Is Plan Descriptor Revised?

Passport to Excellence

The focus of Passport to Excellence is to provide the resources necessary for the academic success of all Savannah-Chatham County public school system students to include homeless children and youth and students with disabilities on the progress being made towards meeting the state student academic achievement standards. It is an enhancement of programs already in place, and its purpose is to provide a wide range of educational options, ensuring our public school system is the first choice for all families.

To accomplish this goal the following guiding principles will be used to sustain and improve academic achievement.

· Leverage federal funding to further reduce student/teacher ratio in the most challenged schools

· Assign most effective teachers to schools with the greatest challenges

· Partner with community groups to open additional resource centers (grants / foundations)

· Ensure equity and promote success in all schools.

Working in coalition with community stakeholders, SCCPSS will offer challenging, yet enriching curriculum designed to ignite a passion for learning and teaching at high levels.

Our improvement efforts are focused on three key areas that are defined as "Units of Change" to center the efforts of schools in planning improvements. These are:

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  Climate in our schools
  
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  Curriculum (what is taught); Instruction (how it is taught) and Assessment (how we know that students acquired the learning that was intended),
  
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  Culture of Learning and Continuous Improvement - Everyone in the school community is always learning to improve their knowledge and skills.
  

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   The LEA is using many strategies and approaches to ensure the use of academic assessments and data analysis to impact student achievement. The academic status of students in SCCPSS can be summarized by examining student performance on the components of the major Georgia statewide assessments and district progress monitoring tools.
   

Georgia Milestones Assessment System – a single assessment system for grades 3-12. Grades 3-8 will be administered an End of Grade (EOG) in language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies

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  High School – End of Course (EOC) in 9^th grade Literature and Composition, American Literature and Composition, Coordinate Algebra, Analytic Geometry, Physical Science, Biology, Us History, and Economics
  

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  The district’s calendar contains information about the dates for progress reports and report cards. Progress reports go home every 41/2 weeks and report cards at the end of the nine-week period. Parents receive regular communication about their child’s progress via phone calls, emails, and text messages from teachers as well. Additionally, the district hosts a Parent Connect site where parents can log on to check on their child’s progress in real time. Sessions for parents are held both at the school and at the district level to interpret test scores and to answer any questions they may have about the various assessments.
  

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   B. In order to assist in the diagnosis of ways to enable low-achieving students meet the standards and improving and teaching and learning in the classroom a well-developed progress monitoring tool needs to be used. This can assist teachers with identifying patterns of growth and gaps in learning. In addition, consolidating and centralizing data for access is valuable in identifying complex patterns throughout a grade level, content area, or across the district. Historically, district-wide formative assessments have been completed in a paper and pencil format. A change in focus toward utilization of technology to deploy these assessments will provide timely access and analysis of results.
   
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   This will assist teachers in implementing informed instructional strategies to drive continuous improvements in student proficiency.
   
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   READING AND MATH
   

The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System is working to increase the literacy and numeracy of all students to ensure their future academic success. Students in grades 2, 4, and 7 must demonstrate their competency in Reading and Mathematics to be eligible for promotion to the next grade. The requirements will increase each year.

The district progress monitoring tools such as the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) for reading and Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) for math are used as formative benchmarks in elementary and middle schools and Compass Learning is used as a computer aided instructional tool for intervention.

The district’s reading-on-grade-level objective is to increase the percentage of students who are reading on grade level by the end of grade 2, 4, and 7 as measured by the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), an adaptive on-line progress monitoring tool that is administered quarterly. The objective states that by 2014, 90% of students will be reading on grade level as determined by a Lexile (A common metric to evaluate reading ability as measured by the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), a research-based, computer-adaptive reading comprehension assessment) score of 330L or higher by the end of grade 2; 630 or higher by the end of grade 4; and 880 or higher by the end of grade 7.

Since SY 2011-12, teachers have used Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) to monitor and guide students’ progress in reading. The School Data Team will analyze the data after each administration of SRI in fall, winter, and spring and adjust instruction based on the analysis of the data.

Based on the 2015 report, 82% of second grade students, 80% of fourth grade students, and 79% of seventh grade students achieved the SRI benchmarks in reading. This shows gains in all three gateway grade levels by 9% in 2^nd grade, 6% in 4^th grade and 7% in 7^th grade. All three grade levels met the SY 14-15 DAS performance target for Reading on Grade Level. Because reading comprehension is essential to academic learning, SCCPSS plans to continue to provide access to the SRI as a progress monitoring tool to students in grades 2-8 for the upcoming school term (SY 2015-16) and use scientifically researched and proven strategies in reading instruction for all students including homeless, neglected and delinquent, ELLs and students with disabilities.

