Smart Goal Draft EDLS 642 O’Donnell

Parent Involvement Strengths Parents choose to attend the school and generally start with greater agreement with the school’s core values. Parents feel welcome at school. Parents volunteer regularly on campus. Parents generally support the classroom with time and treasure. Parent involvement allows for greater utilization of parent expertise in science, reading, and math to assist students. Weaknesses Parents can blur the line between support and control. Parents may have a different view of the definition of the school’s core values and may consider themselves at odds with how administration implements those same values. Parents may lack an understanding of the public school mandates that are required of a charter school. Parents may perceive a teacher as excellent because that teacher is “fun,” which may create tensions when that teacher does not stay at the school because of poor performance or a significant lack of traction with the school’s instructional philosophy. Parents may lack the skills necessary to assist in the classroom.

Budget Strengths Even with cuts from the state, the budget is able to cover instruction. Being a part of a strong and proactive district allows the school to benefit from community decisions like passing the mill levy over-ride. As a charter school, there is some freedom in how the budget is determined. Weaknesses The school’s main source of funding come from the PPR which is based on how many students are in each classroom. Because the school embraces smaller class sizes, the PPR received is limited, which limits the school’s ability to have truly competitive salaries. In order to sustain the school’s philosophy and commitment to small class sizes, fund raising from parents and other sources is an absolute necessity. Higher staff turnover is possible due to smaller salaries and is more likely in areas like Student Support Services creating potential inconsistent delivery of services.

School Culture Strengths The school has a strong instructional philosophy that drives decisions from hiring to teacher coaching and evaluation, to instructional improvements. Teachers, administration, and parents are involved in relational learning to increase understanding of the school’s core values and how that impacts instruction and student achievement (mind) and the development of the whole person (mind, body, and spirit). A mentorship program is available to assist all teachers, but specifically new teachers in implementing the instructional philosophy. All departments, including Student Support Services, are involved and committed to these values. Teachers willingly attend and attempt to implement professional development that is provided by the school administration. Weaknesses The size of the school – North Elementary has 612 students and the other two elementary campuses have between 550 and 600 students each, it is challenging to keep the philosophy consistent between teachers, grade levels, and campuses. Training is extensive, time consuming and must be constantly tended. Professional development is driven by needs decided upon by administration and is rarely if ever chosen by teachers.

Student Achievement According to the Three Year Unified Improvement Plan: TCA meets all state targets in all areas of performance with our reading and math rating as “Exceeds” with a school percentile of 92 for a 3 year average in reading and a school percentile of 90 for a 3 year average in math. TCA received a rating of “Meets” for the school percentile 3 year average in writing (89 th percentile) and in science (86 th percentile). While CSAP data indicates a high achieving school overall with positive results on the School Performance Framework, there are trends to be addressed in reading, math, and writing. Even with the target moving from to 93.98, our students with disabilities closed the gap and made AYP for The subgroup went from achieving a performance score of to Though the subgroup made AYP, the median student growth percentile was not met in math for students with disabilities, but did increase (SPF 3 year /61 to /59). This subgroup did increase their percentile over a 1-year period (44/53)to move to an Approaching rating. Although our students in this category grew, their median growth percentile was 35 (2010) now 37 (2011). To meet state expectations students needed an adequate median growth percentile of 53.

Further Thoughts… The UIP attributed the lack of growth for students with disabilities to: High staff/ administrative turnover in Student Support Services Lack of training for staff connected to Student Support Services Lack of collaboration between regular education staff and Student Support Services Needed teacher training for implementing the core math curriculum Even with the training specific to the core math curriculum: The growth for the school overall is fairly stagnant, if not beginning to decline. The rate of growth for students with disabilities was insufficient to close the growth gap or produce growth that will close the gap within a reasonable span of time.

Conclusions A rising tide lifts all boats. Student Support Services can not be entirely responsible for the growth of students with disabilities as there is turn over and students on balance, spend far more time each day with regular education teachers. Even though teachers currently use data to make decisions for students in their classrooms, they need to have access to school wide data to see how instruction is affecting all groups of students. After having awareness of this data, teachers need to have an opportunity to develop strategies based on the data that will improve student achievement within the context of the school’s instructional philosophy. Grade levels need to have opportunities to collaborate through instructional rounds to answer questions of implementation of the strategies that have been developed. Administration needs to collaborate with grade levels and teachers to provide budget and time resources to implement plans all within the context of the school’s instructional philosophy.

Smart Goal Part of the smart goal is already defined in the school’s UIP for math. The data that is received is based on all three campus scores on TCAP. What isn’t stated is how the goal will be reached at an individual campus. By the end of , students with disabilities at The Classical Academy will improve the median growth percentile in math from 37 to 40. This will be accomplished through raising awareness of the school wide data with teachers, allowing teachers to create plans and collaborate with other teams through the implementation of instructional rounds, and supporting these efforts through the instructional budget.