dr freighters is going to talk just a couple minutes on just the next steps and what to expect with that nomination thank you very much it's really a nice acknowledgement of our community in particular for the middle school and middle school was invited to in to apply for the national blue ribbon school ward based the park consistent high achievement so from that point once you're notified that you are able to apply and you go and fill out the application it's about a twenty page application pretty comprehensive document and once you turn it in sort of anti climactic because you click the button and then you don't hear anything for a while either then they acknowledge that they've received it and then from what we understand there's a period where they review it and look for it for questions and anything that needs to be updated or clarified then they do give you a period of review for yourself to make any corrections or updates then after that that's it you don't hear anything until september at which time you're hoping that you get acknowledged as a national blue ribbon school so we are one of only thirteen schools in pennsylvania invited to continue to do well on the state testing because it's required that you make a y p in order to be a national blue ribbon school so again we don't take any of that for granted we're going to continue to be diligent in everything we do just like everyone is around our school district so thanks for taking the time to acknowledge the the invitation and we'll look forward to hopefully a real celebration the september  and then our second celebration i would like to know how much is the district me being a y p and have you in february they had a special celebration recognizing all the school districts that made a y p and i'm going to kind of show and you know we like to like to acknowledge her celebrations i also would just like to give a brief update on our comprehensive plan this is has replaced our strategic plan as a six year process to really ensure that we're meeting the needs of all students to achieve their highest level and so what the state has done is made a comprehensive plan it's a single district wide plan that will working on we've met twice so far we met in december and then in february and we've been working on our vision the mission shared values and the educational community statement and then all of the next steps that we're going to be dividing into subcommittees and working on the district plan and the whole plan is due in november with the  and seven thousand three hundred eighty minutes per year of art music and physical education instruction for all students orchestra band and chorus opportunities beginning fourth grade computer applications instruction beginning in third grade or language instruction in the area of spanish grades one through five and then french german and spanish in grade six and then consistent instruction in the areas of science and social studies throughout the school year in the elementary grades others districts values are evident in their educational programming as well in our research that we came to find in visiting and discussing things with other schools they have the following in place the facilitate their success including two plus hours of language arts instruction per day language not beginning until six screen very content area priorities with respect to instructional minutes during the course of the day science and social those taught only for one semester in grades one through eight orchestra course and then not beginning until seventh grade days a week and transportation home for those students the trouble and being more outperformed by some others the first graph is the first chart is mcmurry and then that red line represents big merger performance against those other elementary schools here's our fifth grade sixth grade reading and here's the value added piece the value added piece eliminates the variables being used being that it focuses around individual growth based on an individual's past performance so as you notice  the growth for our students that occurs as they enter and work great in pour the leave us in sixth grade is it is definitely competitive percent grade three of our hill is outperforming the state average in reading by fifteen percent worth fifth and sixth grade or outperforming the state average by eighteen nineteen and twenty percent respectively and then at the middle school seventh and eighth grade or outperforming the state by twenty and eighteen percent i also have the math information and it is very similar again our scores are commensurate with those of a school district with whom we compare ourselves interesting point for the math value added scores that were outperforming all of these schools when it comes to the growth that our children are experiencing from the time they enter our doors the time that we send them to the middle school well prepared there's been increased focus in the area of data collection as well as the creation of structured time for the differentiation of instruction to take place but differentiation is not only doing return stronger students but also the support of students the trouble our teachers have available to them diagnostic data including our anger driven pieces a data current and previous years value added data from current previous students each and every child partakes in a in a learning survey that identifies or learning  also have benchmarking measures with respect to next which is or reading fluency and star in accelerated reader pearson success met to measure comprehension throughout the course of the school year we also do a variety of cold reading problems and measuring math mastery math facts  designed to address the diverse learning needs of our students it's targeted reading instruction in the area of language arts they meet twice a week for forty one minutes across their homeroom teachers in their partnership as well as our classroom support teachers and our enrichment facilit are multiple teachers into the fold were able to present multiple perspectives and teaching styles to the content we also monitor our students progress over time and keep these groups dynamic and flexible and are able to tailor instruction to our children's needs upon best practice instructional strategies that are steeped in research these groups seek to answer the questions what do we want all students to learn what can we do instructional to help that happen how do we know when how do we measure whether or not they've acquired the skills and with it with each and every one of these skills we set a time frame and if the child hasn't attained the goals that we have for them with safety nets that we have in place to help ensure that they can on a different timeline some of the things we've talked about it with in our conversation overarching ideas have been independent responsibility and critical thinking beneath these overarching ideas have been specific  conversations in discussions with respect to comprehension application of knowledge following directions research skills problem solving classification and printing and many others one of the other measures that we've taken has been introducing skill building sessions in lieu of world language the students that have scored in the basic or below basic range for the p s a reading engaged in small group lessons and small group instruction with their homeroom teachers we experienced a tremendous amount of success with this program in the in the past year those students that participated in those skill building sessions improved at least one performance level and sometimes two in fourth grade we had sixty nine percent of our students improve performance level on the piazza say in fifth grade fifty three percent of those students that participated