NORMANDIN MIDDLE SCHOOL

Executive Summary

June 3, 2011

Part 1: Is there any information about your school that people should know in order to better understand why you have made the decisions you have?

Normandin Middle School staff, having been identified as teachers in a Commonwealth Priority School, has evolved into a community of learners. Four teachers and the school principal graduated May (2009) following their participation in a master of education program focused on middle school mathematics through Lesley University. In addition, seven staff members have attained master level degrees moving their learning as highly qualified staff members. Staff continually participates in professional development activities during and after the school day. Moreover, the school principal and four teachers and an assistant principal completed the Math Learning Community program through the department of Secondary and Elementary Education and Fitchburg State College – they downloaded the information to math teachers. Also, five additional teachers completed the mentor course offered through University of Massachusetts (CUSP) and continue to mentor new staff here at Normandin.

Student attendance at school plays an important role in student academic success. Normandin Middle School followed the guidelines of the New Bedford Public Schools establishing a fair but stringent attendance practice that reflect high expectations for all students at Normandin Middle School. Current strategies to support student attendance include Saturday School, after school extended learning time (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 2:30 – 5:30), guidance monitoring, phone calls to the home, administrator and/or counselor visits to the home, and daily dialogue with students supported by principal during morning announcements. Through our IPASS system daily phone calls are made to students that are absent and/or tardy. Through June of the 2010-2011 school year, students achieved an overall yearly attendance rate of 95.5%.

Yearly trends indicate that as more families make New Bedford their home, our current student population reflects increasing numbers of English Language Learners (ELL). It is also apparent that there has been an increasing population shift of these families from the south end of the city to the north. We are cognizant of these trends and continue to work with district administration to monitor and address the social and academic needs of our ELL students upon entrance to our school in order that we may enhance or initiate the delivery of social and academic services that best meet their learning needs. We continue to seek diverse staff to work with our diverse student population and look for more inclusion into the curriculum of all the cultures represented in our community.

Providing service delivery to our special education population continues to evolve and improve as we continue to monitor service delivery protocols currently in place. Working with the Assistant Superintendent for Special Education we continue to consider new initiates and service delivery options that may further enhance our school’s current effort. Professional development in best teaching / learning practices for all students has provided all teachers with skill sets and strategies that support the learning needs of special education students and their class room peers. These initiatives always reflect a desire to ensure high expectations for all students, regardless of specific individual learning needs. We have looked very close at our service delivery model and the writing of individual education plans. We know that in large, success for all students, rests with researched based instructional practices that match the learners.

The learning community at Normandin Middle School recognizes the importance of data driven decision making relative to providing the best possible social and academic program possible for our students. With that philosophy, many of our school’s recent initiatives reflect a response to the University of Illinois School Improvement Self-Study completed two years ago; however, due to financial constraints, we were not able to implement the survey during the SY 2010-2011. Our hope is to continue this study in the future. This self-study is completed by students, staff and administration. The results of that data reflect an honest self appraisal where we stand as a school relative to social climate and academic initiative. Additionally, on-going data derived from IPASS as well as PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies) has been the basis for many professional conversations among teachers, students, parents and administration, often leading to new or refined protocols that positively impact the overall learning community. The district utilizes Data Warehouse through the DESE program to make accessible all data,– all administrative staff have been trained and will be able to utilize same for the ’11 MCAS ELA and math results as early as this June 2011.

The conversations relative to IPASS information have resulted in identifying locations/areas where children have most difficulty self-managing, addressing, with faculty, a proactive awareness of active supervision, follow through on a therapeutic rapport with the teacher/student relationship and being able to tweak areas where the staff would need further assistance. These are examples of how IPASS / behavioral data helps drive PBIS. We believe that once established in Data Warehouse the information will be a part of all student data assisting in informing decision making for the whole child.

Part 2: What key data points led you to establish your goals and objectives?

The school considered multiple sources of data, including:

· MCAS

· Formative/Summative Classroom Assessments

· District Benchmark / Galileo data

· District administered GRADE test for reading comprehension

· Common classroom assessments

· Common warm-up activities

· Parent recommendations – individually, PTO, SIC, meetings with teachers, counselors, administrators

· Professional Learning Communities

· District-wide Literacy Committee

Following a review of the data, significant findings included:

· There are students who read below grade level and have difficulty comprehending what they read

· Students tend to demonstrate poor assessment results due to lack of fluency and expressive written language and a limited vocabulary

· Many students, although not reading below grade level, demonstrate poor written expressive language and do not possess a diverse vocabulary

· Students have a great deal of difficulty answering open response questions in ELA and mathematics proficiently

· Students lack basic conceptual understanding of mathematical concepts

· Students are unable to interpret and analyze information in table, chart and graph form

The school developed the following goals for English language arts and Mathematics:

· In English Language Arts increase the proficiency index for all students from 77.2 in 2009 to 81.8 in 2010, and 83.3 in 2011.

