus on whether that mr hannigan mentioned and specifically matter and energy so we're these topics of weather matter and energy are those things that are part of the core standards yes the reason that's correct because that's correct thank you any other board members have any questions on this is it accurate to say that oh most every eighth grader is probably taking some form of algebra so is it accurate to say that almost every eighth grader has to take both a p s a and a keystone algebra that is  correct that is correct when do they are they scheduled similar time like ones in april months in may correct it's definitely a challenge within the eighth grade to get students prepared but historic i mean if you look at last year we did the teachers and the school did a really great job in preparing kids for both types of assessments now we're going to put them together on one plane what we will what we're shooting for is obviously want to be in the upper right hand quadrant and we want to stay away from the lower left hand quarter we want to have a high growth hi attainment and we're going to look at the next slide here because again we look at ourselves relative to our like districts so if you compile all of our growth on proficiency in advance from forty eight math and look at all of our test scores across that the whole grades span this is what it looks like and this is good news and it's good news actually for all three districts here because we're all in moving in that upper right overall but again if you can see that zero line is the growth lines and we're getting a little bit dangerous close to the growth line we're still in that upper right hand quadrant but we're in a little bit too far left all of us events placement and something to celebrate as we continue to have more students take events placement exams but also scoring well on them scoring a three or higher will go deeper with us as we go through finally relative to like districts  students performance on the s a t s sam continues to be an area in need of attention and we'll go deeper with this as we move forward looking at the winter keystone exams from nearly an entire year ago our kids just finished  doing the winter wave of two thousand and fourteen on the exams winter wave exams are typically given to students who did not achieve proficiency or above the first time they took it the these are also potentially students would be new to the district new to the state and that's where we have one hundred sixty eight students and these are their scores in the winter wave looking forward to biology again there were one hundred twenty students that took the exam with nearly forty seven percent being profession and three point three being advanced these are students that were retest or literature the same our literature scores are often an area where we excel and will look at even when we look at the spring exams of twenty  fourteen forty two students and we often have lower numbers i think there are only twenty five students that retold at this year so it's a it's an area where we're seeing some success now this this has a lot more bar graphs this includes the state which is the gold high school is two hundred sixty three that's all the students students that took it as a capstone test students that took it as retest years and then the first time test takers has the asterix there one hundred  fifty eight students at the high school who took algebra one as a capstone course or at the end of the year test and then there were three hundred fifteen students at the middle school that is an increase from one hundred forty five students who took at the year before so just to call out again that this was nearly all of the eighth graders at the middle school taking the algebra one keystone exam in may of last year moving forward to biology again there's a lot more bars on this because it deals with first time test takers to all students that took it with richard four hundred sixteen and then eleven students that went up to the high school to take high school biology moving on to literature as i said before this is is often an area where our students are excelling we had no below basic scores which is different than the state so something to kind of benchmark and again there's not a significant  difference between the total number of test takers and students taking it for the first time this data looks a little bit different we presented in bar graphs instead of the line graph from p s s a's because it's a little more challenging to compare especially since there aren't five years worth of data just yet but because of the different groups of students when you have multiple students as first time test takers and then a group of students who are not first time test takers it's a little more challenging to look at the data in that way so i think this is the gives you the best picture of how our students are performing on this exam ok murphy i just have a quick question on really going back to the biology exam or if i'm looking at the numbers where it is not the not that i'm accusing you of lying but it's just that it kind of skews the result of yeah look different than what it really is right yes there is you're talking about four hundred you know absolutely and that's why it was it's important to call out it is only eleven kids those are our most advanced kids going up to the high school something else that's really important to call out if you can think back a year ago to our presentation we said we were going to focus on biology and see an increase when you look there was nearly a fourteen point two percent per increase in our proficiency advanced took scores for the high school that was an area they focus on it was an area where we wanted to get better and based on that they can i think this data shows for itself that there was i think you're right thank you very much and you're on your own now yes that's it ok just looking back at the class of two thousand and fourteen from celebrations we wanted to note it to note last year's graduates had received seven point two million dollars in scholarships we had one national merit finalist and seven national merit commended students and seventeen of our