in those sessions made an increase and in sixth grade seventy two percent of those children benefited from that instruction with their homeroom teacher in the area of reading that being the case one of the things that we've implemented in this current year we thought as though it was a very reactive approach not pulling those students and solidifying those foundations until after they've already scored in the basic or below basic range one of the things that we recognize historically and that is that we was that the bottom third of our children as professional range are our most physically at risk for us scoring the basic or below basic range and so we've identified these students  include them and are still building groups as well and addition to those that have already scored in the basic and below basic range and are very hopeful for for the results for this year to be much the same as they were last year we've also made revisions to curriculum gaining more children access to the enriching math curriculum and we also engaged in vision of our sixth grade math curriculum in order to increase the level of rigor including the sequence pacing content assessments  homework this is all to better prepare the students for the seventh grade pre algebra course that they'll be taking next year and then the algebra one course in eighth grade which will follow we're currently reflecting upon the shore vision and identify any additional changes  supports that we need to provide as well as identify any math curriculum changes preceeding sixth grade that will need to be made in order to better prepare our children for the upcoming year our language arts committee which consists of representatives from each grade level look at the writing instruction that takes place within our building as well as p s a data and we set out to bring a more consistent approach and focus to writing instruction in our in our building born out of the conversation that we had through our language arts committee was the implementation of writing portfolios for our students for this school year and we hope and we plan that this will be something that continues that ma discussed with third grade level teams what are the important ideas that we need to include in here what's what's the main focus what do we need to in you know what we need to make sure we're instructing our students on in all of those elements were pulled together and you can share with you briefly what those elements are so at the onset of the school year our students are given a cold writing prompt no instruction on a specific mode of writing the students are just given a prompt and they're in the right the response the response is graded using the  it's given back to the students for feedback that's the first element that goes into the writing portfolio at the end of the school year the students are given that same cold prompt and they have an opportunity to see how their rating has grown throughout the course of the school year other elements that have been included are writing the writing objective checklist what we won our grade level teachers to recognize are consistently through each grade level four five six what are the big rocks so to speak that we want to didn't you know how to write you know how to write well personal narratives how to reports compare and contrast essays stories persuasive essays research reports or all of the big rocks that we want our students to master by the end of each grade level in our building along with th writing are graded consistently the same way across grades four five and six our teachers have had an opportunity sit down and talk about the rubrics and of course the elements remain the same of perhaps some of the terms you know depending if it's fourth fifth or sixth grade may be a little more kid friendly depending on the age group but the content is the same throughout our building we talked about the importance of including additional elements in our writing portfolios elements that would include anything that would just be a  a lab written report you know science lab in science class or a reflection piece in social studies or you know journal entry and reading well to make sure that our students recognize the value of writing across content areas so there are many additional elements that are included in these writing portfolios one of those additional elements is a journal that we want our students to feel comfortable with you know writing whenever they have free time again the whole focus of writing in our building is information to heart as well so journals are included within our writing portfolios also at the end of this well actually in a couple weeks on the april second in service or teachers are going to sit down and have a chance to share their student writing that's included in the writing portfolios they're going to have a chance to do a common scoring activity using our building wide rubrics and they're also going to be able to have a conversation about what additional elements moving forward do we want to include so that we celebrate writing and make sure that it's at the forefront front of instruction within our building throughout the school year when our language arts committee meeting teams have met we talked about celebrating writing in encouraging our students to participate in different writing contests we talk about the importance and the value of displaying writing in showing good writing throughout our building and that's all been borne out of our language arts committee as well so again at the end of the school year a hope is that our students will have an opportunity take a look at the writing portfolios and see the growth that was yes first is it could we have a copy of some of those graphs that you had because it was a lot of information to look at in a short amount of time it was good good information relevant bad like take a look described for the board in the community this evening is kind of the pride present priorities of mcmurry thinks you're focusing on some of the new things that you're examining and some of the things that we're considering  we're moving on now to the high school and our last education committee the focus we had many proposals and this month's focus is going to be on this and so we're going to focus first on the review of the keystone exams and then we're going to talk a little tested that many students at one time before and it was kind of a adjustment as we went in fact one of the things that we did that was strategic was that when we gave the exams there were two options of when to give the exams eit december or january and we opted for january because we could contact some of our other school districts and peers that we have there and see how it went and kind of adjust if we needed to specifically when it came to scheduling  we noticed that the times that the state a lot of give the tests were not necessarily accurate took significantly longer than the state said you know when the state gives you the planning documents you sit down and it says oh this test should take about you know two hours or so well it took significantly longer than that now so all the other districts that tested in december they were like wow we didn't a lot of time so we built our schedule and we built a lot of extra time into that  so there were three exams there was an algebra one exam a biology exam in a literature exam and in the winter way we had to get everyone that had already completed a course in that subject area literature being tenth grade english so we tested algebra one we had over eight hundred kids we had almost nine hundred kids take the algebra one test that's over half our school so  had to do a delayed start open up some classroom space so that we could test that number of kids and we did well we did pretty well