• Teacher Hiring
  • A lot of movement in the past month
  • Still vacancies at most campuses. SPED continues to be a focus; lots of elementary school openings as well. 
• Assistant Principals 
  • Final interviews for the last vacancies 
  • Internal candidates were considered first; now moving the pool externally 
• New Initiatives
  • Increased our ad-buy on social media 
  • Launched a referral and signing bonus for SPED roles

Executive Summary

• The majority of schools’ 3rd through 8th grades in the Breakthrough network (63%) did not meet their SY23-24 Ohio State Test (OST) proficiency goal for reading and math.  
  • The median gap between goals and outcomes was 6 percentage points.
• Every K-2 grade at BPS fell short of their S23-24 early literacy goal. 
  • The median shortfall was 49 percentage points. 
• 4 out of 5 campuses decreased their ELA OST proficiency rates; 4 out of 5 campuses increased their Math OST proficiency rates; both the ELA decrease and Math increase were small, single digits.
• Scholars who have spent more time enrolled at BPS–i.e., four or more years–are +7pp on grade in ELA and +9pp on grade in Math when compared to first-year BPS scholars. 
  • These differences shrink to under +3pp when comparing scholars who spent their entire K-8 experience at BPS to scholars who have spent 3 years or less at BPS. 
• i-Ready SY23-24 spring outcomes are very similar to SY22-23 spring outcomes at nearly every school.

As a reminder, we measure scholar achievement through iReady, Accadience, & OST 

• Overall, scholars didn't lose or gain ground this year
• The system of support for scholars has to be prioritized and strengthened. 
• We can see that the quality of instruction is not consistently good.

On the horizon:

• Because we predicted this, we've already adapted our academic strategy. 
• We also know this is not about the curriculum. TNTP already audited this.
• What we have not done, is ensure that each scholar is getting a good lesson in every classroom, every day. This is the focus. 

Questions: 

• What would we have done differently? 
  • This is what we're going to share with you today, but we had to change who we are to be able to execute the new plan. Major focus on quality of instruction.
  • We could have approached the curriculum more prescriptively than we did. Moving away from teacher-made materials, etc. 
• Does this tie to what we discussed in May?
  • These are Ami's initial reactions, but today we'll talk through how we'll be moving forward. 
  • This portion is more focused on specifically the outcomes we had this year. 
• What percent of teachers are teaching to the high-quality curriculum?
  • Only about 6-7% are teaching to the curriculum in full. Teachers are watering it down, etc. 

Things to be proud of:

• Math increases
• We've stopped regressing (opposite of prior trends)
• Scholars who stay enrolled with us longer achieve at higher rates 

Still confident in our strategy and the path forward. 

Current landscape: 

• We are currently not meeting our current goals for both annual growth, but also for our full-cycle goals (K-8) 
• Given this reality, we have to do something different. 

Path Forward:

• Systems & Routines; Internalization; Data-Driven Instruction; Reteach, Intervention & Accelerations; End of Year Assessment 
• When these pillars come together, they form our academic strategy. We can clear measures to track progress.

We have four departments within the Learning team that have identified priorities:

• Scholar Acciemvent: Core curriculum, instruction, and assessment 
• Scholar Experience: Culture, social-emotional learning, and family engagement 
• Professional Development: PLCs (new structure for school-based PD), Leader development, and evaluations 
• Data & Analytics: Data systems and tracking, assessment structure, and grading

Academic Roadmap:

• Arc 0: Summer/prep
  • Independent of experience, teaching the curriculum in full.
  • Prescriptive PD 
• Arc 1: Trimester 1
  • Establish systems and routines
  • Defined criteria for success 
• Arc 2: Trimester 2
  • Data to drive instruction
  • Monitor student success
• Arc 3: Trimester 3
  • Re-teach and intervention
  • Prep for EOY assessments, including testing as a genre
• The plan then breaks down what is happening in each arc in great detail. 
  • There are separate documents for each department within the learning team. 
  • Each document outlines performance indicators, strategies, and what we're looking for during each week of the year. 
  • The schools team will support school leaders in internalizing prior to what is being rolled out to teachers. 

Questions:

• Do we expect pushback?
  • We introduced to principals, and overall they are bought in (by and large)
  • Teachers crave this structure and have been asking for it
  • We have not produced outcomes for kids, so we need to align to improve school/follow the science 
• How will we know this is working? 
  • We'll know right away. Walk through data, we'll be in classrooms, we'll be monitoring principals to see where we prioritize coaching. 
  • This unified approach, allows us to assess all classrooms more quickly (looking for the same thing across the board)

Network-Wide Goals: 

We have goals for the organization overall. We have consistent FY27 goals, and have honed in on our FY25 priorities. 

For FY25 Scholar Achievement, Scholar Recruitment, Scholar Retention, Talent Retention and Mature system. These represent the measurable outcomes we will be tracking towards them.