Alameda School Plan 2005/06

Alameda High School was a 9-12 school with an enrollment of 1,890 in 2005/06. To review Alameda's state Academic Performance Index scores since 2000 click here.

Disclaimer: Single School Plan were hand typed and transcribed from source documents. Please pardon the typos as the webmaster is a poor typist. While an effort was made to spell acronyms, here is a reference guide for those acronyms.

Single School Plan Components

What Did You Learn from 2004/05 Cycle of Inquiry?

1. Looking at your data what general trends do you see? What does the data tell us about how the focus group did? How much progress did they make? How does this compare to growth of other subgroups? Is the student achievement gap closing?

Those target and strategic students who were enrolled and properly placed in Literacy Intervention (REACH and High Point) classes demonstrated marked improvement, as evidenced by their embedded and unit assessments, and the collaborative measures utilized and reviewed by the instructional staff. There are 24 ninth grade students enrolled in REACH.

There are no comparable formal assessments and there is limited informal information available with which to fully assess the progress of students in the strategic and target subgroups who did not receive Literacy Intervention classes.

2. What evidence/data do you have regarding the level of implementation of the teacher/instructional practice and/or schoolwide practice that you planned in your last Cycle of Inquiry? Include information about what was not implemented as well as what was implemented.

REACH placement testing was completed for all incoming Freshman students from feeder middle schools in May 2005. 2005 CST results were utilized to confirm student literacy class placement for the the Fall semester 2005. Students new to the district had an intake review conducted by the ninth grade counselor and the Vice Principal. Multiple measures were used to assess and determine the appropriate placements for students new to the district. In some cases a planning/SST appointment was made to determine an appropriate placement and academic support strategies.

Teachers were able to begin the instructional program immediately. All teachers were experienced, ahd appropriate program training and support, and materials for instruction. Additional insruction materials and resources were available through the Literacy Coach.

The AHS staff has utilized site time to work collabortively to expand the variety of literacy suppport strategies available across curricular areas, and to target specific literacy objectives by course and grade level instruction school-wide. Coordinated collaboration efforts have provided strategic and target students with additional support in other curricular areas outside their literacy classess.

Though various collaborative efforts strategic instructional interventions, techniques and strategies are being developed, shared and incorporated across and into departmental and programmatic instructional practices.

The initial efforts appear to have had a positive impact on the achievement of strategic and target students, as evidenced by the 2005 CST/ELA scores, the embedded assessments, and student performance as indicated by their grades.

3. What evidence do you have that your focus on these students has positively impacted their learning?

The 2005 CST-ELA scores indicate an increase in the performance of strategic and target students. There was a significant increase in student performance overall on the standardized assessments. Teacher and collaborative team reviews indicate that most students are making appropriate growth. There is also evidence the inclusion of targeted vocabulary instruction and other literacy support strategies are having a positive impact on student learning and acheivement across the board, but most especially for our strategic and target students.

4. Is there anything else you learned in examining your data that will inform your revised problem statement?

There are some student subgroups that are still performing significantly below the general student population. Action research is being implemented to explore and determine what additional and/or appropriate academic support can be identified that would have positive impact on student achievement for these subgroups.

Fall 2005

1. What are your problem statements?

Problem Statements

Student Achievement Problems

The staff expects that students can and will read independently, as well as process assigned texts, materials and assignments. The majority of our teachers still do not assess for specific reading skills or deficiencies, or explicitly teach reading skills to their students.

There are strategic students and targeted students that are not able to read, process and complete assignments independently. Their literacy skills ahave significant impact on their academic performance across all curricular areas, as evidenced by GPA, assessment data and teacher observations.

It is important that our instructional interventions and strategies continue to have significant positive impact on stratefic and targeted students' achievement, as measure by embedded assessments, the CST-ELA and student GPA.

Teacher Practice Problems

Some teachers believe that teaching literacy should be a part of their daily instructional practice. Many accept the necessity and responsibility of teaching and reinforcing literacy skills, but believe that they are poorly/ill-prepared to meet this need due to a lack of appropriate training.