The mathematics curriculum is designed to support teachers as they instructionally maximize each child's mathematical experiences. Teachers are urged to provide for movement through the curriculum regardless of a student's current grade level. The use of concrete objects (manipulatives) and visual models is vital for students to understand concepts and explore processes. Knowledge acquisition requires a transition from concrete through pictorial, to the more abstract for all students at all levels and ages.

Incorporating technology in instruction is imperative in order to empower students to keep pace with the information age and to be competitive in the job market; it will enhance and provide flexibility in the learning environment. Calculators and computers are essential tools for learning and doing mathematics at all grade levels. Students should be able to solve practical problems, investigate patterns, explore strategies, and focus on the process of solving problems rather than on tedious computation unrelated to applications.

2015 MAP data also reveals students in grades 2 and 4 made gains in the area Math. 76% of second grade students, 70% of 4^th grade students, and 64 62% of 7^th grade students met the benchmark. This reflects a gain of 1% in 2^nd grade and 3%in 4^th grade, but a loss of 2% in 7^th grade.. Just as in reading, Math scores need to see greater gains and we plan to aggressively use scientifically researched and proven strategies in math instruction. Benchmarking for math using MAP provides the teachers with a RIT (An equal interval curriculum scale used by the District to evaluate mathematics proficiency) score which helps the teachers diagnose areas of need. Numeracy on Grade Level was implemented as a district initiative in SY2012-13 for students in grades 2 through 8. Proficiency levels at grades 2, 4, and 7 were established for the gateway promotion criteria. For the 2014-15 school year, promotion criteria was established at the remaining grade levels (3, 5, 6, and 8) in response to the state’s one-year Georgia Milestones promotion criteria waiver.

Gateway promotion requirements for ROGL and NOGL are established for each year leading to the target year. The district’s target goals for math by 2016-2017 for the gateways grades are:

2^nd grade –186 RIT

4^th grade –207 RIT

7^th grade – 224 RIT

SCIENCE

Below is a summary of Science initiatives in place during the 2014-2015 school year:

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  Instructional Calendars/Pacing Guides
  

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  Quarterly meeting with ES, MS, and HS Science Contacts, as well as ES Science Lab Teachers
  

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  Science Program Newsletter
  

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  District Science Assessments
  

Student Learning Objective (SLO) assessments were developed for five additional HS science courses

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  A HS Science Professional Learning Coach was added to the Science Program staff
  

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  STEM Certification
  

making a variety of STEM lesson plans available to teachers.

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  Science Education Research Project
  

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  Grant Partnership
  

teachers which includes 100 contact hours of professional learning in science content and pedagogy for participants.

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  Community Partnerships
  

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  Field Trip Opportunities
  

Pulaski, the Richmond Hill Fish Hatchery, Starbase, and many others.

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  Science Competitions
  

SCCPSS Elementary School Science Fair, the Marine Science Bowl, the Science Quiz Bowl, SECME, First Lego League, and others.

In addition to the items listed above, the following initiatives will be added for the 2015-2016 school year:

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  SLO assessments for all HS science courses
  
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  Quarterly collaborative planning meetings open to all 6^th – 8^th grade science teachers, HS Biology and HS Physical Science teachers
  
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  Face-to-face and virtual professional learning for K-12 science teachers
  

A review of Social Studies initiatives for SY 2014-2015 and a preview of SY 2015-2016 plans:

Instructional Calendar

As part of the College and Career Readiness standards (CCR) for "Reading and Literacy standards in History/Social Studies 6-12," the Document Based Project (DBQ) will be implemented to aid teachers with writing about evidence from literary and informational texts. Teachers will utilize the CCR Standards as part of the state

standards initiative to help students become more comfortable with complex informational text.

Social Studies teachers will be continued to be trained on the Document Based Questions Literacy Program.

Instructional frameworks were developed for some of the courses that previously did not have a curriculum framework such as American History and Sociology.

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  Specific Learning Objectives were developed for some of the courses that did not have the End of the Course Test attached to them to include Local Area Studies/History, World History and Sociology.
  

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  District Assessments
  

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  Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) were updated for the following courses: Sociology, AP Psychology, AP Macroeconomics, Local Area Studies and US History in Film.
  

Revised SLOs are: World History and American Government/Civics

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  Specific Learning Objectives for Local Area Studies/History and AP Psychology were updated.
  
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  A High School Professional Learning Coach was hired for SY 2014-2015 school. This position will continue for 2015-2016.
  

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  Curriculum
  

Community Partnerships

The Georgia Port Authority and the SCCPSS Social Studies department formed a partnership in order to develop an e-book for their Websites. The e-book project will continue in 2015-2016.

