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Chipman School Plan 2004/05Chipman Middle School was a 6-8 school with an enrollment of 621 in 2004/05that used Lifelong Guidelines and Lifeskills.. To review Chipman's state Academic Performance Index scores since 2000 click here. On April 28th, First Lady Laura Bush visited Chipman to recognize the hard work and accomplishment of the students and staff in successfully implementing a reading intervention program. Here is an editorial about their program. 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 ComponentsFall 2004
Problem Statement Of the 632 students at Chipman Middle School, approximately 245 (38%) are reading below grade level on multiple measures. Within that group, there are a disproportioante number of African American and Hispanic students. Now that the Intensive intervention program is well in place we need to focus our efforts and resources to refining the Strategic program and supporting implementation. We need to continue to refine the delivery of programs at all levels (REACH, Strategic, Benchmark/Advanced, ELD). Additionally, a lack of academic vocabulary for many (in addition to our intervention students) makes accessing the core curriculum in other subjects difficult. While we have addressed the issue of time allowed for reading intervention and have placed the most experienced teachers with the neediest students, the data supports that chronic attendance and tardy issues plague our lowest students. Math: Of the 6 subgroups designated by the Annual Yearly Progress, only one sbugroup, African American, did not meet the Annual Measurable Objective. Student Achievement Questions
Teacher Practice Questions
Student Achievement Goals
Teacher Practice Goals
Chipman 2003/04 Single School Plan
3 Year District API Base DataDefinitions 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. Where no one is left behindSan Francisco Chronicle Editorial, April 29, 2005 IT'S ONE THING to say "No Child Left Behind," it's another to mean it. With 50 percent of its students once performing below grade level, Chipman Middle School in Alameda held a comfortable spot on California's list of low-performing schools. It would have been easy to stay there, too, had the school's educators decided not to make a change and give their students an actual chance. But they did -- and on Thursday, first lady Laura Bush paid a visit to Chipman with the goal of making it a national model for schools with at-risk students. That's a far cry from four years ago when Chipman teachers were sent to research programs to address their students' severe reading deficit. The team chose to implement the state-adopted REACH method of teaching, an intensive intervention program for grades four through eight for students reading below grade level. The teachers also agreed to launch a three-tiered core program, which involved identifying "benchmark" students, that is, those who read at grade level, "strategic" students, who read one to two years below grade level, and "intensive" students, who read more than two years below grade level. The model is based on enabling students reading below grade level to make two years' progress in one year's time by teaching an extended intervention class on comprehension, writing, spelling and "decoding," which is learning how to say the words aloud and comprehending their meaning. It was an ambitious goal -- and a refreshing one, given that many schools with at-risk students cite budget woes, bigger class sizes and lack of quality teachers as excuses for not implementing more rigorous programs. It's always easier to blame outside forces rather than take them on. "But not only have we implemented this program," says Principal Laurie McLachlan-Fry, "we've restructured the entire school around it. We've made it even more intensive." Since implementing all three levels of the program in 2002, state scores for Chipman have gone up. In addition, under the REACH program, reading and writing skills have gone up 8 percent for African-American students and 9 percent for Hispanics. School-wide, there has been a 7 percent improvement. Now, Laura Bush, building on the president's No Child Left Behind Act, cited Chipman's success in visiting the East Bay school Thursday. "I'm so glad you're in a school that pays attention to reading, because if you can read, you can do every subject," she told the students. "Mrs. Bush is going across America and highlighting programs that have worked, that have a record of success. Chipman has shown this success," said Susan Whitson, press secretary for the first lady. Not that it's been easy. Katherine Crawford, who has been a teacher at Chipman for nine years and is now teaching the core program, said the sessions are "draining" and the work is "nonstop," but that nothing has been more rewarding. "They keep improving and we keep pushing," she said. And that's the difference. Teachers at this school care. And in a climate where low-performing schools are seen as the black eye of our educational system, it's refreshing to know that at one school, teachers remain tireless in their efforts and merciless in their demands for a better education for all students. Making Chipman Middle School a national model is great. But let's not stop at home. Right next door, Oakland high schools have been described as "dropout factories" by a recent study of California schools. Let Chipman be a model for them, and maybe Oakland, too, will lose its comfortable spot on the list of the low-performing schools. It might just give the first lady another reason to come back. 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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