2. What are your inquiry questions?

Student Achievement Questions

• Can we reduce the student achievement gap to within 15 units for our strategic and target students, as measured by the CST-ELA?
• Which instructional support strategies have the most significant impact on improving the achievement of our strategic and target students, as evidenced by embedded assessments, collaborative assessments, GPA and teacher observation?

Teacher Practice Questions

• To what degree are all teachers implementing collaborative instructioanl support strategies for our strategic and target students, as evidenced by observation and documentation?
• Of the instructional support strategies implemented which are the most effective on improving performance of our strategic and target students, as evidenced by observation, documentation and other mulitple measures?
3. What are your measurable goals?

Student Achievement Goals

• All literacy class students will make a minimum of 1.5 years of growth in one year as based on Oral Reading Fluency testing and/or CST/ELA scores.
• All strategic and intervention students will master an agreed upon percentage of the target academic vocabulary as measured by a site-created assessment.
• By the Spring of 2010, all eleventh grade students at AHS will be performing at proficient or better, and to reduce the spread of the site Achievement Gap to within 15 percentile units.
• From the Fall of 2005 to Spring 2006, 80% of the 9th and 10th, and 11th grade students in intensive reading intervention will have advanced two grade levels or more based on the corrective reading embedded assessments. In 2006-07 school year 90% will advanced two grade levels or more. In 2007-08 school year 100% will advanced two grade levels or more.
• From the Fall of 2005 to Spring 2006, 80% of students who scored at Far Below Basic will score Basic level on the 2006 CST. Likewise, 50% who scored Basic on the 2005 CST will score proficient the 2006 CST. Increases will be higher (60%) in 2006-07 and in 2007-08.
• From the Fall of 2005 to Spring 2006, 50% of the African Amercian students who scored at Far Below Basic, Below Basic and Basic will advance one level or more based on their performance on the 2006 CST. From the Fall of 2005 to Spring 2006, 10% of the African Amercian students who scored at Far Below Basic, Below Basic and Basic will advance one level or more based on their performance on the 2006 CST.
• All ELL students will make a minimum of 1.5 years of growth in one year as based on Oral Reading Fluency testing and/or CST/ELA scores.

Teacher Practice Goals

• Teachers will receive training on teaching academic vocabulary.
• Collabortive teams will develop appropriate vocabulary lists and instructional plans for all subjects and courses taught at AHS. Collabrative assessments will be developed to assess the efficiacy of the vocabulary instruction and student growth.
• All core and elective teachers will implement the agreed upon vocabulary instruction strategy and teach agreed upon words as measured by department or course assessment.
• 50% of teachers will share evidence of focal student work in vocabulary.
• All ELL students will be placed in appropriate literacy instuctional courses and will have access to appropriate academic support for all core courses.
• Teachers will continue to receive support and training on teaching academic vocabulary, reading comprehension, and literacy skill acquistion.
4. What are your major strategies?
• Expand the literacy intervention classes to address comprehension needs.
• Provide training and support to literacy intervention class teachers.
• Train a team of teachers to become academic vocabulary instructors.
• All teachers receive training in teaching academic vocabulary, followed up by department or course agreements to implement at least one strategy and a group of target words.
• Implement agreed upon literacy strategies in all classrooms.
• Work with other AUSD high schools and the Secondary Literacy Coach to share best practices and resources in intervention programs, vocabualry strategies and staff development.

Alameda 2004/05 Single School Plan

Alameda 2003/04 Single School Plan

Alameda High School

4 Year District API Base Data

Definitions

School Mobility Percent - Represents the percentage of students attending the school for the first time.

Parent Education Average - The average of all responses where "1" represents "Not a high school graduate", "2" represents "High School Graduate", "3" represents "Some College", "4" represents "College Graduate" and "5" represents "Graduate School".

School Classification Index - A mathematically computed index using other non academic API components to create indicator of similar demographics and school environment to be used for similar school rankings.

Disclaimer: All data has been hand created. If there are questions about the validity of the data, please contact the webmaster.

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Last modified: February 8, 2005

Disclaimer: This website is the sole responsibility of Mike McMahon. It does not represent any official opinions, statement of facts or positions of the Alameda Unified School District. Its sole purpose is to disseminate information to interested individuals in the Alameda community.