students signed national letters of intent to continue their athletic careers at the collegiate level the trends eighty nine percent of our students went on to four y institutions eight to two year and three percent sought employment went to military service which in this case was the air force chose athletics which was minor league hockey or were undecided calling out this is data that was new last year so we continued with it this is where our star students are predominantly going penn state is again the number one school attended by our graduates mrs pavlik i see that you're at the podium would you like to answer some of the sure that the data that you're referring to the year before with hand entered and so there's a difference between accepted and going so we had one student who went to an ivy that doesn't mean that was the only acceptance that we had into an ivy so it kind of depends on what their choices are not dance is new to us and last year we still had a combination of kids applying to schools with common after navi aunts and students who are applying  regular snail mail so what you see an obvious is not one hundred percent accurate we're getting better at that this year everybody's applying using the system we're doing a lot of training with our ninth graders in our younger students in terms of like they're starting right off the bat in navi on so that's all they know so as we go through the next couple of years the data that you see in there that will help students make decisions based on the profiling that they do of our students based on the reports will get more and more accurate for example we will get information from the national clearinghouse about how our kids are doing once they're in college so that's data we don't have yet because the first cohort of kids whose information is in our only so college so once they graduate it will track you know did they stay at penn state all four years did they transfer somewhere and that's data that we will start getting through that national clearinghouse so the information's going to get better and better unfortunately just don't have a history of data in there the counselors also know at the end of the year and mostly business players are guided secretary who compiles a lot of this data they know where they're sending final transcripts to so sometimes the you know they think the kids think they're going when they report to one school and then they end up going somewhere else over the summer so we're still trying to keep up with all of that so those processes are still in the works sure thank you i'm lost it's me we're moving on to sh t exams in just two areas to highlight when we celebrated this last spring with her excuse me a few months ago with our students we have two students earn a perfect score on the s a t their current seniors and we had one student earn a perfect score on the again a current member of the class of twenty fifteen one thing i want to call out before you get into this data that there is it's a little different than last year we typically have looked at our data in comparison to our neighborhood schools that data is not available in the same format that has been available over many years historically used to put a spreadsheet on their site under data statistics and tell us every one in pennsylvania scores an average scores on the s a t s and they're not doing that anymore now they're reporting it as cohort data through school performance profile so this is our data as comes to us our average scores from the college board this looks a little bit different than the cohort data that you would see potentially on the school performance profile so just for transparency we wanted to continue reporting the data as we did as five year trends because there have been some dips in our s scores we didn't want to confuse or pull any new data in around how it's getting reporter for the twelfth grade so i just wanted to call that out you'll see that that typical comparison with mount lebanon app or st clair is not here because the data is not available in the same place that it was thank you dr i a specific question about this because if i'm not mistaken we have some stupid the students who be taking the s a t or you have just taken the s the first students who have gone through the process can you explain that a little bit please sure moving forward these this current group of students that are juniors are the first students that took actually at the high school just presented about at the  sas institute last week with students at night grade that took the p s s s that took the tenth grade p s a t and was paid for by the district and then chosen opted into taking the eleventh grade p s a this is the first group that that that started a few years ago that will be taking the s a t not this data the data will be looking at this time next year could you please give a brief overview because there are so many such as as is could you tell us district the p s a t is a practice s a t that students take in tenth grade we we we subsidize that for our students because we want them to have multiple practice exams before they take the s a t s same thing in eleventh grade they take the p but that year it's used to for national merit so all of our students should really be opting in to take that because of the scholarship opportunities in the potential to be labeled as commanded students are national merit students so i just want to be clear the district pays for the says that all the ninth grade teachers take the district pays for the p s a t that all the tenth graders take yes that does not count right or national merit and families themselves have to choose to pay a pretty nominal amount i think it's yeah it's about twenty dollars about twenty dollars for their student as a junior to take the p s a t which could qualify them for the national merit i actually we've seen a great increase in the number of juniors taking the p s a t because now that we're offering it wednesday during the day and it's a delayed start so it is more convenient for them it works for our students a lot better we have probably about sixty percent of our eleventh graders fifty to sixty percent who took the p s a t this year