C. Franz: This test is over fiction tests. Can the students identify parts of texts and use evidence to support their claims? This tends to be the most difficult for our students. And it is one of the key standards. 

Areas that we are focused on now are 6th, 7th, and 3rd grades to help them close their gaps. We know that the teacher matters the most, and so we are working on preparing those teachers. There have been additional interventions with those groups to help close those gaps. Some of those high data points come from teachers who are now in leadership roles. We are also planning on how to support those teachers who are working with a new curriculum and teaching multiple grade levels. 

M Whitley: What does training look like and what does accountability look like? 

CF: Training happened in the summer with the company to use Arts & Letters. We changed our lesson internalization protocol. Once we teach teachers how to do it, then we monitor and look at plans and give feedback. We also do bi-weekly walkthroughs to check for internalization. We saw that teachers were treating the planning like a checklist instead of internalizing it. We started to give more feedback on the exemplars that teachers were using to help them meet the rigor of ILEARN. We also saw that teachers would skip parts of the lesson without recognizing the impact on learning. So, we have created a new protocol for internalization to see how the lessons build on each other. 

MW: How much of their lesson plans are built out for them? 

CF: All of it. It gives everything, completely scripted. That's one of the reasons we switched to Arts & Letters. It gives prompts, if/then situations, and teachable moments. We have been able to see where our teachers can do this work better. 

MW: Is it an issue of the teacher struggling? Or an issue of them just not following through? Can you see who is using their resources? 

CF: Yes - am able to go in and see who is adding those lesson plans. Each staff member has a set of "look-for's" so that we can check if they are following through. We are looking at their exemplars to see if they meet those standards of rigor. 

M Rooney: We are looking at how teachers annotate the passage, what they want to see in their responses, and then if they identify the standard. What we often see is teachers skipping content or not relating their work back to the text. We are seeing issues with time management. 

MW: So how do you fix that? 

CF: Great question! We are being proactive about sending out pre-work before coaching, and then we talk through the lesson. So leaders are going through the work and doing the planning together. 

MW: The idea that they have not read the text would infuriate me. 

CF: It's not every teacher. And it's inconsistent. And reading the text is the first thing that the leaders do when they walk into the room. So we are setting that bar that this is the non-negotiable. 

MW: The last thing I will say is that the teacher has to read the book. It's the minimum. 

MS: And you wouldn't know this without monitoring. 

CF: And here is our Special Populations data. 

MR: And our OEI goals state that we need to be within 10% of proficiency between special populations and majority populations. 

M Rooney: This checkpoint is similar to the standards and goals of last year. To reach our internal goals, we need about 9 kids per class to move to the "passing" category. 

A highlight is our 3rd-grade and now 4th-grade math proficiency rates are fantastic. An area of concern is in the 5th and 6th grades. These are the cohorts that are getting a lot of coaching. 

MW: Do you find that, since COVID learning, you are seeing less literacy and numeracy? Or, how is that showing up here at EDEMS?

MR: The issue that we see is that the shift in math pre-COVID was in phenomena-based learning. Students don't understand some of the basics about what a decimal is and what a fraction is. They are missing functional, operational knowledge. This constructivist approach ignores brain research. It puts us in a tough spot because the curriculum assumes knowledge that does not exist. So what happens is we have to adjust the lesson where we lose some of the rigor. And now Indiana is going to have to make a shift just like it did with The Science of Reading. 

We are looking at how to scale and codify the success that some of our teachers are having. We are building this protocol into the PD when we come back for the second semester.

MW: Do teachers feel secure to take a risk and try something and take accountability? 

MR: Yes, I do. But because we have high accountability for teachers, I think we have some who hide. And because the work is hard, it leads to low expectations for themselves.  

M Rooney: We are very proud of the math team when looking at the OEI goals for special population proficiency. I think we are putting social justice into action. 

CF: We have continued to do our checkpoint assessments and doing response to data lessons. 

Our intervention period continues. We are looking at shifting groups as they have grown from fluency to comprehension. 

M Rooney: We are looking at if teachers and coaches deeply understand the content. And new legislation mandates screeners and tier 2 intervention for students. That data is coming in January. Tier 1 has to be about the grade-level content. Tier 2 & Intervention has to be about filling the foundational gaps.