Longfellow School Plan 2005/06

Longfellow Elementary School was a K-5 school with an enrollment of 181 in 2005/06. To review Longfellow'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?

Although African American students and Latino/Hispanic students made significant growth and respectively met their targets on the state standardized tests in 2005, both groups continue to perform lower than other ethnic groups at our school. African American students tend to score better in language arts and Latino/Hispanic students tend to score better in mathematics. The weakest areas for our sub groups on CST ELA and CA summative assessments are vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing.

Subgroup	CST ELA (proficient)	CST math (proficient)
African American	22%	32%
Latino/Hispanic	4%	35%

However, both subgroups made substanial gains. African American students went for 18.1 to 40.9 a 120% gain and Latino/Hipanic students went from 12.5 to 16.7 or 35% gain. All subgroups at Longfellow are closing the achievement gap with the exception of the Latino/Hispanic group. Our Filipino group is our top performing group.

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.

Our 04-05 focus on improving student behavior and promoting higher attendance rates via a systematic school discipling program plan was difficult to measure. This year we are goign to refocus and look at ways to collect useful data. Teachers believe we now have in place an excellent discipline plan that is well structured and is responsible for the declines in student suspensions. They feel we need to continue with this plan and train new faculty members as appropriate. Our teachers also felt that as a staff we engaged in meaningful staff development activities to deepen our knowledge about African American culture, learning styles and education equity.

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

See numer one above.

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

We saw that although African American subgroup is making tremendous gains that they stull udner perform in comparison to other groups. We also realize that the Latino/Hispanic subgroup, while making gains, under performs all other sub groups and that a large number of ELL students comprise this group.

Vocabulary, comprehension and writing are weak areas. Teachers want to continue current practices and focus on leveraging academic vocabulary, utilizing HRM reading comprehension strategies and Losaic of Thought methodologies. We devoted a tremendous amount of time and resources to increase our cultural awarenes of African American students and this has made a significant difference in their performance. It appears our ELD strategies are working for our Filipino and other Asian sugroups, but not as effectively for our Latino/Hispanic subgroup. So we must seek a deeper understanding of Hispanic culture.

Finally, we appreciate how positive the "Cycle of Inquiry" process has been in guiding our professional growth and educational practices. We value the collaboration and our faculty has made a commitment to vigorously continue the process.

Fall 2005

1. What is your problem statement?

05-06 Focus Literacy

• Although Afro-American and Latino students made significant growth and respectively met their targets on state standardized tests in 2005, both groups continue to be the lowest performing groups. The weakest area for our subgroups on the CST ELA and CA Summative assessments continue to be vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing. There continues to bea trend that upper grade students perform consistently lower in the areas mentioned above. We have observed that many students are not engaged in reading during our current Silent Sustained Reading time. Currently, teachers report they to supplement and enhance thier skills in teaching reading comprehension strategies especially for our focus groups.
2. What are your inquiry questions?

Student Achievement Questions

• Are the Afro-American and Latino students who are currently scoring "Basic" on CST/ELA showing evidence of using Houghton Mifflin Reading comprehension and Mosaic of Thought strategies independently?
• Are they reaching proficiency on their Houghton Mifflin Theme Skills and the CA Summative tests?

Teacher Practice Questions

• To what degree are teachers expaninding a 25 minute free choice of silent sustained reading time with Reader's Workshop coupled with HMR reading comprehension strategies and Mosaic of Thought?
3. What are your measurable goals?

Student Achievement Goals

• At least 48% of our Afro Americans and 26% of Latino students will score proficient on the Houghton Mifflin Theme Skills and CA Summative tests.
• At least 5% more Afro Amercian and Latino students will score proficient on the CST/ELA.

Teacher Practice Goals

• Teachers will increase skills in implementing Reader's Workshop coupled with HMR reading comprehension strategies and Mosaic of Thought as measured by coaching observation.
4. What are your major strategies?
• Exapanding the free choice SSR time with Reader's Workshop coupled with HMR reading comprehension strategies and Mosaic of Thought.
• Continue with classroom cycle of inquiry realted to reading comprehension.
• Maintain literacy and math interventions currently in place such as Explanded Reading, SURF, Read Naturally, SME, etc.
• .

Longfellow 2004/05 Single School Plan

Longfellow 2003/04 Single School Plan

Longfellow

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

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