District 15 unveils new Student Performance Targets

During the District 15 Board of Education's March 14 meeting, Mary Zarr, assistant superintendent for curriculum, special services, and school improvement, presented the Board with a draft of the Student Performance Targets developed to support the District 15 Strategic Goals approved earlier this year.

The proposed performance targets are as follows:

• Proficiency: At least 90 percent of all students will meet/exceed grade-level proficiency standards in reading.

• Proficiency: At least 90 percent of all students will meet/exceed grade-level proficiency standards in math.

• Growth: At least 90 percent of all students will meet/exceed one year of academic growth each school year in reading and math.

• Growth: Close the achievement gap between identified sub-groups.

• Outcomes: Increase the number of eighth-grade students that meet/exceed college readiness benchmarks in English, Reading, Math, and Science.

The District will now solicit the community's feedback on these targets prior to submitting them for approval at the Board's April 11 meeting. An online survey, as well as more information on these proposed targets, measures, and reports, is available on the District 15 website, www.ccsd15.net.

“When the Board charged us with making rigorous student performance targets, we took that to heart,” said Mrs. Zarr. “These are rigorous, and we anticipate that we will be able to begin meeting and exceeding these targets in about a five- to six-year period.”

The targets, which represent districtwide progress and are inclusive of all grade levels, are divided into three categories—proficiency targets, growth targets, and outcome targets.

“We feel that this is very important because it takes student achievement into consideration, but it also challenges us to make sure that our students—even those meeting and exceeding expectations at the beginning of the year—are still making academic growth,” said Mrs. Zarr. “The proposed student performance targets also provide for inclusion of an outcomes target, which helps construct a profile of the desired scores characteristic of an exiting eighth grader after experiencing a high quality K-8 education.”

Mrs. Zarr also emphasized that the targets are supportive of research-based theory on the triangulation of data. They allow for use of multiple measures of achievement, growth, and outcomes to be included in monitoring reports that will provide a comprehensive accounting of student achievement.

“As educators, we firmly believe that, when you are going to look at the performance of a student, you have to look at multiple measures of that performance over an extended period of time,” she said. “We don't want to simply report the scores of a test that a child takes one time a year for 50 minutes on a single day—their snapshot in time—and then use that snapshot for someone to make conclusions about the hard work and efforts that go into the progressive student achievement in District 15.”

These multiple measures of student achievement will be analyzed and reported, enabling students, staff, and other stakeholders to monitor progress locally, nationally, and eventually, internationally. Updated monitoring reports will be provided in January, March, and June, followed by the District's all-inclusive Annual Student Achievement Report in October.

“Our state-mandated tests will always be included within our measures, but we also want to include other local and national benchmarks. Progress toward meeting each student performance target that is presented here will be assessed and reported using at least three measurements of progress,” said Mrs. Zarr. “We also feel that, because we will be using multiple measures, we've built in enough flexibility to allow us to continue using these targets once the state tests change and the Common Core is fully implemented.”

In addition to these targets, the Department of Instruction and site-based leadership teams will also develop yearly school goals based on individual trend data, and they will align each school's improvement efforts accordingly.

“This will enable a hard working, committed staff at a school that is perhaps starting at a proficiency rate of 79 or 80 percent to celebrate when it meets a stretch goal of increasing that rate to 82 or 83 percent, and not feel it has failed because it didn't hit the District's target of 90 percent,” said Mrs. Zarr. “That's actually how we envision hitting these targets within the next five or six years—by measuring schools where they currently stand and setting realistic, achievable targets that they can make by constructing a supportive school improvement plan. As each school makes these incremental gains along the way, the District as a whole should hit these targets.”

-Story Submitted by Community Consolidated School District 15