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Chipman Single School Plan 2007/08Chipman Middle School was a 6-8 school with an enrollment of 605 in 2006/07 that used Lifelong Guidelines and Lifeskills. To review Chipman'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 ComponentsWhat Did You Learn from 2006/07 Cycle of Inquiry?
The data is very clear; our African American continue to be far behind their Asian and Caucasian peers. In addition their growth is stagnant in comparison to the Hispanic, English learners and economically disadvantaged students. The progress that was made was small in ELA and a decline in Math. The achievement gap is not closing. We continue to move students out of REACH and appear to have reached a stable number of REACH sections – with our transient population and Special Education students; we will always have a need for a few sections but not more than two or three. Once exited from REACH, moving our students from Strategic to Benchmark/Advanced or Proficient and Advanced is proving very challenging. Without this, the AG will not be closed. Last year, we had all students in the 8th grade take Algebra instead of the below grade level, General Math class, traditionally offered. The result of this was that we made an overall gain in our Math CST scores but not within our African American sub group. Our ELL population continued to have significant growth, validating the work in both the placement and instruction of the students. Our Hispanic students are no longer a sub group but did make significant progress last year. Having gone through the SAIT process, we successfully implemented the 9 Essential Components identified areas for implementation. The time, energy and compromise necessary to adhere to the mandates were great. While we did make the 1 point growth necessary to exit SAIT, the progress was not significant enough to warrant continuing with the “demands” of the program. These requirements did take time away from the SIM work that would have been more of a focus for implementation. The SAIT process and requirements were not focused enough on teacher practice (other than the participation of AB466, subsequent hours and fidelity to the State Adopted text), instructional strategies, student engagement, or any brain compatible elements that we know are essential for long term learning to take place. Given our large African American population and their stagnant growth, the exclusive focus on the adopted text did not meet their needs. The progress made was insignificant for the amount of work that was put into adhering to the SAIT mandates. The gains allowed us to exit SAIT but did not do anything towards significantly closing the AG or exiting PI/meeting our AMOs. Teacher practice in our REACH classes impacted the AG in that we have far fewer students who are FBB and we are successfully exiting students from Intensive Reading classes. In addition, we are also successful with our ELL and Low Socio Economic students. Teacher practices in our Strategic ELA classes do not seem to have the impact that we had hoped. That said, the curriculum being used versus the teachers practice might have a lot to do with this. The adherence to Prentice Hall, a curriculum that is not research validated for addressing the skill gaps in fluency, comprehension, decoding, etc. was implemented with fidelity. Our SAIT evaluation required that we have students being taught from and “learning” directly from the textbooks during instructional time. While standards based textbooks are used for creating the scope and sequence and lesson planning, the text is not engaging enough nor does it take into account the strategies that an accomplished teacher makes use of when teaching new skills. We don’t have the evidence to show that we have brought our African American and Hispanic students up to the percent proficient necessary to achieve our AYP. While we have been focused on them, we obviously did not do enough of the right things. We do have the data to show that our African American students do better at our school than they do in the district or the State; however, we have a significant enough population that that is not enough. We have had a significant impact on our ELL students. The opportunity provided many of our ELL students to move into mainstreamed ELA classes while also focusing on the implementation of High Point resulted in great gains for those students on the CST in ELA. Providing all of our 8th graders with Algebra did greatly increase their gains in concept mastery but those students at the lowest levels of achievement may benefit from a different pacing of grade level standards, more repetition of concepts and opportunities to practice math skills. Given the change in the Math CSTs- advanced students take a math subject test instead of a grade level math test - there are some questions arising around how we place students in advanced math classes. Fall 2007
Problem Statements Student Achievement Problems Of the *472 students at Chipman who took the 2006-07 CSTs, approximately 62.4% were not proficient in ELA & 65.3% are not proficient in Math. While we are seeing some students move from FBB and BB to Basic, very few are moving to Proficient and we are seeing a decline in the number of students who are Proficient and Advanced in both ELA and Math. With the intensity of the SAIT process and the school wide commitment to implementing the recommendations, the expected growth was far greater than what we achieved. Teacher Practice Problems Student Achievement Questions ELA
Math
Are African American Students increasing proficiency at rates that will allow them to close the gap with higher performing subgroups? Are Proficient & Advanced students maintaining their levels of proficiency in both ELA & Math? How can we make sure that our high students are facing a diversity of rigorous work? Teacher Practice Questions ELA
Math
The number of African American students moving up will grow at least 10% in each band on the CST for both ELA and Math. Strategic & B/Adv students will increase their Standard Scores by 10% as measured by GRADE. 40% of those students in MathTech/Alegebra support will pass the midterm with a score of 70% or higher. 10% of the MathTech students will be exited based on Core math class grade of B or higher Increase our API to 720 school wide and 600 for African American students. All teachers will attend regular collaborative meetings and implement agreed upon lesson plans based on benchmark and other common assessments.
All respective programs will implement the identified Math intervention/support
Chipman 2006/07 Single School Plan Chipman 2005/06 Single School Plan Chipman 2004/05 Single School Plan Chipman 2003/04 Single School Plan Chipman
4 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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