the testing schedule went went off without a hi we learned a couple things from from giving the exams one we learned that it takes quite a long time to unprotect almost nine hundred exams and we learned that getting ready for the next day's exam is extra difficult when you have nine hundred sams to unpack and six hundred exams to package for the very next day so this spring way we will be getting our exams as you see every other day so not back to back we won't make that mistake for ourselves again because some late night but anyways the biology exam was given to anyone that had completed a biology course which that was again almost half of our school and then the literature course was really only the juniors exam is for those kids that are currently in those classes so that went away was the state's way of getting everyone that had already completed those classes through that's why the numbers were so high so this spring when we test in may it will be those kids that are currently enrolled in those classes so the numbers will be less we'll have about three hundred sixty some for algebra for biology i'm sorry about three hundred sixty some again for literature and we have about  says who is testing that's who's testing how are we preparing the good news is that they have been preparing because they're currently in the classes across the state kind of the outcry was you know you're asking the states asking us to test kids that haven't had these classes for years i mean that's seems silly to me but that the state decided it so so we did that the spring wave though is is going to reflect a lot more on what's actually happening in our school because those are the kids that are currently enrolled in those classes so what are we going to do for those that don't pass and that's actually most important question on the slide is those who didn't pass the winter wave those that's probably the concern that the parents have in the community if my child did not get a professional advance score on the keystone exam in the winter what's going to happen well what's going to happen is there they're going to take it again and what's also going to happen is is that we're going to be offering some opportunities for tutorials after schools we're going to do some classes after last week we got a spreadsheet back from the state department that had a listing of every student to took the winter wave of testing we sorted that all out and i did a composite score for you to look at and this is this is actually every kid who took it we wanted to get a sense of how did you so this even though we don't measure a y p across all the grades of kids who took it you know it's one large group this will give you a sense of how how well we did and i just to simplify for you i group them together in the non proficiency and the proficiency level so if you look at algebra one we had about seventy five percent proficient were danced rate from all of the kids who took it we really were interested in thinking about these retest years and how are we going to prepare so if we notice our p s a scores last year we're in math and these again you know mr we talk about apples and oranges these actually are a little bit of an apple and orange here but the algebra one test is going to replace the math p s a as the measure so we know if a little bit of work there to do if you see that seventy five percent we have about one hundred ninety three kids who need to retest we have a little bit of work to do so we when we get to the next level talk about what are we going to do between now and may when we retest you have a look at the biology the numbers there are a little bit better but you can see that we have one hundred twenty one students who need to retest in biology and literature i think is probably few if you think about what christian shared with you those kids finished literature and have had a number of years of literature so we had really good proficiency there but we still have thirty two students who did not demonstrate fish and see who we will want to give remediation to and retest so we can look at the next slide so what does that mean for us working on preparing something for you for your next board meeting to ask you to consider the addition of after school tutoring sessions we believe that the work that the high schools doing currently for the students who are currently in those courses will really prepare them well for the keystones but for these hundred ninety three students who were not proficiency advanced in algebra one we want to provide them with more than just online review material so we'd like to have them do some afterschool sessions we believe that three teachers are frank some five sessions after school for two hours and duration would really be of benefit and would give us the flexibility to to cover that number of students in we believe that two teachers doing five sessions in two hours in duration would be would be really good for remediation there and you can see with literature we're going to recommend one teacher do five sessions well over the course of two hours scores last week when the state released them last week if you look at literature thirty two children did not did not get a profession score on that actually ok there the number to retest thirty two on literature if you think about that that's one year removed from the class they had it last year and they took it this year biology one hundred twenty one removed that's two to three years removed from the curriculum when they had the class in algebra one hundred ninety it's like three to five years removed from the cream so it's actually the numbers reflect almost the time away from when they have been so this is a trend that i also think something to note with a match that we felt and we've had many conversations in our curriculum meetings and now a lot of the student that tested out running didn't have an out of one course and so they were in the integrated series and out of the algebra they kind of sprinkled all the way through the integrated so they didn't learn all of the out of the concepts sometimes until integrated three so i think you're seeing a little bit of that as as we're making that curriculum shipped i think we're going to see the numbers increase again there that could be why we have some of that and also the literature to piggyback on the literature is suggested to be taken after tenth grade literature is  not content based so it's not their reading shakespear their test and shakespeare it's skill based much like the p s essays but with a higher rigor i'm going to be interested to see one of my because i'm english and that's that's my i like i'm going to be interested to see this year the spring when we test all the tenth graders because these eleventh graders that talk and we tested all of graders in literature they actually had all of the tenth grade and half of eleventh grade you know so it's like you know an extra so i'm wondering if our scores are going to stay this this good of tenth grade instead of in the middle of eleventh grade i'm going to be that's one of my own curiosity things that i'm going to be interested to see but i think having gotten this the first round i really think we commend our teachers and our students i really did want to say i think they did exceptionally well  the real benefit is right now the high school is in possession of that spreadsheet that has every student's school or they know the proficiency level they know how close those students were to reaching permission and i know christian you talk to me a little bit about the fact that we're looking at essays it's below basic basic for fission and advance those are the four score ranges and they are numerical and they're kind of ranges each one of them and and so the kids that are closest to that