Professor Chloe Ruff-Miller from Gettysburg College updated committee on research project.  Her Gettysburg College student, Shelby, will be invited to future meetings and will be working alongside Maribel Gonzales, Vida's data coach, as they refine the past presentation that last semester's Gettysburg College class presented. Professor Ruff- Miller will work with Maribel Gonzales to prepare the complicated statistics. Shelby's and Maribel's work will include ELL achievement gap and different interventions, native responses to math and specific word problems, such as, think aloud, talk through math problems.  They look for visual ways to display problems and more dynamic interventions. Gettysburg college students will continue to look at data and correlate  NWEAs and PSSAs.  

Report cards went out. Cynthia Maldonado reports that she is receiving positive feedback from the new report card. Leadership committee will discuss how to report out quarterly academic progress beyond test scores to assess student progress in learning. Qualitative assessment portfolios could be a way of demonstrating work as it evolves overtime. DRAs assess and measure learning from beginning to end.  Next steps would be to align grades and scores. And see where the misalignments are.  Second grade will be piloting the new report cards alongside old report cards. And elementary lower grades will be working towards moving forward new report cards in the next academic year.

Cynthia Maldonado has a team that is reviewing 8 math curricula.  Looking to review social studies curriculum next year.

Academic excellence School Committee is due to meet before next academic excellence Board Committee meeting. There has not been a school committee meeting since the last board committee meeting.

Discussed Hola Ole program which occurs two times a week for beginning and intermediate Spanish language learners.  Students practice conversational skills, grammar, and comprehension. Occurs during morning meeting so as not to cut into the academic day. Program is for 2nd through 6th graders. Students were selected based upon their scoring of IPT testing  - identified groups A & B are being served by this program.  These students will work through the end of the year and progress will be monitored throughout by the means of written and oral tests. They play games, have homework, practice vocabulary. At the end of each unit they are tested.  Groups are comprised of three to five students