District data drives goals, strategies for learning

Maricopa Unified School District administrators and department heads gathered Tuesday and Wednesday for a summer “Inspiring Change” leadership retreat.

In addition to reviewing the district’s goals and evidence of their having been met, the leadership team explored teacher evaluation and district testing data, a springboard for strategies and action plans to ensure student learning.

Instructional improvement is supported through Galileo testing, which is often done online.Galileo testing is almost 100 percent aligned to AIMS tests. “Galileo helps predict how kids will do on the AIMS,” said Director of Multiple Projects Lynette Michalski.

Superintendent Jeff Kleck agreed. “It’s almost a one-to-one correlation.”

Kleck encourage site administrators to have their teachers take the sample AIMS tests, “not to come away and teach the tests, but they’ll discover the way the kids take the test and recurring questions on the tests,” he said.

Desert Wind principal Joe Verres explained that teachers must realize “what they need to do and what they’re going to need to do.” The AIMS tests at higher grade levels are also important for teachers to review in order to understand what will ultimately be expected of their students.

Early intervention contributes to increased test scores, and MHS principal June Ceyla encouraged principals to share teachers’ great intervention methods with other schools in the district.

“Data discussion will be part of the school life,” Michalski told the leadership team.

One district trend she termed “a concern” is an overall decline in math scores, at about 13 percent. One possible contributor is a change in the state’s math standards. “AIMS this year can’t be compared to the past. We’ve been told by the state that this is almost a baseline for a new beginning,” Michalski said. “Another year with new math core standards should see an improvement.”

Third grade is where math scores begin to decline. In response, the district is setting “Every Child” goals of 90 percent of third graders at grade level in math by May 2012 and 90 percent of students reading by third grade.

The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), a set of standardized, individually administered measures of early literacy development, is regularly used to monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills in grades K-3.

Michalski indicated district students’ AIMS scores were about the same as Pinal County as a whole, and, in some cases, “better than the state.”

“Every site has something to celebrate,” she said. “Teachers are being very successful.”

Photo by Joyce Hollis