SPED 564 Achievement Paper Sample

SPED 564 Achievement Paper by Marla Layton The student achievement data measured at my district, school, and classroom levels offers invaluable support for making good decisions about instruction. My school district collects data from multiple sources, such as Iowa Assessments, Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), classroom performance data including Formative Reading Assessment for Teachers (FAST) and Benchmark Assessment System (BAS), and other relevant data, such as ACT scores. The district’s student improvement goals reflect increasing the percent of elementary students:

• meeting or exceeding grade level expectations in Reading for FAST and BAS

• meeting expected growth on MAP in Math

• meeting proficiency on Iowa Assessments in Social

The district wide data system allows teachers to compile data by classroom and content areas to identify patterns in performance. The district’s purpose in gathering data is to identify trends and gaps and to determine student and staff learning needs in light of our district’s annual student achievement goals. The data is utilized by the district’s Curriculum and Instruction team to identify where need and support is needed and to review curriculum. My school’s building leadership team, including my principal, instructional coach, and Instructional Leadership Team (ILT), analyzes our own building’s data in light of the district’s student improvement goals to look for areas that need improvement and to create annual student improvement goals for our building. This data is then presented to our building staff. As a result, my school building’s student achievement goals are aligned to the district goals. My building’s student improvement goals reflect:

• 100% of our students will make a year’s growth in

Only reading and behavior are identified as needed goal areas leaving out other academic areas, such as math and writing. However, these building goals were refined based on student’s past performance data. Datnow and Park (2014) state student achievement goals are essential to the cycle of continuous improvement and can be specific and measurable but they do not outline the details for classroom instruction and differentiation needed for every student. To help all students achieve, teachers need to systematically and routinely use data to guide instructional decisions and meet students’ learning needs. Some of the teachers in my building do a great job of implementing this cycle and other’s do not. Collaboration among grade level PLC’s and critical partners, such as special education and Title reading, needs to be better utilized in my school to maximize the benefits of data by helping teachers share effective practices, gain a deeper understanding of students’ needs, and develop effective strategies to better serve students is needed at every grade level in my school. This past year, the first grade PLC met with special education and title teachers on a regular basis to organize small-group instruction around the subsets of goals students were not meeting. As a result, first grade learners achieved the highest percentage of growth in reading in our building and every student made