can if i could interject one of the benefits and one of the reasons we selected the p s s s and this is something i was going to say later but i'll say it now was that taking the p s s s gives families access to all of the college board reports and data and students access to that and it gives us a summary of of the skills of the students and gives us predictors on how they would do in a p courses and how they will do on future testing so for our kids to take the retired p s eighty one three eight a p s a t in tenth grade we have two years now of data so we can see if they're growing in the skills that they were that they needed to grow on so if you consider the ninth grade test like a benchmark test if you took the s a t s now this is about where you would be and then tenth grade to be another year of data and we can see if they've grown in those skills teachers can see what skills they need to work on holistically and then individual students can see where they are  and then by the time they get to eleventh grade they should have a pretty good idea of where they're where they're falling we've definitely see with this first cohort of students at the trend upward they did better on the p s a t than the p s s s and we're hoping that this year's debt on the s a t will continue to show that trend so this is a question either for you mrs public or for dr murphy so my understanding is about the p s a t is that when you get your results student gets sort of a mini booklet that identifies all the questions that you got wrong so that it's almost like a study guide for you moving forward to the s a t s so it's my impression and correct me if i'm wrong students and families would be better to take that p s a t than to take the s a t multiple times is that correct that's correct ok that's correct and when we did our research in our assessment committee a few years ago that's what we found when we compared ourselves to the like districts who were scoring the same on the state tests but out scoring us on the s a t that they had double the number of kids taking the p s a t in tenth grade and that the families paid for it there was just a difference in the culture in those communities about the testing and so that's what we're trying to effect with with paying for the test for all of our kids skewness pavlik did you not say at one time that the families also for example you came to the ma lebanon school system but the families there culturally would get them additional assistance prior to taking those this has been my experience there yeah ok that's what i just i know that that's why we in fact had those other programs a couple years ago brought in to in fact we have only a small numbers thirty sixty people or whatever into that program to have them sort of learn how to take that this and i know that that was something you had brought up in a couple years and you didn't think i school students the yellow bar is for the state the blue is for the united states we are outperforming those two areas so that's math moving on a critical reading that stayed the same from last year to this year and then but on to writing there was a pretty significant debt from five twenty six to five seventeen so that's just in general the scores again looking at a little little differently than we did last year because it doesn't include our neighboring districts moving on to the ac t this is the composite score over a five year trend while the s a t s may have gone down the a c t's showed some it focuses on critical reading writing and mathematics it doesn't necessarily that looks at those skills specifically whereas the a c t consists of curriculum based tests around english mathematics reading and science the highest score in the a c t's a thirty six with the s a t s it doesn't necessarily it looks at reasoning based on knowledge and skills and it's the most widely used exam and for admissions to college  s you repeat with the a c t is i don't i don't write as fast as you talk sorry it's a curriculum based test of educational development in english mathematics reading and science  and it's also designed to measure skills of students to be successful in the first year of college coursework that's when you look at this next bar graph of the students that took the a c t it looks at all of those areas english composition algebra social science biology and our students outperform the state pretty significantly starting in english which is kind of mirrors what happens with our literature exam all the way down to all students that chose to take all for yes yes moving on to advanced placement exam just me dr murphy i noticed that there was a sign up sheet at the high school for the as fab the host now is that anywhere in the we actually have quite a few students who take the ass fabs so it is given through the military but it provides a lot of good data for students to determine where their skill levels are so we do get that but we don't get reports about their dad at the reports go to the individual students so it's more of something that they can choose to take but it's not out at that the school necessarily could use it if that makes sense and also search source guides them into career choices that you it's not necessarily how this other data reports out right now having been in the military i was familiar with it it's used in the military but whenever i saw a recruiter up at the school and i solve the list of one hundred   so that they can receive data on their own moving on to advanced placement exams ninety one percent of our test takers scored a three or higher and there was a six percent point increase in the number of students scoring a three or higher so that's definitely something to celebrate three hundred thirty eight students took seven hundred fifty six exams with three hundred six of them scoring a three or higher something that's really important to talk around is seventeen students qualified for the national a p scholar ward which means they earned a four on at least four exams or more and that's a ten student increase from last year last year we had seven students qualified to be national a p scholar and this year it was seventeen so that's pretty significant to  note