School improvement plans strive to improve measurable scores
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff Writer
While administrators in the Burlington Area School District stress that testing is a snapshot of a specific student at a specific period of time, those same tests are also a gauge of overall student achievement.
As a result, testing featured prominently in the school improvement plans presented at the BASD Curriculum Committee meeting Monday night.
A general plan was first laid out for the entire district by BASD Superintendent Peter Smet, which involved continued use of the Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and implementation of the certified staff evaluation plan.
Beyond those goals, Assistant Superintendent Connie Zinnen said were the individual school improvement plans – all set to move toward one common goal.
“Ultimately to support our district goal of all students college and career ready,” Zinnen said.
The district is choosing to focus heavily on reading and math improvements, since those two areas are a major component of the new state report cards.
“I want everyone to be reassured that we are not neglecting other areas,” Zinnen said. “We strategically picked reading and math.”
Individual school plans – grades K-6 using a common plan for Cooper, Winkler, Waller, Lyons and Dyer, plus plans for Karcher Middle and Burlington High schools – then focus in on specific goals to achieve that.
“They have dug even deeper,” Zinnen said. In addition, teachers have been asked to make a specific goal relating to student achievement, which is a part of the certified staff evaluation.
The school improvement plans will also now look uniform across all the schools.
“It’s a concerted effort, and it’s a K-12 effort,” Zinnen said.
Elementary schools
The principals of Cooper, Winkler, Waller, Lyons and Dyer made a combined presentation, since the plans for grades K-6 are universal.
Cooper, Winkler and Waller are grades K-4, while Dyer has grades 5-6 as well as Montessori fourth grade.
The goal for K-6 reading and math is to increase the district’s RIT (Rasch Unit) scores so they meet or exceed the national mean normative scores.
Right now, kindergarten and first grade are above the fall national means, but all six grades have a large jump to make the spring national means.
“It’s a stretch. We know that,” said
The elementary schools plan to administer Measures of Academic Progress or MAP testing three times, then use those MAP results in the PLCs to adjust instruction.
“We don’t just give the test. We analyze it,” said Dyer Principal Joyce Uglow. “We look at those scores and drill down into those common core standards.”
Waller Principal Victoria Libbey added that the PLCs are a great help, and that “the teachers are so collaborative.”
The schools will also use the Compass Learning online system and specifically address deficit areas, as well as set goals with individual students.
Karcher Middle
The same goal – of meeting or exceeding the national mean RIT scores – is in place at Karcher Middle School, with much of the same action steps as at the elementary level.
Also as at the elementary level, co-teaching and differentiating instruction within classrooms will be implemented.
Karcher Principal Marty McGinley said it was good to have everyone moving forward with a common goal.
“Everything’s come to a head,” he said. “Everyone’s hearing the same message.”
In addition, Karcher will be transitioning students from not just the MAP scores, but also to the first step of the ACT testing suite – the EXPLORE test.
Karcher has a goal of having the reading and math EXPLORE scores exceeding the national norm – which the average already does.
Burlington High School
While Karcher administers the EXPLORE score, BHS Principal Eric Burling is pleased with the progress his students have already made on the PLAN (the second test of the ACT testing suite) and hopes to see it continue.
Already, students at BHS have exceeded the goal of meeting or exceeding the national average on the PLAN reading and math portions, but Burling wants to see the scores continue to improve.
As for the ACT test, Burling wants to get at least 64 percent of students taking the exam (58 percent took it in the last year), and continue to exceed the Wisconsin averages on reading and math.
Already, Burling said, students are discussing test scores and comparing.
“That’s that culture of improvement,” he said, though he did say students were discussing MAP scores.
As a school goal, Burling is aiming at having an average composite score of 22.7 – which would be the highest in 10 years in the district.
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