· In Math, increase the proficiency index for all students from 59.8 in 2009 to 64.7 in 2010, and 73.4 in 2011.

English Language Arts

MCAS Performance Level	Scaled Score Range	MCAS-Alt Performance Level	Points Per Student	Actual 2006	Actual 2007	Actual 2008	Actual 2009	Actual 2010	Projected 2011
Proficient or Advanced	240-280	Progressing	100	494	564	522	460	492	325
Needs Improvement High	230-238	Emerging	75	271	220	208	183	199	225
Needs Improvement Low	220-228	Awareness	50	228	202	157	129	146	102
Warning / Failing High	210-218	Portfolio Incomplete	25	180	111	110	115	108	70
Warning / Failing Low	200-208	Portfolio not Submitted	0	13	5	4	7	8	3
			Total students:	1186	1102	1001	894	953	925
Is your count off? Add this # of students to your distribution (subtract if neg.):					0	0	0	0	0
		Baseline CPI:		72.2
		Improvement Target:			75.7	81.0	81.9	81.8	83.3
		CPI:			77.8	78.3	77.2	77.8	83.5

Math

MCAS Performance Level	Scaled Score Range	MCAS-Alt Performance Level	Points Per Student	Actual 2006	Actual 2007	Actual 2008	Actual 2009	Actual 2010	Projected 2011
Proficient or Advanced	240-280	Progressing	100	240	258	318	282	342	400
Needs Improvement High	230-238	Emerging	75	156	150	127	120	158	272
Needs Improvement Low	220-228	Awareness	50	257	249	172	169	175	150
Warning / Failing High	210-218	Portfolio Incomplete	25	489	418	363	308	262	100
Warning / Failing Low	200-208	Portfolio not Submitted	0	38	25	21	13	11	3
			Total students:	1180	1100	1001	892	948	925
Is your count off? Add this # of students to your distribution (subtract if neg.):					0	0	0	0	0
		Baseline CPI:		51.5
		Improvement Target:			57.6	61.0	65.8	67.8	73.5
		CPI:			54.5	58.9	59.8	64.7	73.4

The following Student Learning Objectives have been identified:

· Students will continue to practice appropriate operations to solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and positive integer exponents with whole numbers and with positive fractions, mixed numbers decimal and percents. (6.N.9)

· Students will continue to represent real situations and mathematical relationships with concrete models, tables, graphs, and rules in words and with symbols, e.g. input-output tables. (6.P.4)

· Students will develop skills to understand, interpret and effectively answer open response questions.

· Students consider and use written / oral feedback to improve skill / concept development in specified content area

· Identified striving readers will develop and utilize research based ‘best practice’ reading skills, and be able to read text fluently and with comprehension at least one grade level above initial identified reading level G.E.

Part 3: What were the most important causes of low student performance that you identified? Were there any patterns in the causes you identified?

· Poor expressive written language and lack of vocabulary

· Reading levels below grade level

· Pattern – Most students who read below grade level have low comprehension, have poor vocabulary knowledge and perform poorly on assessments

· All students in general, perform poorly on MCAS open response questions due to poor written expressive language skills and understanding of the prompt

Part 4: What are the key strategies you have selected? Why were these strategies selected? How do they address the causes you identified?

