Otis School Plan 2007/08

Otis Elementary School was a K-5 school with an enrollment of 388 in 2006/07. To review Otis' 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 2006/07 Cycle of Inquiry?

Otis students have made significant gains over the past six years, as shown by standardized testing. The percentage of students proficient in ELA has increased from 51% to 74% and in Math from 56% to 74%. Individual grade level performance varies, with a trend of decreasing gains with increasing grade level, particularly in Math. Progress in ELA is slightly better than in math. API shows an increase of 110 points; an average of 18 points per year.

Results of implementing our Major Strategies to accomplish our 06-07 Record of Agreements was generally very positive.

Student and Teacher Achievement Goals

• Direct instruction of Tier 2 Words – Implementation of Word Wizards was carried out by all teachers. The percentage of students participating was unknown, but anecdotal evidence suggests that those most in need of practice with multisyllabic words were not the students that participated.
• Implement Step Up to Writing – All teachers implemented this program. Using the AUSD Writing Rubric as an indicator of writing performance, the average number of students in all grade levels that were proficient increased from 77% to 82%. This 6% increase fell short of the 10% goal.
• Pilot an ExCEL-based instructional support strategy – 2nd grade teachers piloted Learning Groups for two months. Overall scores on the 2nd grade ELA CST’s increased 17%, more than any other grade level The goals of decreasing the achievement gaps between the highest and lowest scoring ethnic groups, males and females and economic status were indeterminate due to the comparative limitations of the data between 1st and 2nd grade.

While all groups increased the percent proficient in ELA and Math, the 06-07 assessment results clearly show performance gaps between ethnic groups, ELL and EO and SED and non-SED students (AMO graph, table 3.) Table 3 also shows the prominent difference between African American students proficient in ELA and Math. The difference of 23 percentage points is alarming, particularly when compared to all other groups. Personal communication with Assessment Director Leni vonBlanckense reveals that this is a trend across the district.

Multiple Measure data was also analyzed for traditionally low scoring groups to look at the influence of district measures on student performance scores. In general there was no significant change in performance from 2006-2007. For all PARI students there was a drop in Reading and a minor drop in math scores.

Analyses of various movement charts show that those performing below grade level in ELA made significant gains between 05-06 and 06-07 CST’s (table 8.) This is particularly evident for African American and Asian students. The same students had little change on the math CST’s. Conversely, students performing at or above grade level showed a decrease in performance in both ELA and Math. This is particularly evident for African American students.

As a result of addressing performance inequities among ethnic groups the 06-07 School Site Council concluded that there needed to be more effective communication between classroom teachers and parents/guardians. Two specific strategies were suggested by the SSC: show the Encinal H.S. student video to increase staff awareness of issues that African American students felt influenced them in elementary school and improve communication between the classroom teacher and parents/guardians.

From faculty discussions of the data, and examination of the Distinguished School Application rubric, it is clear that we need to create a Single School Plan that emphasizes more effective intervention for students at risk of failure in ELA, more effectively challenges students at and above grade level in ELA and Math, provides additional support for math instruction, and improves communication between school and students’ homes.

Fall 2007

1. What are your problem statements?

Problem Statements

Student Achievement Problems

At risk of retention (PARI), African American and Latino students are not making progress in ELA and Math, as measured by district Multiple Measures scores.

Above grade level performing students are not challenged enough and are disproportionately decreasing in performance.

Teacher Practice Problems

Teachers find it extremely difficult to differentiate instruction to meet the diverse academic needs in their classrooms. The ELA and Math curriculum pacing and content is not easily accessible for the lowest performing students and not challenging enough for the highest performing students.

2. What are your inquiry questions?

Student Achievement Questions

Will using a Response to Intervention model similar to ExCEL (Otis Learning Groups) improve student scores in ELA, particularly for PARI, African American and Latino students?

Will implementing Everyday Counts Calendar Math help to make math concepts more accessible and improve the math scores of PARI, African American and Latino students?

Teacher Practice Questions

Will implementing a grade level differentiated instructional model one hour each day, via Learning Groups, help teachers effectively meet the needs of the lowest and highest performing students?

Can teachers more effectively address math concepts, in the adopted text, for low performing students by supplementing and reinforcing them through Everyday Counts Calendar Math?

3. What are your measurable goals?

Average Multiple Measures for all PARI students will be 3.5 or better for ELA and Math.

For 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students participating in the Learning Group differentiated instructional support program, the achievement gap between non-proficient and proficient students will decrease by 10% in CST ELA.

African American students proficient on the Math CST will increase by 10 percentage points.

All 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade teachers will use a grade level differentiated instructional support model called Learning Groups. Implementation will be determined by minutes of grade level meetings and principal observation of Learning Groups

All classroom teachers will implement Everyday Counts Calendar Math. Implementation will be determined by minutes of grade level meetings and principal observation of the program.

Otis 2006/07 Single School Plan

Otis 2005/06 Single School Plan

Otis 2004/05 Single School Plan

Otis 2003/04 Single School Plan

Otis

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: March 7, 2007

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.