Monthly Updates

September - October 2007 Uniontown Area School District Data data data! We’ve had progress monitoring on the mind since the start of the school year in Uniontown.  Starting in mid-September, hallways and classrooms echoed with distant beeps of timers and PDAs as the teachers at each of our participating schools assessed all students in grades one through four.  Despite some technology glitches and occasional writers’ cramps, the district’s first try at school-wide screening was a success!  Overall, teacher feedback about the process was positive.  Many piloting the PDAs shared that the technology was a blessing compared to the paper-pencil method—thanks SBSL!J  Others were surprised at how easily and efficiently they tested their entire class despite earlier preconceptions that the assessments would be laborious and detract too much from instruction.  Some were delighted by the insight they gained into individual students’ weaknesses during the testing. After all data was collected by hand or synched onto the palm pilots, Kathy transferred the scores into Aimsweb so that Maria and Eileen could prepare for the first DDMT meetings of the year.  Each school’s team along with a district administrator convened in early October to review the Fall achievement data, set goals, and develop progress monitoring groups and schedules.  I’d like to congratulate Maria, Eileen, and all DDMT members for tackling these daunting tasks with enthusiasm and focus—the process is not easy!  After much discussion and some debate, the groups generated the initial intervention groups and progress monitoring schedules for each grade level.  Next, Eileen, Maria, and Renee met with grade level teams and individual teachers to plan intervention instruction, to explore/model various standard protocol programs, and to develop systematic skill-based lessons tied to students’ areas of need.  There was a great deal of problem solving that occurred during this process.  Overall, we saw that based on assessment data alone there were many more intensive and strategic students than teachers to provide intensive and strategic intervention.  That required creative planning of various cooperative learning activities to create smaller homogeneous groups or pairs within larger groups to facilitate more intense strategy and skill instruction.  It also required careful examination of the core program.  At Lafayette, that meant that the teachers and reading teachers collaboratively planned additional reinforcement of skills taught in the core.  At Menallen and Ben Franklin, it meant careful examination of the integrity and fidelity with which the core was being taught.  It also required some staffing changes. The data showed that an additional intervention teacher was needed at both Ben Franklin and Menallen to teach multiple groups of children in grades one through three.  Eileen and the building principals spent countless hours trying to devise creative schedules using long term substitutes, rearranging intervention schedules, and modifying groups--to no avail.  Too many children were struggling!  When Amanda and Dr. Zigmond met with Dr. Machesky and Mrs. Rittenhouse for the monthly Project meeting, they were told that due to increased enrollment at Ben Franklin, the district decided to move one reading teacher from Lafayette to BF.  While we were concerned about the implications of this change for Lafayette, we were hopeful that it would improve the environment at BF.  The teachers at both schools confronted the change with resiliency and flexibility.  New intervention groups and schedules were devised within the week and it was back to “business as usual!”  Central also decided to hire a long term substitute for a reading teacher position (vacated by a teacher on sabbatical) and assign that teacher to Menallen.  This addition dramatically alleviated the strain on schedules and staff to ultimately improve instruction for the lowest achieving students in the early grades there.  So, interventions were off and rolling at all three schools! As the blustery days of October came and went, intervention continued and teachers began collecting progress monitoring data.  All intensive students were progress monitored weekly while their strategic peers were assessed only every other week.  Although progress monitoring is not normally required for Benchmark students, the DDMTs decided that the “borderline benchmark” students’ progress should be assessed more often than the typical three times per year so that support can be provided as needed.  At Lafayette, the teachers opted to assess their students every two weeks; whereas, those students at BF and Menallen would be tested monthly.   Overall, there aren’t enough data points collected yet to make any decisions about students’ level of response to instruction but enough time has gone by for us to witness exciting changes in teacher practice and student motivation.  These changes are particularly evident at Lafayette.  We’ve found that the teachers’ discourse about students now centers on data and evidence rather than demographics and characteristics.  Even more exciting are the changes we see in the students related to reading!  Student engagement and time on task has increased (especially during intervention) dramatically from the first day of school! Of course, academic progress doesn’t happen overnight and the PM graphs so far indicate that there is still much growth to be made.  We look forward to the November DDMT meetings when the faculty dives into the PM results so far to determine what instructional changes are necessary to help impact that progress.  Until then, we’ll eat, sleep, and drink data! Amanda Kloo, Ph.D. - Project Coordinator, University of Pittsburgh Back to Monthly Updates Main Page