The following message was sent to elementary principals and the PD Liaisons at sites with elementary grades.  Questions regarding the content of this message may be directed to school principals or Christine Ermold, Director of Elementary Education KPBSD.

The Standards Referenced Reporting Committee met on January 27th and reviewed the survey results from the first semester survey to elementary school teachers regarding standards based grading and standards referenced reporting.  If your site had three or more respondents to the survey, the school principal and Effective Instruction coach assigned to the school will receive a separate email with those results.  If you had less than three respondents, you will only receive the summary below. There were 118 respondents, and it is estimated that about 350 teachers teach grades K-6 in some capacity (including special education, specialists, and general education teachers) districtwide, yielding an approximate response rate of 33.7%.  The committee intends to redistribute the same survey again next December, to see what areas we’ve made progress in and which areas still need attention.

Following is a summary of district level data.

Regarding the standards and the report cards:

• 79.65% of respondents indicated they understand and use the new standards.
• 82% indicated they know how to help parents/guardians understand standards referenced rubrics and reports.
• 75.79% indicated their students and/or they regularly refer to the standards that are being taught during regular daily work.
• 42.48% of respondents indicate they are able to help students, colleagues, and parents understand what Standards Referenced Reporting is, and why we are using it.
• 4.42% indicated they really don’t know what it is or why it’s being used, while 15.93% indicated they know what it is, but are still wrestling with why it’s being used.
• 8% of respondents indicated a generally negative view of the standards referenced report card in their comments.

Regarding desired support and professional development opportunities:

• 61.25% indicated grade level or small group in-service training is  something thing they’d most like to have available during the semester ahead.
• 31.25% indicated a desire for a for-credit book talk on standards and grading.
• 31.25% also indicated a desire for school-wide in-service training led by a district coach or member of the Standards Referenced Reporting Committee.
• The desire to have PowerSchool front loaded with more assignments and assessments already linked to the standards was indicated by 55.26% of respondents.

Regarding collaboration:

• 75.01% indicated their collaborative team has used student progress on the standards as a focus of their professional learning and work together.
• 61.84% requested that the district provide facilitated collaboration during early release or in-service time to create more rubrics and tools for teaching and monitoring progress towards the standards.

As a result of the information found in the survey results, the Standards Referenced Reporting Committee took immediate action to:

• Schedule grade-span focused collaboration sessions via Lync to provide an immediate opportunity that could help meet the identified need (see the email from Michelle Thomasson dated 1/27 sent to PD Liaisons and inserted here: PD For Grade Level Collaboration).   Please note that each school’s principal, in partnership with their PD site Liaison, is charged with assessing and planning for the professional development needs of the staff.  These sessions are a supportive opportunity for your teachers but you may need to schedule more site-specific activities to target your teacher’s needs.  As a reminder, the Effective Instruction Coaches and members of the Standards Referenced Reporting Committee are available to support you in this area, as may be needed.
• Provide the survey results to principals, PD site liaisons, and coaches in the hopes of promoting conversation and planning of future collaboration and PD that meets each site’s identified needs.
• Created a one page guidance document regarding standards referenced reporting for students who have IEPs.  The document was reviewed by the special education department.  A copy has also been inserted here Spec Ed Guidance and added to the ‘S’ drive for your easy reference.
• Work towards creating short videos explaining the standards and the reporting system that can be posted on YouTube and shared with parents.

Recommendations for future action (based on the survey results and other input received from our district’s teachers and principals) include:

• Recommending an allocation of professional development funds in FY16 to support grade-alike collaboration sessions focused on rubrics for assessing the standards and ways students can demonstrate a ‘4’ on various standards.
• Offering a for-credit course via distance technology focused on a book talk about standards and grading during 2015-16.
• Continuing to provide as-requested support to specific sites.
• Continuing to provide just-in-time updates during Coffee/ Tea sessions, on the KP Knowledgebase, and in the ‘S’ drive.
• Continuing to front-load PowerSchool with assessments tied to the standards, and encouraging curriculum committees to identify any assignments that are likely used by most teachers that can also be front-loaded into PowerSchool.
• Provide a refined guide for principals, secretaries, and teachers at multi-graded sites regarding the minimum course enrollment required in a student’s schedule.

We will work to get any site-specific data you’re going to receive to principals ASAP-  It should be by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest.

Thank you for all your effort to support our students, their teachers, and their parents!