there were one hundred four more exams this year to last and we continue to show increased improvement of student ship scoring three or higher so even though the number of kids taking is the number of tests being given is going up the scores are going up as well so that's that's that's really good news moving on to the subjects course this gives you an idea of how our students scored whether it's five four three two one the colleges decide what they accept some schools will only take a five some schools will take a four or five so that really becomes a school decision as far as where students go this this graph in the next page shows us the number of students taking the course the number of students who chose to take the exam as well as the store students scoring a three or higher some areas to highlight the number of biology is increased from twenty five tests in two thousand and ten and last year we had seventy two tests so that i mean with the m score increasing as well it was three point two eight in two thousand and ten and it's three point six three so i mean that's just a little thing to cull out again the number of exams being taken by our high school kids is really significant to kno same thing with calculus and went from thirty one tests in two thousand and ten to sixty seven last year the next slide is the same same sort of data every exam that our students take  this was the first time over the past five years that students took the micro or macro exams in economics one of the tests that had the most growth on this slide are the is the a p psychology exam in two thousand and ten thirty six students took the exam with the mean score of three point zero eight last year sixty three students took the exam so nearly doubled with the mean score of three point six two so a p continues to be a really good thing to celebrate at the high school and it's one of the i'm going to keep remembering that one of the first things that we did when we looked at our data and just like every all of the other administrators here said today as soon as we get the data in the summer we're like start crunching numbers and start comparing it to previous years and start trying to make sense of it all but i have to say the first thing we did this year was really celebrate because we had a lot of successes at the high school and it was very valid ating for our students and our staff to finally see data that reflects what they think is going on and what we see every day at the high school and so you know we celebrate what our successes are and we look at what areas we continue to  improve or areas that we can improve so that is kind of where we have been with everything and certainly when dr french talks about the s p p score we've been celebrating that quite a bit but there's also area for growth there  we have done a lot of work i'm going to talk first about the s a t because that i think is the most important to area for our focus right now we've done a lot of work over the last three years in changing the culture of the high school towards test students are responding to the other tests because we have seen an increase in number of students taking the s a t opting to take the p s a t in eleventh grade and taking the a c t so you know a big part of our  plan when we started the work with the eight s eight hundred eighty was to change the culture of testing at the high school and embed testing talk really across the curriculum and in families because that is one of the things i saw in the other districts that i've worked in that were high performing that was a conversation going on in families when kids were in middle school what is he proper you doing you know that is not something that has been really standard conversation in peters township so we're trying to make that more part of the conversation and we really start in the school with our teachers with her students so that talk is going on very very frequently we are really excited by the first cohort of kids that are current juniors that are taking the s a t because they are the first group to kind of get hit with all of the different responses that we've had to this data a few years ago the data we're looking at for the class of two thousand and fourteen on s a t s also it's important to note also still went through the old sequence of math so this current senior class is the first class that will be tested that is on the new sequence of math so there's a lot of different variables that go in when we compare data from year to year that i just want to make note of so we're continuing to embed testing takhar the language of testing into our coursework and our teachers are doing a lot to give our kids more opportunities to practice we're very careful not to teach to any test that is not what we are about we pride ourselves in the well rounded minutes of our students and the fact that they're getting a good education at peters that encompasses everything but we can take what we're currently teaching and sent it in a way that mimics how they're being tested on a lot of these  made to respond to the data over the years so even though every class of kids is different every cohort of kids that come through is different last year's cohort cohort was different you really can only compare them to themselves over the years and that's why growth is so important to us when we're comparing those kids to where we're projecting them to be but we are looking at all of all of the data so you expect it to ebb and flow a little bit with response to the keystone exams we have done a ton of work over that we're really proud of the results that we got on the tests particularly with the achievement we're fortunate unlike the other schools our kids have multiple opportunities to pass the keystone exam and so we start testing them when they're in the course and then by the time they're juniors those scores are basically captured and that's what you see in our data is that for achievement is the score that was captured we had tremendous response to that to our interventions that we did but we continuing to look at that and continuing to grow that so for literature our focus really has been on the advanced group of kids and those we think