cutoff score we actually had  almost almost all of them the largest percentage of children that did not get a passing score were very close so that's good news for us and because it was the first time taking this we're actually pretty please i know the scores aren't necessarily reflective of of what we would hope that our state scores are here peters township but i look at those scores and i say there was a lot that is new and a lot that is not right about that how that testing i mean just the way that the state enrolled it and yet we did almost very similar to r p s to say scores you know and so so i kind of look at the the spring wave and the future of our testing as opportunities for improvement because they will go up because the kids are currently in those classes they're going to do better on a test that reflects what's in that class because they're in the class right now so based on the circumstances it's it's hard to even it's interesting and i think  you're kidding me we have to do this now right now and they were like yeah right now so what we want to know is that we are taking it seriously need had the opportunity to review this data and they're doing that deeper work of looking at what each student needs to sit bickley to how you it and then the next question i had in addition to that was as ever in any given and i don't need any answer now on what will happen to the students who can't make those sessions those five two hour sessions you know there's going to be students who can't make it there so with our school so number one if you have a child and those that are out there in t v land as well if if if you have a child that is currently enrolled in the class they'll be taking the test or if you have a child that hasn't passed over taking it but we're just for convenience sake we're also putting it on your child's schedule so it's a high school we have nine periods you'll notice if you look on their schedule now you will see that it is a tenth period we have like added it as a class so they will see which test they're taking it's added on to their schedule and then in terms of their individual scores as to what they got on the test we are uploading the scores into power school that's that's currently happening here at the central office th making the import which is a a large data job into power school we're hoping that that process will be will be done this week and we hope to have letters printed next week that will go home so the letters will be ma merge basically and pull the data for each individual child and so one letter will be developed per child put in their home room teacher xbox and they'll be receiving in the room and it will have their their three scores on it will be enough breakdown of the scores for a child that didn't score proficient in algebra to say wow i did really well in these particular parts of algebra and this is where i need to concentrate or you just get a seventy five unfortunately that's happened that's what we'll have a report we have the score when we did the  classes can individualize it to the students or is it just going to be generic all encompassing algebra tutorial we looked through the the raw data excel spreadsheet that was at the state department i believe it has to be able to content co very well and yet it's kind of like looking at greek but there is information in there that indicates how the students did in each one of those areas as a group but not the only way to educate your students so we have to sort of that's the next step of our work together is to figure out how to decode the code and then put the remediation is in place that are appropriate for the michael again but my question would have been it's already mid march these tests are made mess of next two months by the time you get the data will you have individual scores for the students to be able to know where they need to work on by the time you do the tutoring classes sounds to me that they won't have it by men to do the level best they can to try it as much as we can i mean if we're looking at five after school session it i'm just saying look worst case scenario that's week before the tests i mean to do like you so i think we should have them way before that i'm looking at our month of april as our month of tutoring session all of the  i know biology is not one that they have to pass to graduate until the current eighth graders come into high school what about the algebra in the literature my only concern was we have seventy five percent proficient in algebra and to do those other twenty five percent state hasn't issued their own local assessments so until they come down with their their project based whatever they're calling it which we don't know yet ours are still in place so those will count as a local sesame if the student wouldn't pass in the second round of testing ok so then those students and i'm in particularly focusing on juniors because them to be seen right next year and your connection would have to get this semester course of these so don't be put into their schedules to take those courses now what about because we caught everybody who had algebra one let's assume there was a ninth grader that had algebra one they took the test they didn't score proficient and maybe take it they don't score proficiency or they just going to keep going on to the next math class and have an additional remediation class or how does that work would be the choice i think because this is all new we haven't decided how that will walk the state actually has changed their mind and merriment have more that originally all students rolling on have to walk to time to take a test i think they've kind of pulled back on that and you can take it as many times as you want that it is school district ball while so you many times as you want until your eleventh grade year until the end of your love for a year and then you're done so i think the child might be up to child choice unless the district wants to get involved in mandate a p s a or a key step mediation course to go along with to supplement to get removed from algebra and then take the test again the following i have that semester out of a class which would be an option for that student and so they could test in january so they could take that semester class at the end of that semester take the next at the same time you're taking geometry time i heard it was forty eight hours to take the project basis estimate i did get a chance to see one a couple years ago and from what i recall they were more difficult than the assessments themselves so i don't know that they're going to be a really great substitution i think that we're going to have kids who prefer to get remediation and retest again i mean i think we should we can look at winter wave as being our time where we retest kids and we may even want to look at some point at the summer wave as an opportunity to remediate and we there are going to be a summer keystone opportunity we may want to look at that at some point as a as an opportunity to get a kid in and maybe summer version of that so it doesn't impact their schedule of course work that they want to take i hear you saying that that that's going to be a concern so these are all things that we really need to look at and see you know how are remediation plan goes and then work from there and out on the next level and one thing i would and would like to see in this is my personal opinion i think that when the parents of juniors get these in the mail and they get up to child gets a letter that says you're not profession they're going to think oh my what do i do now if there's any kind of pain instruction sheet or anything you can send home to those proficient to say now what ok you know there's a class in her tutoring classes you can test again in may because not everybody watches