The Data Narrative section corresponds with the “Evaluate” portion of the continuous improvement cycle. In this section, you will construct a narrative that describes the process and results of the school's analysis of its data. The analysis reported here should justify the performance targets and actions proposed in the Action Plan section. This analysis section includes the following tasks:
1. Identify where the school did not at least meet minimum state and federal accountability expectations
2. Describe progress toward targets for the prior school year
3. Describe what performance data were used in the analysis of trends
4. Identify trends and priority performance challenges (negative trends)
5. Describe how performance challenges were prioritized
6. Identify the root causes of performance challenges
7. Describe how the root causes were identified and verified and what data were used
8. Describe stakeholder involvement in the analysis
Additional guidance on how to engage in the data analysis process is provided at the Unified Improvement Planning Website.
You do not need to enter any information on this sub-tab. The content below will automatically populate as you fill out the other sub-tabs in this section. Follow the directions on each of the following sub-tabs to complete your analysis. Alternatively, if you’d prefer, you can also directly edit these sections by clicking on the links included at the bottom of each section below (e.g., “Edit Brief Description Narrative”).
(Optional) As you complete each sub-tab, you may click the box labeled “Complete & Ready to submit” to help you track your progress through the UIP. If you would like to download an editable DOC file of the content of the UIP Narrative, click the “Download” button at the upper right corner of this sub-tab.
Mountainside Elementary School is a Title I school located on Fort Carson military installation and is a member of the Fountain-Fort Carson School District #8. It has approximately 500 students who attend kindergarten through fifth grade. The student turnover rate from school year to school year is approximately 50%. At this time 55% of our student population qualifies for federal free and/or reduced lunch prices, and nearly 95% of our students are military dependents. Mountainside Elementary School's UIP is developed annually through a collaborative process including Mountainside Elementary School's teaching staff, building administrators, and parents. The School Accreditation and Accountability Committee and other members of the instructional staff are involved in analysis of data in planning for consistent systemic improvement. After conducting a comprehensive needs assessment, the following priority performance challenges, root causes, and subsequent action steps are identified to be addressed for the upcoming school year. Coordination of State, Federal, and Local Resource, School-wide Parent and Staff Involvement:Stakeholders at Mountainside Elementary School include the accreditation team, staff, students, and parents the school serves. Mountainside stakeholders will work with state and District personnel to ensure federal, state, and local funds are coordinated to benefit our students to the strongest degree possible. We provide parents with the opportunity to know about their child’s academic and social development, how they can support the school, and how they can get involved in school activities through multiple methods (email, phone conversation, parent-teacher conferences, school and classroom newsletters, website, blogs, student planners …). Our parent compact is made available to parents at the first semester parent-teacher conferences. Parents will be provided access to speak directly with school staff about parent involvement in the school. Additionally, our parent compact will be made available to all new families to Mountainside Elementary School. Parents will be surveyed in the second semester of the school year to determine their satisfaction and areas where Mountainside can improve in providing a quality educational environment. The Multi-tiered Systems of Support program is strong at Mountainside for students that are in need of additional academic and behavioral support. MTSS case managers coordinate interventions, collaborate with classroom teachers, and communicate with parents to address specific targeted areas in need of growth, based on individual student data and school-wide data analysis. There are a large number of clubs and activities that are scheduled over the school year to allow students to explore new areas of interest, support areas of need, or pursue areas of strength. Finally, these activities help to build relationships between students, parents, and our school. Preschool Transition for Students to Mountainside Elementary School:As Mountainside Elementary School works to effectively partner with the early childhood programs that feed into our school the following steps are executed to ensure a quality transition: School staff meet with parents on an annual basis to inform transitioning parents about services provided;Conduct a Kindergarten Round-up process where parents and incoming students are introduced to Mountainside through a presentation by kindergarten teachers highlighting curricular components, communicate behavioral expectations, provide a snapshot of the academic day, and address any questions that may be posed;Transition Meetings are held for students with special needs;Conduct a Title I informational meeting. Highly Qualified Instructional Staff:Fountain-Fort Carson School District Eight strives to ensure competitive salaries and high quality work environments for all staff. In order to effectively provide a high quality educational program to all students at Mountainside Elementary School, the District’s highly qualified hiring components will be strictly adhered to throughout the school hiring process. Once highly qualified teachers are employed at Mountainside