2013-2014 Site Continuous School Improvement Findings

School: Appleton East High School School Improvement Goal(s): East High School will continuously respond to best instructional practices through constant collaboration and community partnerships to increase student learning. Sub-goals:

Strengthen Advisory’s to better meet individual student needs. This is the second year of implementation of Advisories at East encompassing grades 9, 10, and 11.

Create Course Specific PLC’s toward better answering the questions: What do we want students to learn? Why do we want them to learn it? How will they learn it? How do we know they have learned it? And if they haven’t learned it, what additional tools are we going to utilize to ensure learning? Writing would continue to be a focus at the PLC level.

Continue to engage parents through AASD Survey and community meetings.

Data and Findings: The East CSIP Team is identifying key data points that we will look at annually. The following is the past three years of data for some of those data points.

Data Point 11-12 School Year 12-13 School Year 13-14 School Year % of students with “F” (Sem. 1) 16.6% 14.2% 15.2%

% of students less than 2.0 GPA (Sem. 2) 20.7% 20.4% 20.0%

Number of seniors who did not graduate 26 21 13

Number of Unique Students Suspended 60 75 78

Number of Expulsion Recommendations 25 21 17

Number of students with Truancy Issues 154 176 101

We are also looking to incorporate the ACT- Aspire to our annual data with 14-15 being are benchmark year as that is the first year with that data. In addition to this data points we are developing surveys to monitor the success of programs. The following is data from these past years Advisories as well as the 11-12 to 13-14 YRBS (Youth Risk Behavior Survey) Results that we use to help monitor our student-staff relationships.

Survey Question 11-12 School Year 12-13 School Year 13-14 School Year YRBS: I feel I belong at this school 65.0% NA 70.6%

YRBS: There is an adult I can talk to at East 57.0% NA 69.5%

Advisory Data: Teachers care about me --- 72% 69%

Advisory Data: I feel like I belong at East --- 80% 78%

Finally, East created over 20 course specific PLC’s that met weekly and filled out documentation of each meeting. The following are two “Wordles” that displays what the PLC’s talked about.

Summary of Findings: Based upon your 2013-14 data, what are 3-5 key learnings/celebrations? We are celebrating the growth in the YRBS data that showed double digit increases in both adult connections and sense of belonging. We feel that connections and belonging is where all growth begins when working with our young people. We hope to continue this trend by strengthening our Advisory. We saw a slight decrease in the number of students with low GPA (under 2.0) for the second year in a row, which is a positive trend, but at the same time we saw an increase this year with the number of students failing after a significant drop the year before. This is our first year with course PLC’s where teachers are given a common built in time to meet within the school day. We are celebrating the large focus on students and assessments during the PLC time. We know that we are still in the early stages of PLC’s and hope to continue to develop common assessments in all courses to further assess student growth. Finally, the two-hour Late Start was a fantastic addition to the schedule as it allowed us to provide staff development and collaboration around advisory and PLC’s. Also, with the referendum passing second semester, the final two-hour Late Start’s allowed our staff to get some foundational training on one-to-one technology training. What are 1-3 things to be considered as you develop CSIP plans for 2014-15 based upon this year’s experiences? The increase in the number of failures this past school year will be a focus this next school year, as the our incoming 9th graders had the highest percentage of failures (16.7%). We see the addition of one-to-one devices, Infinite Campus, as well as a “Flex” period as keys to improving these numbers. Homeroom Advisors will more easily be able to do grade checks on a regular bases as students will be able to look up grades in Infinite Campus on their Chromebooks. Advisors can assist students more readily with these weekly grade checks. When a student is struggling in a class, the 39 minute flex period can be utilized three day a week. With several initiatives being new for the 14-15 school year, the CSIP team will look to do more work in a subcommittee format. This will allow more staff to take part in the school improvement process. The areas that will be key to East’s success are listed below. A general focus of cultural responsiveness as well as community partnerships are needed in each of these areas.

PLC development to infuse more literacy strategies in courses as well as the continued development of common assessments within each PLC.

Advisory/PBIS – Continue to develop advisory lessons that strengthen staff-student relationships, help in career exploration, and assist to assure academic success.

Flex Schedule – creating Intervention and Enrichment opportunities for our students.

One-to-one Technology Implementation – ensuring both staff and students are growing in their learning via the vehicle of Google Chrome as well as the addition of the High School Tech Integrator.

State Educator Effectiveness – Support teachers in their growth through the implementation of Teachscape and the development of SLO’s.