this not everybody comes to the school meetings or leaves but just for the juniors maybe you could put something together to integrate we did prepare regular you know district memo about the assessment but i hear you asking for something that's more tailored to our junior should know what do i do now juniors that were proficient because i think that's going to be the people that have the most questions based on and this is gone b s he said i think the after school tutoring program how it's presented to the students and i'll say to the parents out there we want to think of that in terms of a requirement we that that's going to be very well planned it's going to be a very worth while experience for the kids to really move them along and so we want to think you know the teachers need to do a good job at encouraging individual students parents need to help us and help their children by making sure that they are to support in this program it should be a priority so and i and i think offering the course a couple options get kids to in the eleventh grade who are not profession will be a big help to them and to their parents the high school really did a good job of putting together a lot of material online which they offered the kid that's one of the into as and in my travels and meeting with educators throughout the country in particular the eleventh grade not keystone and the algebra was a concern because of the time lag which christine you mention and also to that many of us are teaching the teaching of the integrated algebra so that it did become a concern it sounds like an excuse it is and maybe one of the things that we learn in mathematics in all our subjects is that we teach for  mention this but middle school will also be given to the keystone algebra assessment as well because we have a number of students who are currently in eighth grade who are taking out for one so that that would be unusual we had a few state graders take the keystone in the winter because they had had algebra in their seventh grade year and they took it at the high school but for this assessment in may they're going to be taking it on the same exact date as the high school required to give that assessment on the same day so we'll have one hundred  some students at the high school and then i cannot remember off the top of my head how many mr hand again has in his group but next year will be the entirely different yes it will be so so with you know this this year is a very unusual gear and having had so many looking at or maybe five teachers in each of them sections and i think originally the thought was well we're better where it we're encouraging it parents to send their kids but i don't know that it was going to be required so i think we were thinking percentage of kids that show up or  more realistic figure than sixty or seventy students put and i don't think that i those were just ballpark numbers because i gree with emily that i didn't think that a whole on hundred ninety three kids would show up they were just to give you a sense of we need to put the most emphasis at the algebra one level then the biology then the literature and i think that if it's a high school administration team can sort of use their discretion to budget those teachers and number of sessions to the content so they would decide that the academic inquire arment and encourage or in terms of what mr merrill said what we can do is have additional teachers available but where we find is where teachers take the time to identify  with their students one on one really encourage them those numbers do go up and they and if kids find the sessions worthwhile you know five to our sessions isn't really a big investment of time but it's a wonderful investment in terms of its proximity to the next testing session it's their own test and if you want to do it when it's a small matter of time compared to having to take the course the next year i mean you can get i think that's part of the thing we need to press upon parents in this letter is we are offering this sort your child contest profession in may because if they don't you know they're required to take the course next year and they're going to have to take it in school  just one other this is not a comment as a school board member it's as a parent i had a child who had to take one of these tests this year even though he was in eighth grade because he'd already had out whatever thought it was  the online materials were a good idea to be able to put out there for the students to study on their own but i found it a bit sporadic as to whether the teachers in the classroom actually had a pretty classic you know maybe spent one or two days going through that data prior to the test to maybe help the students who didn't have some time i knew a way to back in certain time but possibly if we would have across the board require this kind of preparation classes some of these numbers could have been a little bit better i do understand the first time we took the test but hopefully that's not going to be an issue in the future because now we're going to take the test at the time they have the class and so they will have been preparing but that may have helped a little bit if there could have been a little bit more consistent  preparation in the beginning and that's just that's just my own personal perspective on having had someone that went through this are there any other questions for today's meeting to are we going to have any problems getting we usually only have one or two for each department that that side that are interested but this is their practice a little different so i thought i could say that i think the thing that i can do to help support that is on the april second in service day we're going to be talking with the staff about this new peer performance profile which it's like a district report card that's coming out teacher evaluation is ultimately going to be tied to performance student performance so i think that with these kind of with data being tied to teacher evaluation like think that our staff once they recognize that if they're going to take it seriously that it's part of their job is to help the students do well and there i was thinking to what my how on because we have some that come in april second  know working with you if we can kind of get some of that data analyze the anchor spanker give that to the department say here is what we need to plan for for these tutoring sessions that gives them some time to get things ready so that will work out well for us sent out a survey to the surrounding school districts and we actually really had a response from sixteen other school districts just to see where they were on their standardized testing and then last year during the meeting it was really relevant that that ninth grade  the c t p four test the data it was you know from the students to the staff was just really not being utilized in the area to move student achievement forward to last year we did not give the e r b we continue to have our meetings and grade the s a t now research has shown that you know the the more times that you take the p s a t the better score that you'll do on the s a t s and plus while you take that p s s s and the p s a t then you also then have a log in and all that information and from the college board so you get to do their personality tests they have practiced test it's a wealth of information we hadn't even story from the college board come in and to speak to us you know about the scope and sequence and you know was very helpful to any of our questions one of the other nice things with the p s a t it's a score report it's actually provides us with the answers and the it's a line to come course so that we can really you know look at the curricular how the news of the testing and where the students are so