more students should be in the advanced category on our p vast scores we were  nine because those kids are getting really two years before they get tested on literature so that's what we're looking at there we have teacher teams who are working on that in biology we've done the most work there over the past year we've done a lot to change we're teaching biology what we're teaching based on the keystone exam and to our remediate implants are showing some success we got up to eighty five percent from seventy seven the year before which is a tremendous accomplishment and where we saw growth everywhere basic we have room for more growth in basic so that's been our focus this year our students that were basic digging into the data of those students and then for algebra we also saw a lot of success there the below basic students  target group that is where we did not see as much growth as we would have liked last year and we've restructured that course that is our algebra one foundations all of those students were in algebra one foundations and so this year that class is a block period so those kids are getting algebra for one and a half periods three times a week or two periods three times a week and the other two days a week they get for one period and then they have a study help with that algebra teacher so that they can get they can work independently and get her assistance there we also have a coach teacher in there  we've also offered library tutoring that's new to us this year in english and math we have math teachers in the library during all of the lunch periods and during periods two and eight which are heavy study hall periods that has been a big success data teams to the high school we've had them we've we've beefed them up a little bit they're analyzing summarizing the data getting that to the hands of teachers so teachers can make sense of it because as you can see it's a lot of data and to ask classrooms teachers to dig through that and figure everything out  it's a lot of work and so we have teachers who look at it they know what their curriculum is they know where their gaps are so they do that first we go over it and then they present that to the staff and we make adjustments to what we're doing as a response to it  the last thing i will talk about is our professional development on best practices at the high school so in all classes our goal is to increase rigor and really target our instruction based on what the data is showing us which is a shift for a lot of our staff and that takes a lot of work it's a heavy lift to look at data and convert that into what you do every day in your classroom and focus on individual student needs i'll give you an example we have two algebra two teachers this year there differentiated supervision plan is focused on the non proficient algebra students that are in their algebra two class so they're looking at those kids data they're targeting what what needs to those kids have what data do i have to support that and how can  i work with those students above and beyond what they're learning just in algebra two to make sure that when they retest on the algebra they are profession have what they need so the professional development is on best practices so every month we have a different theme different focus and we have teachers who are leading that charge the teachers have selected what best practices they want to focus on and each month we highlight what's going on with our staff we provide them with literature we have our professional learning community meetings with them and we do walk through to check on their progress so it's a little bit about what we're doing i do have a question i see one subject missing and i believe i have a p classes  music are we not keeping track of our music classes for we are there wasn't a student who took that exam last year ok these are only the exams and only the exam and there wasn't any students not last year now so we're not keeping track of how our music students are doing in a p classes we do it's just not reported on they didn't take an a p exam test ok so we're keeping up rigor in music though we are we are they just can't take the a p t i had a question about s a t and you know something that you said is about how maybe in other districts there was a lot more you know s a t prep going on that type of culture would we ever consider and i don't even know if this is a great idea but would we ever consider as a district to create an elective course on s a t prep that kids could take during the school day because i think that is the biggest impediment to getting s a t prep is if you are an extracurricular activities during school it's difficult to do and then sometimes in the summer if you play a particular sports or something it's very difficult to get in and you would it's an academic reading writing and arithmetic would that ever work curricular does anybody think that that would be a good idea or not a great use of time we've talked about that that's still something on the table we want to look and see how this process will play out first i think it's too soon to say whether or not we're seeing success or not because we haven't tested the first group of kids our students struggle to get the electives and oftentimes and are our students tend to focus on the academic subjects so we have kids who give up lunch so that they can take nine classes so that was one of the reasons we did go that route initially we focused on our own particular class but it's still something that we consider can consider some schools do it the s a t prep class we are looking we have embedded s a t prep into our courses which other schools haven't done a little bit more and we also through there is an s a t some sh t practice that we are looking at right now and pushing out our students and they can do some independent work there as well so we're right now we just got the course me but there's some other stuff in there so we're just looking at different avenues that we can that we can give them the hard part with the s a t prep is do we have enough to fill an entire semester thank you mrs public any other questions from any of the board members thank you very much scorecard that helps us