During the 01/27/2021 Board of Education meeting, it was reported to the Board that 27.59% of Appleton Area District high schoolers were failing at least one class and 20/14% had at least one incomplete. (27.59% of Appleton Area School District High Schoolers Are Failing At Least One Class – All Things Appleton). At the time, Steve Harrison was unable to provide any historical data to compare those numbers to, although he did assure the Board that, going forward, they would be systematizing that process.
Happily, since 01/27/2021, he was able to pull historical data for grades 9-12 going back to 2017. He pulled it on February 5th, and the data for all the past years showed the same moment in time on February 5 of their respective years.
Steve reminded the Board that there is a window of time between when the semester ends and when incompletes are finalized where students have the opportunity to turn those incompletes into letter grades. That window is not over yet, so they anticipate that the number of incompletes may go down. [Presumably the numbers from previous years, as listed, were also within that window and could also have gone down after February 5. One hopes that these reports will be run again once everything has been finalized.]
Steve pointed out that the data seems pretty stable for 2017-2019, then bumps up in 2020, and then significantly increases in 2021. [I don’t believe he pointed this out, but since these numbers all come from the first semester of their respective year, it should be noted that the increase in 2020 would not have been Covid related since school didn’t shut down until March.]
Over the last 5 years the number of AASD 9-12 graders with at least one F are as follows:
2017 – 15.1%
2018 – 14.2%
2019 – 14.1%
2020 – 17.1%
2021 – 27.6%
That is an increase of 10.5 percentage points from 2020 to 2021.
The number of AASD 9-12 graders with at least one incomplete over the past 5 years are:
2017 – 3.9%
2018 – 1.8%
2019 – 1.8%
2020 – 2.6%
2021 – 20.1%
That is an increase of 17.5 percentage points from last year.
Steve then presented the administration’s plans to respond to these numbers.
They already shared their i-Ready results from the Fall at a previous Board meeting. They are currently in the Winter i-Ready window. They want to compare the data they have now for grades 7-8 and compare it to previous grade reports. They also want to look at the i-Ready data for grades 5k-8 so they can both see where they currently are and how much growth they have achieved since the Fall. That’s important because one of their key goals is that the vast majority of AASD students will attain grade level expected growth for the year.
They also want to address unfinished learning and look at what adjustments they need to make based on what they see in the i-Ready data–particularly within the domains of reading and math.
February 22 is the date that, as part of their staff professional development, they can spend time both at the school site and classroom level to figure out where they can make adjustments in the instruction they’re providing.
They also plan to perform credit analysis regarding the number of credits students are supposed to have as Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors, and compare where they are now in 2021 to where they have been historically at this point in time at the end of the first semester.
He mentioned summer school. They are continuing to meet with different staff members and administrators to think about how they can be innovative in their summer schooling.
Per Steve, “We’ve certainly challenged ourselves over the past year to be innovative in our instruction, and that certainly doesn’t need to only hold true during the regular school year.”
They want to focus on updating their summer school programing to take advantage of virtual opportunities. They are looking at their digital resources and hope to target unfinished learning by working with their teachers and identifying what the standards and areas of instruction are that need to be completed so they can focus the summer school instruction on those particular areas vs. redoing an entire course. They’re also looking at opportunities for potential elective credits so that summer school is not focused solely on credit recovery but that students have an opportunity to frontload additional credits.
They also want to think about using their targeted student support time in the morning and afternoon within their hybrid schedule as well as on Wednesday afternoon as an opportunity to be intentional and specific in connecting with students who need to finish a course and turn an incomplete or a previous failing grade into a passing letter grade.
Greg Hartjes then spoke about how the district plans to use the ESSER 2 dollars they’ve received. Sometimes called CARES Act money, over the summer the district received $1.5 million in funds that they could use for Covid related expenses. They spent the majority of it on technology–particularly to buy chromebooks for their students in 4k through 6th grade.
They expect an additional $6 million to be allocated to AASD which is a significant amount of money. They will be able to spend it on Covid-related expenses they’re incurring this year, such as for the additional staffing and technology they’ve put in place. Once they’ve paid for that, they think they will have $4-$4.5 million left over which will have to be spent by September of 2023. They plan to use those dollars to reteach and remediate and to build in all the supports that they need to help the students that are struggling due to the school closures and are not learning as much as they would have in person. They have 2 years to spend these dollars to try to bring all those students that have struggled back up to where they need to be.
Superintendent Judy Baseman then wrapped things up and said that they will be developing an inclusive process for targeting those dollars. They’ll be be using representative staff, parents, and administrators–people with whom they can share some of their thinking regarding areas the administration would like to focus on–as a way to get feedback from the community and stakeholder groups. When they are ready to roll out their plan they will have utilized this feedback to determine the highest areas of need. They’ll be using a lot of the data presented during the 02/08 meeting but also will be using i-Ready data and other stuff as well. This is an opportunity to make changes not only at the school sites but also to district level programming as well.
They have community partners who are ready and willing to help AASD boost the performance of the students across all grade levels. So AASD will be looking at how they can maximize those partnerships. She mentioned STAR Coordinators (Students on Target to Achieve Results), a middle and high school level program done in partnership with Boys and Girls Club and funded through multiple Community Foundation grants. She expressed an interest in discovering how AASD can potentially increase opportunities for their African American/Black students. She said they also work with the Hmong American Partnership, and said that CASA Hispana approached them about some wrap-around-type of connections with families. They know that some of their students in those particular cultural groups are experiencing some significant challenges as well. AASD is examining their current community partnerships and also looking at other ways to make connections so that we can come together as a community to support and address the significant needs that have appeared throughout this pandemic. AASD can’t do it alone. Superintendent Baseman was heartened by the outreach with their community partners and she looks forward to ongoing partnerships to address the needs of all of the students.
View full meeting here: https://youtu.be/7nkXWOQH6Ac
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