2013-14 Continuous School Improvement Process

AASD BOE Summary Report

School: Appleton North High School

School Improvement Goal(s):

North High School will seek to improve the disciplinary literacy skills of all students in an effort to

increase the level of learning in all grades. Specific areas of focus for 2013-14 are:

• Increase the reading, writing, and math proficiency of students as measured by numerous

assessments, to include but not limited to, District-wide assessments, WKCE, ACT, SAT, AP,

AIMS, and MAPs testing.

• Decrease the number of 9th grade students performing below grade level.

• Decrease the achievement gap between students by accelerating the learning of the following

sub-groups:

o Economically Disadvantaged

o ELL

o Males

o Minority Students

o Students with Disabilities

CSIP Action Plan Items:

Conduct extensive “data digs” and staff workshops involving numerous staff in

professional development opportunities including those focused on PLC’s, Disciplinary

Literacy and Reading & Writing Across the Content Areas, as well as differentiation, and

Common Core State Standards development and implementation.

Provide faculty meeting and Late Start staff development time to introduce disciplinary

literacy strategies utilizing District staff, site CSS, and Literacy Support Specialist.

Continue refinement and implementation of our freshmen teaming model, or CORE 9th

Grade team interdisciplinary structure which is in its fourth year.

Review past year’s Algebra support “WIN” hour: 3 sections established/scheduled and

directly linked with 3 CORE SLC team’s assigned math (Algebra) staff.

Annual school-wide participation in “National Day of Writing”.

Review progress of our “Lightning Success” program for 9th grade students.

Review progress of recently revised “Polaris” instructional model, our site’s

comprehensive At-Risk Program delivery structure.

Continue development and integration of our Literacy Support Specialist position.

Continue Teacher Assistant program for grade 10-12 students.

Investigate “Advisor/Advisee” scheduling model for implementation via homerooms, in

conjunction with “DOTS” activity feedback, as well as review of Youth Risk Behavior

Survey (YRBS) data, with follow up on recommendations including possible schedule

changes to be implemented for the 2014-15 school year.

Share school’s performance with North Community via website/newsletter/Parent

Organization meetings pertaining to: AP, ACT/SAT, WKCE, MAPs, Polaris, other, etc.

Continue communication and recognition efforts pertaining to “North Nine”:

As part of our CSIP action plan, we reviewed and analyzed all of the data that we had in the summer of

2013, as well as reviewing ongoing reports and data collected throughout the 2013-14 school year.

Information was communicated directly with the North community via newsletter, our updated website,

and Parent Organization meetings, which was also part of our action plan. The following includes a

summary of that information shared throughout the year:

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) issued a School Report Card for our school and for

every public school in Wisconsin. The accountability index score that our school received is based on our

performance in three priority areas:

Student achievement in reading and mathematics on the 10th grade state assessment (WKCE)

• Closing gaps in performance between specific student groups (comparing English language

learners, low-income students, students with disabilities, and members of racial or ethnic group

with their peers)

• On-track to graduation/postsecondary readiness, using reliable predictors of high school

graduation and postsecondary success

North High School scored higher than the state average in all three priority areas, including “Student

Achievement”, “Closing Gaps”, and the “On-Track and Postsecondary Readiness” categories. Even so, it

is important for us to continue reviewing all of the data and searching out measures to help us improve in

each of these areas.

We utilize the report card as another data measure to help us in our efforts to continuously improve the

work we do for students. As part of North High School’s “action plan” for the 2013-14 school year, one

of our highlighted goals was to communicate with our families about multiple data points in order to

provide a broader view of our students’ performance on numerous measures, in addition to the WKCE

test which is only administered to our sophomore students one time in the fall of each year. One such

measure is our school’s participation and success with Advanced Placement (AP) exams.

This past school year, North had 352 students take 688 AP exams and score a grade of 3 or

higher resulting in advanced placement standing for college on 545 of them. This is tremendous

and we’re excited to report our students’ successes on these very rigorous exams! This data is even

more impressive when one factors in the overall positive growth of our AP program over the past

several years. For example, in spring of 2009, North High School had 216 students take 370 AP

exams and score a grade of 3 or higher on 281 of them. From 2009 to 2013, North has nearly

doubled the number of AP exams taken by students while maintaining a 79% advanced placement

standing score of 3 or higher!

Another assessment measure we review highlights our school’s performance on the American Collegiate

Test (ACT). We have a large number of students at North that take the ACT and their average composite

score has consistently been well above the national average, and even above the often touted high state

average score, by a significant margin.