it is that is the recommendation of this committee that we would be the district would be paying for the p the tenth grade year because we also were looking at some data that if the students were out on a saturday taking it with a lot of other activities and our numbers were not as high as what we would like them to be and so you know that is the recommendation student a couple questions this isn't in the current budget so we would have to approve doing it for this spring or is this something you were implementing for next year software's or implementing it will be and over that within for next year ok with you et to test in october and so we're going to require all of the children who will be sophomores now if we improve it will be requiring all the students that are sophomores next year to register and take that as this course it's kind there's nothing we have to change from a policy perspective a requirement is an operating procedure type of thing to do so we would just be required to approve the expenditure in the budget at school really the nice thing when we went when we met with stevens or it from the college board not only talked about the benefit to the students of taking the p s a t in sequence and helping them become you know more quickly proficiency with the s a t you talk of the lot about students who do that sequence of p s s s then p s a t then s a t being much more successful in their a p exams and i know that that's that's also a high priority for this board that we increase the number of students taking the a p s there's the ability for us to get from school reports out of both that both of those the p f assess and the p s a t to identify students who may not have been rolled in a p courses who based on those scores could do very well in a p classes  so i think there's going to be some really useful data and really the only thing i have to add is that you know if if a court decides that this is the way to proceed this tenth grade data would become part of the work that we do every year in the fall to look at all of the kids might feel like they're in the group and it might encourage more kids to take it then we need to do it now i ask because it's spending more money and if we look at also if you look at the question of also having juniors take the p s a t in school  based on the numbers of what we're looking at three hundred eighty students in the tenth grade in the fall we did get a quote from the college board it's a little over five thousand dollars so i don't know that you know i mean it's definitely an that i can't i can't talk to that specific numbers but just as a comparison we don't have our tempers are going out and taking that for practice that would encourage that that number to go i like the first time i think idea about having in tenth grade i'm just wondering if maybe over the course the next year we'll look at what to do about junior being home watching our numbers but i think it's a myth that you know i'm tasting you know with the national merit scholar you know they're starting their you know college application and you know getting to that and i will always be able to  time i mean they were so we were so proud of them it was so much better than the way we i saw them approach take me or the i mean they were we went into each classroom during scheduling to talk to them about what this test was going to help them in their future  i think that it's something that the parents wanted it sounds like it's something that you've all have thought about for juniors i don't see the relevance of that right now but i think for software you all want really thought about this and it sounds like a good idea to me that was great last year our first time around it was like sixty fifty some kids this time so we are better on that upswing there are last month per session with the juniors before they get to present will be on march nineteenth might look like so be a mark nineteen office hours this is something we did last year we found very helpful for students they will be able to be in scheduling office hours with the counseling department during the week of march twentieth it's actually a one fatal wednesday  before easter break and they will be able to go with an outline with a powerpoint and do their mock presentation to their counselor and get immediate feedback but they are by appointment so we can kind of keep fifteen minute time slots that kids can get in now and they extended their hours that day so it's like they do it to like four four thirty so they'll stay well but after school kids don't want to miss class so i think that helped last year we will be emailing email blocking web site down since all that w so that's where we are going with that the only new thing that i want to share with the committee because it was something that was brought out last year and i we just haven't had time to revisit i want to let you know that we we did make some revision so the oral presentation rubric we after doing it one year we heard from we you know member it was district wide teachers principals counselors k to twelve grade a value with our students and that when we did suggestion cards and comments for next time the biggest outcry that we heard about making making it better for next year's you know students was revising the rubric it wasn't student friendly it wasn't anything like students are used to seeing in their classrooms it was you know one strike and you're out kind of rubric so that really stuck with us and we wanted to make that better for this year's group so hopefully we have done that so basically the rubric utilizes a point value system which kids are used to seeing in class even though they're not getting a grade for this they're used to seeing points and they figure out the math and they can get to where they need to go and they are confident that when you give them a rubric and says well if you miss and mess up  one thing you're done that's that frightens them they don't understand that because that's not how it works in the classrooms so we went to a point value system and the root like effect was more like speech and english classes what they use have you can click on so basically what i want to let you know is this is kind of the formatting how it looks different all the elements are the same all of the content that was graded before is the same nothing has changed so that you know i know we've we've been criticized in the past all look at the setting a career fair career speech classroom project they're all the same elements ok so everything content wise is still there so basically what this does is it breaks it down into a score of fifty and that the explorers now have were they were anxious about we were anxious about parents were anxious about it because that's not the way we use rubrics in our classroom i think it does bad in one area they might do really well in another and it might help them overall their points so basically i just wanted to show know you were going to do that it was perfectly ok we talked a lot about david and i asked dr karim because if we could bring to you just to let you know that we've started to do some work on thinking about the data tool to pull together all of the data that we look at you heard mr stuart park today about how he i took some notes how he works with his teachers went down by anchor data so he's looking to find out what are the kids being tested on a one of those weak skills that we can remediation or to help students do better we talked about value added data are we growing our students and also are those kids on trajectory to be professional on their next p s a assessment he talked about all of the benchmark later that he collects to find out you know are the students progressing towards proficiency what he didn't tell you was is that he has to look