compile ataman data growth rate increase in college readiness and one single score and the state look said if you're above seventy that would be considered like what we used to believe was making it like it's also been color coded because the state is very helpful based on a scale of one hundred you get seven extra credit points but not all schools can get all seven extra credit so our hero ninety four point five slightly down from last year but again very remarkable but we're going to look testing this is not what it's about and i hope that you heard when we're saying we look at the data and we look at diagnostics and and any kind of test it's never about where the kid's going to what are we going to have the kids do different but what can we do different to ensure that our children are more successful we're going to them their higher higher level techs and tests and whatnot but a lot is about what do we do it's not about retesting and testing over again so we're not going to play the s p p game about how do we get more points if it's not going to benefit our students pleasant asking for there isn't it and attainment data not a growth data but changed closing the achievement gap here you could see because a science we had a fifty on the on the growth that is one area of improvement when we could go after but again overall the students were ninety against me because i am trying to help them understand some things about what when you see a red that makes people like oh my gosh what's wrong what we going to do with that represents there in that zero for historically underperforming that represents important that we're responsible for all children the growth of all children but that measure here when it comes down to it in that in that group of about fifty students and there are only there are seven children who are not official so it doesn't tell the whole the five percent proficient or you have fewer than eleven children non proficiency you get a pass and anybody who knows anything about mathematics knows that doesn't work you cannot have a percentage and a fixed and when you have a gap closures you know we're going to look really small and does not mean that we're not going after it but in terms of large scale change no i school significant a significant improvement over last year i think a lot of a lot of it to do with the really intense focus on their areas of interest from the year prior to cure the violent years so again it just shows when you opportunity an option for some students who just want to be transparent and they are students we want to report on their progress dr french will you move from that slide because when i was looking at that over the weekend i just wanted to say how proud i am of our district leadership team all of the principals all of the other administrators who are in central office because this is i pop ing how you know so that you see advertisements on television all the time for these charter schools who will do wonderful things for your children and while some students with extraordinary needs may do well i think this kind of charter i'd like to see it posted outside district office because parents ought to think long and hard before they move somebody out of peter's thank you make sure that our children are successful when they leave us no thank you thank you all any board members have any other questions and i think we've come to the part of the agenda where those public comment any of the fifty of you out there like to say something french lot of data to go through and presented to us in previous years education committee meetings we saw graphs that tracked classes through k through eight and they were colored so it wasn't just how sixth grade did in math for five years we saw how that particular class either grew or stayed still or didn't grow and you could track it through classes and that's how we that's how i always envisioned the growth so when i saw what you presented the data today about  h it was different to me because it's just that one grade and how that one course is being viewed not the whole class through the span of years and i'm sure the board members would remember those color coded graphs that you would see you know how that class did in first grade that same class how they did in fourth grade in the same class how they did in one three so as wondering if there's any type of  attainment data over time although it's the same cohort there you're just still looking at the there are levels of attainment across different across the same test over different years and as different it does not tell you so if you have you maintained in the end in the percentage of students in advance where they lowered vance high advance and so it's just not as precise and that's why we did not present that data because of the growth data we have right now is a better way to capture that data and we only gave you a snippet of the growth is a very good bill available the data that we have available in this tool you can actually take that same co you can take cohorts of children and push them through growth across across time keep the cohort the same for growth to be able to see a growth level a fourth grader who's now an eighth grader what percent proficient or what what gross we have that available at all we just didn't report it talk about specific data on how that fourth grader did in fourth grade as opposed to how they didn't need grade are you projecting it out and projecting to me both you can do cohorts individual students and you can do pretty predictions so it's a very it's a very robust tool but again we look at it just you know the old way of looking at it where you look at the tank the same cohort attainment over time you really do lose it looks prettier that way here we can actually see th there are times i would prefer to look at it like that way because that's happy here it shows we do have a lot of work because we're looking that our children although they continue at the same level of proficiency in the same bars they may not be maintaining their standard there is their status in the and i must not have hit that magnifying glass because i look at this page right here the one final thing that i wrote down is