The Massie Heritage Center is undergoing renovations in order to display the “Ship to Shore” exhibit. The exhibit will serve as a teaching and learning resource for several Social Studies courses to include Economics and Logistics.

A new partnership was formed with the Georgia Historical Society and the SCCPSS Social Studies department. Society staff members are assisting teachers and students with Social Studies Fair projects.

Many of our Economics teachers have received training at workshops facilitated by instructors from the Georgia Council on Economics Education.

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  Field Trips
  

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   Schools and teachers are responsible for implementing the districts Instructional “Non-Negotiables,” which are district-wide expectations that support standards-based classrooms. Many of these non-negotiables relate to academic assessment of students to include homeless children and youth, students with disabilities, and students who may be at risk of failing. These strategies include using rubrics for development of work and assessment by the teacher and student, designing performance tasks that reflect rigor and are directly correlated to the curriculum, using timely and specific feedback by teachers to students regarding their work products, and developing common formative assessments by teachers in grade level teams in the elementary grades, and by content area teams in secondary schools. Teachers in Professional Learning Communities do this work collaboratively during assigned planning times and other times as determined by the building administrators. Teachers also use online assessment systems throughout the year. These assessments are used to help measure growth, to determine placement for new students, and to forecast results on major high-stakes tests. These include CompassLearning, STAR Math, Accelerated Math, and the Georgia Online Formative Assessment Resource (GOFAR). Teachers also use Exemplars Math tasks and grade level assessments from state adopted textbooks throughout the year for diagnostic purposes and progress checks.
   

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   Response to Intervention (RTI) is an intervention process designed to help students who are struggling academically, behaviorally and/or communicatively. RTI consists of curriculum based instruction, early identification of educational deficits, frequent progress monitoring, and intensive evidence-based instructional interventions. The district RTI documentation is located in TIENET which is an electronic web-based response to intervention program that makes documenting intervention more efficient. Schools maintain spreadsheets and generate reports for central office review. The provision of research-based interventions varies throughout the district. The district employs universal screeners at the elementary and middle school levels in the content area of reading via DIBELS for grades K-1, Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) for grades 2-8, and in the content area of math via Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) for grades 2-8.
   

Procedures for identification and assessment of potential Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students are in place to ensure proper classification, programmatic assessment and reclassification of all LEP students based on State and Federal requirements. The Home Language Survey (HLS) is administered to all students in the school district during start of school enrollment and to newly enrolled students. The WIDA ACCESS Placement Test (W-APT) is administered to all K-12 students identified as potential English language learners on the Home Language Survey. The W-APT is used as a measure of ESOL program eligibility. ACCESS is used to assess and measure English proficiency. This assessment is administered annually to ALL English language learners in grades K through 12 - this includes any student who qualifies for ESOL services even if they (or their parents) have denied ESOL services. Monitored students (EL-M) have exited the program, and are therefore not eligible to be assessed with the ACCESS for ELs assessment. A student plan is maintained in the permanent student record file for each student identified as EL. All eligible LEP students are re-tested annually with ACCESS. Progress is assessed and tier placement is evaluated by the ESOL teacher and classroom teachers. Data from the ACCESS is analyzed and used to improve the ESOL instructional program by :

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  Identifying, acquiring, and upgrading curricula, instruction materials, educational software, and assessment procedures.
  
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  Developing and implementing new language instruction educational programs and academic content instructional programs for EL in early childhood, elementary and secondary programs.
  
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  Expanding or enhancing existing language instruction educational programs and academic content instruction programs at district Cluster Centers.
  
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  The ACCESS data is also used to determine LEP student’s readiness to exit the ESOL program. Several factors of student performance will be considered in determining English proficiency level and readiness to exit. English Learners (ELs) must be assessed for proficiency on an annual basis, using the state approved assessment, ACCESS for ELs. The requirement to pass state reading assessments in order to exit ESOL has been removed and exit will now be based on ELs reaching a minimum literacy score on the state approved language proficiency assessment. Students reaching a Composite Proficiency Level of at least a 5 on tier B or C (as well as a 4.8 Literacy sub-score) of the ACCESS are considered to have attained a level of English proficiency and are exited from the program. The ESOL teacher and classroom teachers, using a Language Assessment Conference, further assess students who reach a composite proficiency level at least a 4 or higher on tier B or C (as well as a 4.8 Literacy sub-score) of the ACCESS. Based on the determination of the Language Assessment Committee, students scoring in this range may be recommended for exiting the program. Students who are determined ready to exit the program are then placed in the regular program and are monitored for two years by the site-designated ELL contact and the classroom teachers to ensure their success in general education courses.
  

a) Language proficiency

b) Achievement

c) Classroom performance

d) test scores

e) Teacher recommendations