at multiple sources to gather that data and then he has to prepare that to share with his staff so  one of the things that we thought would be useful in really moving forward the district and growing the district is to look at purchasing a tool that could bring all of that together into one nice neat package and into a package that would be  friendly to teachers that would help others to be able to look at the data know how a particular child doing it any given point in time and and then begin to address what are the instructional changes that i need to make to help that child achieve so  we've taken a look at some four particular tools and to really taking i'm taking a deeper look at them right now to find out whether or not they fit the needs that we have in this district to help us identify student needs one of the things that's really interesting is the vendors that are out there have begun to make their tools more robust not only can we look at tools that will let place in our curriculum where where that skill is being taught and where we can find content to address that we still there are some tools out there that have connections to building our own online assessments so  the if mcmurry had an interest in building their own benchmarking or their own assessment tools we could find there are told that it would love to build there being responsible and looking at data across four different buildings it would really be   hopefully to be added to the assessment budget for the next school year and the really the thought behind that is is to build next year's professional development schedule around data and using data to differentiate instruction first students so in order to do that i'd like to have us have administrators receive training so all of the all of our principals our central office staff remained in june and potentially are  having our teachers be trained in the use of this data tool in august and then the rest of our professional development schedule next year focused on how are we using data to do whatever it is that we're doing to enhance student morning so if we're working with curriculum how is the data type that if we're working on addressing the needs of individual students in special education how does the data and so this is sort of my first presentation to see how you feel about that and so are you looking at a system where you get p s s say you get keystone exams get all this testing with all these different results in it and it's going to go into this one what's really exciting now is that these different vendors are in order to stay competitive with one another they're adding on features that that would lead us to do together many of the things that we are do like i said some of these now have the they pull in all of the standardized scores would be pulled in and even beyond that classroom level data your classroom grades your attendance your behavior whether or not you've had medical in on those those those records would all be in one and at your fingertips so that you can you can see the whole picture of what's going on or what's been going on for a child of of the their entire career you have all of it all of it in one and you get to select the criteria and run actually go and they they are magically go and once you do the first handshake with them on your different data sources it's there what about the other things like the behavior things that would get entered their powers that's already house thr it would be beneficial to actually a couple of the tools that we've taken a look at have mechanisms for tracking response and invention strategies so you know we're looking at the ability to have even more data on and in assume that you can use this to actually recommend courses for students to take prior to them during their scheduling especially for middle school and high school if you see what they're testing is you're going to know if they're more apt to do well in a class or not or maybe push it off a year or something like that so hopefully we do this this is all beneficial for teachers and administrators to be able to get the data better help parents help their children with their need to do in school to succeed so i hope that the more that we can push down from the that so it gives us an opportunity to get there early reassess what we're doing with our youngsters but also we're teaching them when we're teaching them and how we're teaching them so the possibilities to improve student performan and also go after is down to individual students and what their particular needs are so when you're talking about the linkage of this consulting company helps to set that up they don't actually see children's test data right they just help set up the links and then people here in our district get to see that the data gets put in correct right every one of the tools we look at has different levels of committee so you know i may have that top level commission to see every student district but i might get mr story mr mark to do in teacher evaluations based on student achievement obviously this gives them a way to make sure that they're doing their job so you know in the data was being used in the school district but this gives this a big call for pulling it all t to be that's the big prize oh absolutely that's that's one of the major benefits to mention teacher evaluation at least one of the vendors we were talking at looking at is working on a component to help us with that dollars for the year ok so it's not two hundred thousand dollars and maybe a hike the highest one we saw was forty thousand dollars and i don't think we're actually looking at that particular one time cost with minimal updates that's yearly nearly the front end this is usually a little more expensive because professional development needs to be added on but then the recurring costs are usually under twenty thousand dollars a year for most that we'll see it just i want to thank you for the opportunity to present at the education committee tonight and have you examined listen to the special needs of our students at the elementary both the primary and the intermediate unit and we're looking at continuing our support for the curriculum for the artistic classrooms there are our own mcmurry these programs have been supported and evaluated by patent consultants from p d and include the verbal behavior approach we've had excellent evaluations this year and student progress has been also very good so we've had so much success there that we are looking at moving  artistic program to the middle school and we are in the process of taming permission from patton to extend the artistic support an artillery support program there which then we will need the curriculum sensory room and designated staff for that program in the middle school next year i think that it's a very good program it is research based and widely used in the private schools and so we've had a lot of success we want to see that continue through the middle school and eventually hopefully to the high school at also at the middle school we want to look at the gifted program  there and the district is monitoring and evaluating the support that we have there for staff now and how to effectively meet the needs of our gifted students there were looking and evaluating the gifted instruction this given to the students  the time that the teachers have to collaborate with the seventh and eighth grade teachers to differentiate instruction for progress of the gifted students their time for writing the i p s and holding the parent meetings so we're looking and hoping that we will be allowed to put in the budget for consideration a half time gifted teacher at the middle school dedicated to teach dedicated transition programs and that will start at the middle school and carry on into the high school that