In addition, all of our 9th graders participated in MAPs testing in the fall and spring. This information was

collectively shared and reviewed by our three CORE freshmen teams of staff, both in the fall and in the

spring. The information gathered provided some important data, including the growth and/or regression

made from the fall to the spring in both reading and math as measured by individual student’s RIT score.

Overall, all three CORE teams experienced growth in both math and reading scores from the fall to the

spring testing sessions, with the range of growth in reading being 2.18 to 3.26 RIT points, and the range

of growth in math being 3.46 to 5.36 RIT points.

In addition to the data above, we have identified those subgroups within our school’s population that have

not performed as well on standardized tests and are in need of additional interventions in order to be

successful. Numerous interventions and school-wide efforts have been instituted at North as part of our

CSIP Action Plan. Some of these include, but are not limited to the following efforts, many of which are

established to address struggling students: LinkCrew & “New to North” Summer Orientation meetings

and activities, “Freshmen Teaming” or 9th Grade Smaller Learning Communities (just completed 4

th year

of this initiative), “Polaris”, which is our revised “At Risk” Literacy Support delivery model which has a

greater focus on direct intervention efforts in reading and writing, as well as “JumpStart” for those

directly impacted by chronic absenteeism and truancy concerns, Lightning Success for 9th Grade,

continued part-time staffing of a part-time Literacy Support Specialist, the continuation of PLC’s for

North Staff within the respective content core instructional areas (Science, Math, Communication Arts,

World Languages, Social Studies, etc.), and re-investing time and professional development resources

with “North Unplugged”, our school’s weekly reading program.

As part of our ongoing Continuous School Improvement Process, we will have numerous focus areas for

the coming year. These will include, but are not limited to the following for 2014-15:

Late Start PLC staff development and planning framed by the following questions:

*What is it we expect students to learn?

*How will we know when they have learned it?

*How will we respond when they don’t learn?

*How will we respond when they already know it?

RTI –becoming more culturally responsive through universal instruction

Decrease the number of Algebra failures

Continue to focus and promote additional family and community partnership

opportunities

School wide implementation of the new I/E schedule and building upon our staff/student

relationships through our advisor/advisee model

Infusing PBIS strategies into North’s existing structure

Conduct extensive “data digs” and staff workshops involving numerous staff in

professional development opportunities including those focused on PLC’s, Disciplinary

Literacy and Reading & Writing Across the Content Areas, as well as differentiation, and

Common Core State Standards development and implementation.

Continued college and career readiness and planning discussions and communications

with students and families

Implementation of 1:1 devices for students, incorporating instructional support provided

via our Technology Integration Specialists.

Submit electronically to Chris Webster

2013-2014 WEST Site Continuous School Improvement Findings (Keep concise—1-2 pages)

School: WEST School Improvement Goal(s): West staff members will help students develop strong literacy skills needed for college and career readiness.

Specific action: Survey staff about their needs, trials and achievements with regard to literacy strategy usage.

Data and Findings: a. Display tables, graphs, or spreadsheets to visually illustrate end of year student outcomes based upon the data set(s) identified in the above goal statement(s). Make sure to disaggregate the data to highlight the growth of the students who were a focus in each of your CSIP goals. b. Describe your take-aways from the data; i.e. what does the data illustrate.

These charts illustrate a school-wide effort to improve the integration of literacy initiatives, focusing on application of literacy tools to help improve reading scores. The data illustrates that teachers are implementing some of the strategies that our LSS people are teaching to the staff, but it also illustrates that more

work needs to be done in this area so that literacy tools are a normal part of daily culture. The data does not show us how specific instruction and strategies impacted student achievement, but the chart below helps illustrate a decrease is minimal performance and an increase in proficient and advanced proficient scores in Reading over time. This chart illustrates a school-wide effort to improve reading scores on the WKCE. The data above shows a decline in scores prior to implementing this CSIP plan and specific incentives and interventions designed to help students in the area of reading. The scores have improved consistently over the last two years, which also corresponds to greater use of literacy strategies in the classroom.

Summary of Findings: Based upon your 2013-2014 data, what are 3-5 key learnings/celebrations?

1. Our students have shown improvement in reading, making the largest leap in the proficient area in this last year. 2. Our staff and students have worked hard to grow as teachers of literacy. 3. Our building Literacy Support Specialists are reaching our teachers, which has an impact on student achievement. 4. More work on the same topics will help staff develop confidence in implementing literacy consistently.

What are 1-3 things to be considered as you develop CSIP plans for 2013-14 based upon this year’s experiences?

1. We will need to work on what is in last year’s plan more before moving on to new initiatives.

2. Family and Community Partnerships still needs to be a stronger focus for West in the upcoming years.