Mineola Elementary Principals Detail Action Plans

During a meeting on December 1, the elementary school principals from the Mineola School District gave a series of presentations detailing action plans for their respective buildings. The action plans are part of new regulations where .

An early focus of the presentation was the results for the kindergarten NWEA reading exam, for which the normal fall score is 142.5 and to which 160, or 70 percent of students, fell below. A total of 67 students scored above that mark. Principal SueCaryl Fleischmann attributed the low score to the test being administered the first two weeks of school, a time when students come in “pretty shy” and were using computers for the first time.

“We had to put a little sticker on the left click so that they knew what button to actually push,” she said, stating that by January there would be improvement based on student’s computer usage alone.

The school is instituting a “literacy collaborative” along with a coach for teachers on alternate Wednesdays and will use the winter NWEA to measure progress. Dr. Fleischmann and teachers will also meet once per week in professional learning career (PLC) groups to review student assessments, progress toward goals and analyze data.

Since the NWEA is a , it has what is called “typical” growth and “catch up” growth which those students who are behind in their learning must also achieve.

“You want to see everybody (at) at least the same numbers and then you want to see the catch-up growth as well,” Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler said. “The notion here is the principal’s are going to get new numbers and then revise their action plans to correlate. These numbers, there’s not a good way to present it that is meaningful because that’s not the kind of test it is – it’s a growth-model test. The real power of this test will happen in the spring.”

The first assessment of the will be conducted in 2013 and Mineola does not have a growth model assessment “other than running records in the younger grades and NWEA,” according to the superintendent. New York State is currently .

“We are fast becoming an academic grade at pre-K so it’s a whole shift of how we think about and the tasks that our kids are expected to do are very challenging,” Dr. Nagler said. “The accountability of NCLB and meeting AYP (annual yearly performance) is as a nation, that’s where we are. What it tells me is there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t happening in the home to prepare kids for school.”

At the , principal Devra Small said that her SMART goals are looking at the “overall growth of students,” where “we want to see that every student is moving forward wherever their beginning level is, that every student is showing growth (and) that we don’t have anyone stagnating or sliding back.” The “neediest” readers are being placed in a reading group twice per day. “NWEA gave us some more precise direction,” she said.

Principal Deborah Shaw stated that they are “really very similar” to Hampton on the data received from the NWEA test, but “the piece of our information that I think might be of interest to everyone,” is that they have PLC meetings and will be looking at samples of student work in fourth grade “where the teacher have been working very closely to create assessments that really tie into expectation and the rigor of the common core.”

All grades at Meadow are also promoting “student responsibility and awareness” of the NWEA, specifically “what does it mean and how is everyone, parent, teacher, student, going to work together to raise those scores,” Shaw said.

Each student’s scores are sent home along with their goals which must be signed by a parent. “This gives them an idea of what their child can do and what their child should be working towards doing,” Shaw said.

As part of a district-wide initiative rolled out before the holiday break, teachers are placing links on webpages to games that students can play in computer lab and at home. These games are linked to RIT scores that are part of the NWEA exam.

“We’re really worried with our fourth graders, one of our concerns is they’re understanding the vocabulary because even though they can decode what they are reading, we’re noticing that they may not get the nuances of what’s happening,” Shaw said, adding that the teachers are working on increasing the complexity of texts which they read as part of classwork. For the second grade, the focus is word study while in first grade teachers are trying to get children up to their appropriate reading level.

“We all have the same goals but we’re at a higher level,” Principal Pat Molloy said, focusing on the reading and literacy groups for students. “I would say I almost see every reading teacher and ESL teacher every day and we talk about learning, we talk about what’s going on in the classes, we try to problem solve.”

Molloy said that Jackson Avenue is “a little behind” the other schools with student responsibility and setting of goals but they are “in the process” of implementing it with strategies for students. Another goal is to replenish the reading level texts library and do so “at a higher level.” The school is prepping before and after-school programs, most of which will start in January, save for one which started in December which meets twice a week for an hour after school. The children in the program are determined by their NWEA scores in reading and math. Molloy said that strategic and student goals were planned to go out December 1 but were pushed back and sent home before the holiday break.

Flanked by assistant principal Dr. George Maurer and instructional leader Michelle HochHauser, principal Mark Barth stated that he was “finding consistency” between student performance on NWEA and state assessments. The development of the individual worksheets to develop student goals “is really a powerful tool for us” he said, adding that it “builds capacity” for differentiated instruction. The administration of the NWEA takes three weeks at the middle school since students are tested on  reading, math and language.

Barth said that he participates in Friday planing and “reflection” reports for each grade group, explaining that his artifact “is our collective thinking about the success of that week” after PLC meetings. The administration is developing a “menu” where within each progress level there would be three or four different activities for students to complete. He is most concerned about “bubble” kids – those who achieved a low three or “just missed” on state assessment. “We’re concerned that we maintain them,” he said.

The school is going to offer fifth graders after-school sessions by invitation, but not try to take students away from other activities such as drama club, etc.

“The final bottom line is that we will advise the parent that we think this should take the priority,” Barth said.

Student goal sheets directly address children who scored twos, threes and fours, giving them strategies to enrich since Des Cartes – the NWEA system of displaying learning statements – is divided into three segments: current status and what students are ready to learn, what has been mastered and what needs to be learned.