starts when you're fourteen years old and so we will put an emphasis at the middle school to really start to develop that program but i'm going to switch and carry over to the high school now which is where we really want to focus our efforts in the transition program there specifically targeting some of our life skills students there so that they have the same opportunity to graduate with knowing where their future is going and what opportunities they have to do that we in special develop this transition plan and we look at three areas we look at your post secondary education and training for after high school we look at employment go and we look at independent living and so guided by those three transition elements at the high school we want to really explore what assessments we need for the life skills to see what curriculum we need what opportunities we need to offer them including work discovery job coaching and make sure we have the staff necessary for that so that is a program that we already have started to move forward with in the district and i would like to continue that committee and the board to support that so we can get our program so we can enable all of our students to maximise their potential sons will the details on that program of what you'd like to do with the high school with the life skills and stuff we'd be getting more details on that through the budgeting process about how many students you think are going to take advantage of that happy teachers who might need what kind of space we may need anything like that well space we're looking at the middle school space if i can back up to the middle school they already and we have two rooms over there that are going to be looked out for one a sensory room and one for the artistic room so that we'll have to go through the process and through hiring the teacher that we already hired we're going to be able to split staff so we've already have staff in place for the middle school and the high school for the learning support part so it'll be for the curriculum and sas moment and the job coaching that will look at how we can present that in more detail for the budget committee this is kelly i have lived here for thirty years you just came in more information about special ed and i was just listening and thanks laurie and you so much for bringing this to bringing this here to us th another end of march or beginning of actually april budget meeting and then we do a tentative in may so the most more detail you can pass on to mr mcnary for the budget meeting the better ok for that department and and also a real passion for meeting the needs of the children if these programs serve and so she's continually looking for new ways to do that and so i don't have to keep any other questions from the board before we go public on any other comments from the administrators that are here thank you once again and we open up for public comment podium name and address we look when compared to other schools in the state who've taken the case we don't have that data yet i've spoken and mr smith may have to to some colleagues in other areas because we're all curious yeah far what i've heard is they're already in line with the p s a phase so if they did well they did well they didn't they didn't it's kind of like it's very correlation and like we saw strong correlation with ours right that's what some other at district administrators have been telling me but i don't know we don't have any of those numbers re planning to offer for those students who did not reach proficiency i'm just wondering why we don't want to go beyond that and also include at minimum those students that might be recommended by their teachers for additional help you know given that this is so new and our kids are not used to keystones and i'm thinking back to my new york days with the regions which was a similar thing there's a whole different strategy on how to take the keystone i'm sure versus what they're used to the p s s a's so why are we not offering this at minimum to students that are recommended by their teacher who might need additional help or anybody who is self selects to get additional help i think that's something we could look into it again it's all very kind of just you know off feeling our way through this but you know i don't think any of that is that idea typically that is how the program develops you know teachers into taking a look at the youngsters who are teaching concern is just be sure it is so new i think your comment was very valid saying that you know well a lot of these kids did not have algebra for example for a couple of years but i wouldn't feel comfortable making that a board assumption because we really don't know so that's my comment on that and the p s a t's i'm thrilled that you guys are looking at that i sent a letter to all of the board members earlier in the year suggesting that this is something that was implemented in a district that i came from about five years ago with the scores have increased every single year to from i think they started at eight in the state and they're now number three with the s a t s scores but i would also throw in and that i'm a proponent of testing but why not the plan because the plan test is what prepares our students for the a c t and anyone who has a student who's going on to college knows that they do not just take the s a t s anymore and the ace eighties are in fact gaining in popularity on the east so i would just throw that out there is something to consider as well the plan test anderson seventy nine alexander drive in mcmurray i had a question also about the p s a t's i understand that the district the proposal is for the district to pay for it and graders and require all tenth graders to take it that wednesday when they offer it are you also going to offer the opportunity for the eleventh graders to take it on now wednesday but i guess pay for it on their own because it's my understanding that a district has to pick a day to give it in their district either the wednesday or this saturday i think that you have to give the opportunity to the eleventh graders who want to take it for the national merit scholarship also take it during the day because as you recall last year there's the issue too with the sports games being held on that saturday now i'm not sure but it is my understanding that you have to pick a day and can only pick one day but my request is that the eleventh graders also be able to take and that is the year that they are on that wednesday that they can qualify if you have missed class to take it i understand that but i  all of those eleventh graders to take that p s a t test i think that the last time i spoke about this issue i think everybody was in agreement that the college for representative who came and spoke to the district said that students who take p s eighty's do better on s a t s so i think our junior should be in urge to take it and i would even encourage that this year i think that there was something posted on the website about the p s a t registration and there was also an email blast that when out about the t registration i think if we encourage eleventh graders to take it and maybe even go further and sending out a global connect call to all juniors to encourage them to take the eighty's that's a way to increase our scores in s a t s which was a board goal at least last year or the year before because it's my understanding that the junior meet with their counselors their junior year in the fall but it's also my understanding that they would meet everyone what meet before that october sixteenth date to get that encouragement from their counselor so i think that we as a district should do everything we can to make it easy for our eleventh graders to take that p s a t test also on that wednesday during school thank