· Veteran teachers have participated and new teachers will be provided with professional development in the use of math models and instructional strategies that will improve conceptual understanding

· Teachers will continue to use warm-up and filler activities reflecting academic rigor (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) and appropriate to the curriculum

· Utilization of Math Lab Program to address the individual needs of all learners

· Exercising academic rigor, teachers will continue to provide students with daily practice of conceptual skills using previous MCAS/benchmark questions and material taught from previous lessons (formative assessments) (Differentiated Instruction) (Appropriate and timely oral and written feedback)

· Teachers will continue to use the standards based lesson plan template, reflecting academic rigor when developing uniform lesson plans for documentation of strategies and daily practice (Teachers will develop extensions to ensure high academic students are engaged at the higher levels of Blooms)

· All teachers will participate in professional development in the use of tables, charts, and graphs and provide life related applications

· All teachers will participate in and make use of professional development on using data to inform instruction

· Teachers will instruct students in the creation, interpretation and terminology associated with tables, charts, and graphs in all subject areas

· Students will be able to articulate an understanding of tables, charts, and graphs verbally or in written form

· Teachers have participated in professional development i.e. research based strategies, to assist students in answering open response questions

· Teachers will demonstrate/model skills using academic rigor that will assist students in answering open response questions to a proficient level

· SPED teachers will participate in math content professional development and will share strategies learned that match their learners

· All Special Needs students not in a co-taught class will be provided with an additional tutorial classes – math and interventions

· All teachers will learn and utilize the model of looking at student work (LASW)

· Continue use of research based 6 + 1 writing program as part of grade six ELA/Literacy classes

· Provide professional development for grade seven and eight teachers in the elements of 6+1 writing program

· Expand on John Collins writing program

· Use of research based 6+1 writing program in grades seven and eight

· Identified striving readers in grade six will be afforded small group instruction for social studies and language arts in small group instruction taught by a licensed reading teacher. Students will receive support from teacher that focuses on individual student needs (phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension partnered with good writing practices) through content classes.

· Implement standards based assessment practices that are skill and content based, necessary to inform instruction

· Teachers will continue to develop lesson plans that use Understanding by Design type lesson plan format with a focus on standards based objectives, essential questions, and learning activities reflecting academic rigor utilizing extensions to the curriculum

· Teachers will continue to use classroom management strategies as identified in research based Skillful Teacher like strategies, Positive Behavior and Intervention Support Program (PBIS) (Theme: Keeping in the Zone)

· Administrators will continue to provide teachers with feedback that will enhance their instructional practices.

· Assistant principals will continue to promote and educate students on Zone Values (Safe Decisions, Considerate Decisions, and Doing the Right Thing bringing about positive student behavior Theme: Keeping in the Zone)

Part 5: What is the relationship between the strategies you will implement for ALL students and the strategies targeting SUBGROUPS?

· The strategies for ALL students and ALL subgroups are the same. ALL students will benefit from strategies designed for mathematics and English Language Arts and in all content areas.

Part 6: What challenges do you expect to face in implementing your plan? What resources will the district provide to help you overcome these challenges?

· The challenge will be to provide support in the most effective and efficient manner for all students before, during, and after the school day with effective on going vacation and extended year programs.

· Scheduling must allow striving students in ELA and/or math to be taught in small groups while continuing in most classes in traditional heterogeneous settings.

· Support in designated reading and math classes is available for those students not identified as already receiving special education delivery services

· To have all teachers recognize that they are teachers of reading and providing the support they need to maximize the teacher’s ability to help students with reading to learn in all contents

· Providing regular and special education teachers with support and feedback in continuity of services and training when needed in the co-teaching model

The district has been most supportive in providing what is needed to support striving students:

· Continued to provide funds for an additional grade six English Language Arts teacher to work with 24 grade sixth grade students in a small group setting supported by the phonetic based reading program, utilizing 6+1 Traits, John Collins’ Writing, and guided reading introduction to teachers

· Continued to provide funds for an English Language Arts teacher to support students and teachers in grade seven and eight to increase students’ abilities in fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension

· Continued the services of the Math School Support Specialist

· Continued to provide math teachers with support in Lesley’s M.Ed. in MS math

· Continued the relationship of Mass Insight with curriculum support with training and review of the curriculum map as well as peer observation introduction

· Provided funds to support a Crises Counselor in working with students and families in crisis

· Strengthen the relationship of the district department directors as they support professional development, development of curriculum maps and extensions to the curriculum and review of curriculum and support materials

· Provided additional support to supervise students before school allowing students to interact in a safe manner and begin the day ready to learn

· Provided funds to continue the training of all teachers in the PBIS model of student support

· Provided funds to support NISL for three assistant principals and two teachers – setting the tone for a collaborative leadership process

· Continued to support the professional development for all staff prior to the start of the academic year

· A refocus on the whole child’s development and the importance of engaging all learners in the activities of their choice

· Provided funding for the most important Student Success Center – a program to re-engage disengaged learners in a model that includes interventions to match the student