that we may not have the scores from mount lebanon for saying clarify this but we do know what they were for all those other years and you know you know once we get them we can see if they're continuing to grow at a certain rate and whether we are do you anticipate that those scores and be available at some time or can we just call them and ask them i have called beyond except i called the state college board and they want to release that information to us they are reporting it in the school performance profile you can click it'll be on the left side but it's different numbers our numbers are the college board numbers that we get in this enormous packet and the numbers that were previously reported in the state the s p p numbers are just that great cohort b because initially i thought i found the dat very transparent they outperformed us the cohort in grade twelve did as well so i didn't want to present that data because the numbers would look different and it would look like we were kind of playing some kind of data number game but you can definitely see it and it's it's going to show there outperforming us just to be playing with that while i appreciate measured against our peers i think it's important to keep us i think we have to be careful though as it's a public has demonstrated that there is a cultural difference in school districts there is activity differences in school districts this philosophy differences in school districts and so even though we should compare ourselves to local districts and i'm all for that you have to take in consideration that there are differences in terms of how the school goes about their education educating the same type children with the same information so i'm fully supportive of measuring ourselves i think you have to be careful in those measurements because there is difference of as noted tonight in philosophy philosophies harvey are there any other comments from the board any other public  s just one and i'm sorry of your i'm sorry could you please tell us your name sure my name is melissa last name is richardson thank you heidi as you drive by the sign which i love took a picture of send it to you my friends that peter stone ship is second in the region great but could you just clarify is that in within washington county is that what is the region mean is that is it allegheny county just the whole state i just was kind of curious as to would say in our local area and i believe we were number tied for number four in the state ok so number four and stay ok i just wanted i just was curious what that meant ok the other thing is i have a neighbor who is good self a woman that a minister there and they were doing this steam program and i was just wondering and because you know i know that science was one of those areas that was in red and i know that you're not focusing on that right now but i was just wondering has there been any conversation at all about incorporating some of that because i know i'm not i don't remember all of the what the acronym stands for i know science and art and math which sound great are all in there is there any thought about incorporating something like that into the i mean because with the construction things that are going on with mcmurry coming up i don't know if you are going to be what your thoughts are about that and so when i thank you rex allow me to clear the up to clarify this  so we were going to focus on him and in terms of looking at particular strategies we are looking in terms of programming so we are looking at a fact we have a meeting this week with the center for innovation at cal you to come in and do it an stem opportunities k twelve well up for gaps mr sikorski co hosted a stem career fair and the robotics tournament this this past saturday and we are in conversation with project lead the way and they're a leader in science hands on science curriculum so we're doing a number of things we again when you look at the job prospects for our students there are the prospects for our students are going to will graduate are going to be in  and biomedical until we were out there actually really aggressively wanting to increase our opportunities for students but we don't want to do it randomly want to do on a smart way ok so then that is there there has already been discussion ok good ok the last question i have is and it's a it's about the common core and again the website i go to it i get a little confused but what i found is that in twelfth grade they're expecting and we talked about this at the p council meeting that their goal is is that twelfth grade the what they're expecting kids to do it at twelfth grade is and so is that does anybody else have understanding a twelfth grade what is the expectation for common core math does anybody know because what i read is and what i've heard from other people and read online is that the twelfth grade expectation for math and common core in twelfth grade is algebra and if we're expecting you know eighth grade here you know you said that most of your kids are taking that algebra exam i just need i'm just not clear on that and if that's true or not true i would have to look at exactly what you're looking at but algebraic concepts we know are the gate keeper for success in college may might have been referring to that but algebra concepts beginning kindergarten and so i don't believe that they would have been talking about sending out a core sequence where students are taking algebra for the first time in high school blankly had to do with some expectation around algebraic concepts and again you see algebraic concepts beginning in the in the primary grades i would have to look at because all i could find it topped out at algebra there was nothing beyond algebra and i'm thinking to myself ok is that you know they keep talking about these are rigorous standards but there's got to be something beyond algebra so that's why i just wanted a little bit of clarification and how we were as a district were jumping on this common core how we're going to address that if that if it were using the textbooks that are aligned with that with common core who work so long and hard all day and stay here till nine o'clock at night so thank you all night