Wendy reviewed the Academic dashboard, focusing on the success of our return to school plan and the learning plan for students who remain remote. She discussed the option for families to re-join school in person on May 3rd and that the team has reached out to all remote families to find out their preferences. Bill discussed some of the challenges administratively and operationally of reopening the school, especially of adding more students on May 3rd. 

Wendy discussed our academic results on the dashboard from ANet and internal assessments. She noted that we are doing well, but not where we typically are or where we had hoped. She discussed that the challenges come from remote testing and from students being remote for a year, but we expect to see improvement now that we are majority in-person. Sherriff noted that the results are better than expected, even if we wish they were improved. Bill noted that there are challenges with the comparison to network this year due to remote 

The committee discussed the metrics and benchmarks we use to evaluate student learning, whether that is a comparison to their own cohort's achievement in prior years or comparisons to the previous students in that grade, and how we can use that data to support student learning. They also discussed how we evaluate individual student progress and achievement. Sherriff shared that it will be important to focus on growth given the context of this pandemic year, versus focusing on absolute performance. 

Wendy discussed internal K-2 assessments for literacy, benchmarking what students were able to learn while remote and designing interventions based on the data. She also discussed changes to MCAS this year and how ANet results might be indicators of MCAS results. She noted that our school community is generally excited for MCAS since we encourage students to view the exam as an opportunity to show what they've learned, and that the academic team sees MCAS as important for progress monitoring, accountability, and educational equity. 

Lastly, Wendy discussed a few changes in the academic leadership team for the upcoming school year.
 

The next Academic Achievement Committee Meeting will be held on June 8, 2021 at 9 am.