Elementary School they will be supported through: The district mentor programThe building mentor coordinatorTheir grade level teamGrade level collaboration meeting timeRegularly scheduled staff meetings focusing on professional learning and professional development. Dedicated collaborative time for staff focusing in the areas of Reading, Math, Writing, and Student Behaviors/Building-wide Culture Feedback and coaching from their building administrator(s)Professional development opportunities offered at the building-level and district-level in areas such as: Implementation and training on adopted instructional programmingUtilization of instructional resourcesPedagogyData analysis on student performanceBehavioral and emotional student supportDistrict-designed Teaching & Learning FrameworksDeconstruction of grade level standards, creation of learning targets, alignment of formative and summative assessments [Edit Brief Description Narrative ]
[Edit Brief Description Narrative ]
Begin Prior Year Targets
During the past two years there have been two significant changes that have taken place to strengthen instruction at Mountainside Elementary. First, beginning during the second half of the 2015-16 school year, and continuing through last year, instructional work was begun to make staff comfortable deconstructing grade level standards, and subsequently from those deconstructed standards create learning targets that align with grade level expectations identified in the Colorado Academic Standards. Over this period of time, the majority of the efforts around grade level collaboration, and during PLC/staff meetings were dedicated to strengthening our ability to effectively identify and instruct utilizing those processes. Student learning was demonstrated through aligned summative assessments, giving staff members latitude to align instruction toward the expectation for student mastery identified by the grade-level standard, and not be tied to instruction that was defined by an adopted instructional program. After receiving the results from our student performance on the annual state assessments, the focus of our professional development will now shift to also include formative assessment design, feedback to students during the formative assessment process, and utilizing this information to implement real-time changes to instructional delivery in the classroom to address conceptual challenges as they arise. Mountainside professional development continues to focus on improving instructional design as described within the district's Teaching and Learning Frameworks. Areas of continued professional development for staff will be in deconstructing standards in a way that allows very focused instructional decisions based on timely formative assessment practices. The next natural step in this evolution will be to review assessments with a more critical eye to ensure that what is being assessed aligns with what is being taught. This process will begin to move past math instruction, which was our initial content area of focus, and begin to include ELA and other content areas that may be incorporated into our instructional planning model. The three questions that are continually asked of staff members is ''Where are we going (with our instruction)?'' ''Where are we now (assessing our students' current state of understanding)?'' Finally, ''What do we need to do to close that gap?'' [Edit Current Performance Narrative ]
[Edit Current Performance Narrative ]
Academic Achievement (Status): Students at Mountainside have demonstrated academic achievement reflecting a saw tooth pattern of achievement with spikes and troughs in all three grades assessed. This past year's PARCC/CMAS assessment achievement data all show decreases from grade level to grade level, but demonstrate relative stability with the same cohort of students longitudinally across assessment years. Student Achievement was below the school's goal of at or above the median score in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade ELA and Math, and in 5th grade Science. Trend Direction: Increasing then decreasing
Academic Achievement (Status): As compared to the state average measured by the CMAS assessment in science and the ACCESS for Mountainside's ELL population, student achievement is significantly higher than the state and district averages. Additionally, as measured by the ACCESS assessment, there is no gap between the achievement of students as members of student subgroups and the overall student population taking the assessment. Trend Direction:
Academic Growth: Academic Growth as measured by the ACCESS indicates student growth significantly higher than the the state median of 50 percent. The median growth percentile for Mountainside's students is at 62. Trend Direction:
Academic Growth: Academic growth data also demonstrates a saw tooth pattern with spikes and troughs over the past three years in the two grade levels where growth information is available.Last year's PARCC/CMAS assessment growth data show decreases in the median growth percentile from the previous year. There was one grade level growth score that was above the school target of academic growth, 4th grade ELA, otherwise the other three cohort scores fell below the goal of at or above the state median score. Trend Direction: Increasing then decreasing
STEM Teacher Conceptual Understanding-Lack of understanding/comfort in integrating and implementing STEM cross-curricular lessons, activities... -Teachers have an opportunity to observe modeling of "Inquiry" structured, or Engineering Design Process lessons from peers to observe successful STEM integrated lessons.
Building Culture and CommunityDevelop a culture of a collaborative community within Mountainside Elementary School.
English-Language ArtsTeachers will implement the Colorado Academic Standards for reading, writing, and communication with evidence-based writing tasks, academic language, and cross-curricular literacy.
Reflection of Priority Performance ChallengesPriority Performance Challenges: During the collaborative process conducted in mid-April Mountainside Elementary School staff members identified a need to focus building leadership and major improvement strategies through the creation of ''solution teams'' in three specific areas: ELA (English Language Arts), STEM- (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), and Building Culture and Community.Familiarizing and implementing the district's Teaching and Learning Frameworks as a structure to design instruction. (This work will be reflected by a positive change in the growth trend data in all content areas, specifically addressing our decline in Reading growth.) Collaboration between grade level teams and building leadershipDeconstruction of Colorado Academic Standards to arrive at clearly defined learning targetsDevelopment of targeted formative assessments that align to Colorado Academic Standards and are integrated into the grade levels' instructional implementationFocus teacher and student attention to be able to address the following 3 critical questions: Where are we going (in our learning)?Where are we now (our current level of understanding)?What do we need to do to close the gap between our current level and our expected level of understanding? Continuing a focus of STEM activities embedded in how we provide students opportunity to engage in inquiry-based learning, collaborative problem-solving, and engineering based activities. This needs to continue even after the conclusion of the 3 year DODEA STEM grant as teachers strive to continue to provide engaging exploration opportunities for students attending Mountainside both through curricular options and extracurricular activities. [Edit Priority Performance Challenges Narrative ]
[Edit Priority Performance Challenges Narrative ]
Collaborative planning time
Planning to integrate/embed STEM concepts into cross-curricular lessons
Inquiry-based instructional strategies
Providing an instructional environment that supports student inquiry, collaboration and problem-solving.
Teacher Observations needed in STEM based lessons
Teachers have an opportunity to observe modeling of "Inquiry" structured, or Engineering Design Process lessons from peers to observe successful STEM integrated lessons.
Need for math Curriculum Based Measure to benchmark student performance
Math interventions are limited because the data on student math performance are limited as part of a universal screening measure.
Significant influx of student enrollment
On base housing in the Mountainside attendance area has been rebuilt and families have been moved into our new neighborhoods. This has resulted in an increase of enrollment of more than 100 students over the past 12 months, and places a greater importance on creating a tight-knit school community.
Student families transitioning into and out of Mountainside
Families are in a consistent state of flux as they soldiers are deployed and/or their Primary Change of Station is pushed through. This makes it difficult to establish and maintain a culture that is passed down from student to student over the course of years.
Out of district/Out of zone student enrollment
To address declining enrollment, Mountainside Elementary School has opened up its attendance to students residing outside the traditional attendance area. This has diluted the traditional "neighborhood school feel" and requires the school to work to integrate students into what is expected of Mountainside Elementary School students.
Increase rigor in using the speaking and listening standards
Staff are working to calibrate grade-level expectations for communication using both the writing standards and the speaking and listening standards. Formative assessment/summative assessment opportunities need to be planned to allow timely feedback through both modes to drive instruction.
Increase use of higher-level vocabulary
Students and teachers will apply appropriate, higher-level vocabulary in writing and classroom discussions.
Student and teachers actively participate in examining student writing
Students will analyze text to support claims and conclusions with text-based evidence and language. Staff will work to calibrate scoring using writing rubrics to share strategies to advance student's writing proficiency.
Prepare students for structure and format of assessment
Teachers will administer writing tasks similar to district and state assessments to prepare students for grade-level expectations.
Instructional program for K-5 Reading instruction is no longer aligned to C.A.S.
The adopted instructional program for reading instruction was aligned to Colorado Model Content Standards of 2010, and not the Colorado Academic Standards of 2013. Teachers will work to supplement the instructional program to meet standards-based instruction needs.
Reflection on Root CausesRoot causes: Writing instruction lacked a cohesive structure throughout our K-5 classrooms;Continue developing a deeper understanding of the Colorado Academic Standards; Core instructional program in reading is not directly aligned to the 2013 adopted Colorado Academic Standards; ELA assessments and instruction are not seamlessly aligned based on our current instructional program to the Colorado Academic Standards;Create aligned assessments between our learning targets that are driven by the work within the Colorado Academic Standards, and our formative and summative assessments; Develop increased rigor in student responses and instruction to meet higher expectations in reading, writing, science and math;Utilize a benchmark screening tool in math to provide interim assessment information and provide diagnostic information about computation and number sense K-5 Need for professional collaboration and data dialogue between classroom teachers and intervention providers to identify student needs. Root causes were determined using student results from: PARCC/CMAS Assessments, SCANTRON Performance Series, District Quarterly Writing Assessment, as well as other formative and summative assessments, informal and formal classroom observations, and feedback from staff members throughout the school year. Save [Edit Root Causes Narrative ]
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