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SIP Review and Opportunity for Improvement

Amy Dherit

American College of Education

EL5703: School Improvement

Dr. Jacqueline O’Mara

June 6, 2021
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SIP Review and Opportunity for Improvement

Gaffney Middle School is a Title I school that has a high poverty index of 82.75%. Gaffney

Middle School has several areas in which improvements need to be made in order to help

students reach achievement. The school was evaluated based on students' scores on the state

assessment tests and data was aggregated from surveys that were sent out to parents,

teachers, and students. The information shows that Gaffney Middle School is rank below

average on the state's report card system. Therefore, Gaffney Middle School has analyzed the

data from the State Report Card in order to construct a plan that will target the subgroups that

are struggling, such as the Students in Poverty, Black, LED, Male, and Disabled subgroups. The

School Improvement Plan (SIP) also includes ways to improve relationships between the school

and the parents and student’s homes. The plan mentions the importance of building the

relationships between students' homes and families with the school as well as building

partnerships between the school and community. Provided all changes are made and the

strategies are adhered to, then all Gaffney Middle School’s stakeholders will benefit.

Gaffney Middle School’s SIP Analysis

School Name and District: Schafer Elementary School

Grades Served: Grades 6-8

Vision, Mission, and Goals:

Does the school have a shared vision, mission, and goals? Yes

The Literacy Vision of Gaffney Middle School is to provide leadership to ensure high quality
literacy instruction so that all students develop the 21st century skills needed to become
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college and career ready. Literacy is important to our school because it is the foundation of life-
long learning.

Administrators, teachers, and students throughout the school will successfully use literacy as a
tool for life-long learning. Students will gain knowledge and demonstrate learning in all
disciplines through an emphasis on literacy.

The school’s mission for parent and family involvement is to engage parents regularly in the
student's educational program. The mission is fulfilled by purposeful parent contact. Parent
conference days are scheduled twice a year for all grade levels and are available at other times
as needed.

Are the shared vision, mission, and goals supported by multiple measures of Yes
data?

Do the shared vision, mission, and goals focus on equitable access, YES
opportunities, and outcomes for all students?

Are the shared vision, mission, and goals used to guide and monitor YES
decisions, actions, and outcomes?

Data Analysis:

What assessments are used in this example school? List the assessments.

❖ SC READY ELA
❖ SC READY Math
❖ SC PASS Science
❖ SC PASS Social Studies
❖ South Carolina Department of Education Parent Survey
❖ South Carolina Department of Teacher Survey
❖ South Carolina Department of Education Student Survey
❖ Teacher Created Benchmark
❖ STAR 360 (Reading and Math)

The SC Ready ELA, SC Ready Math, SC PASS Science, and SC PASS Social Studies are

current South Carolina state assessments. Under the federal accountability ESSA, the tests

now are affiliated with ACT/ASPIRE, which are summative assessments that are aligned to the
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college-readiness standards (ACT, 2021). The ACT Readiness scoring indicates “one of four

levels: Exceeding, Ready, Close, or In Need of Support” (ACT, 2021, p.4). However well the

student knows the standards, their score will reflect where they fall within those four levels.

Throughout the improvement plan, other assessments such as Benchmarks and MAP

tests are referenced in different areas of the action plans.

What are the assessment scores, and what do they tell you about this school’s weaknesses?

❖ State Standardized Language Arts Scores

➢ Disabled subgroup: SC Aspire ELA mean composite score was 414.1.
➢ Male subgroup: SC Aspire ELA mean composite score was 419.2.
➢ Black subgroup: SC Aspire ELA mean composite score was 419.3.
➢ Students in Poverty (SIP) subgroup: SC Aspire ELA mean composite score was
419.9.
❖ State Standardized Math Scores
➢ Disabled subgroup: SC Aspire Math mean score was 415.4.
➢ Black subgroup: SC Aspire Math mean score was 418.
➢ Students in Poverty (SIP) subgroup: SC Aspire Math mean score was 418.6.
❖ State Standardized Social Studies Scores
➢ Disabled subgroup: SC Aspire Social Studies mean score was 572.8.
➢ Black subgroup: SC Aspire Social Studies mean score was 587.8.
➢ LEP subgroup: SC Aspire Social Studies mean score was 591.2.
➢ Students in Poverty (SIP) subgroup: SC Aspire Social Studies mean score was
593.3.
❖ State Standardized Science Scores
➢ Disabled subgroup: SC Aspire Science mean score was 554.1.
➢ LEP subgroup: SC Aspire Science mean score was 577.2.
➢ Students in Poverty (SIP) subgroup: SC Aspire Science mean score was 581.8.

The State Standard scores for ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies are broken

down by subgroups that show areas of weaknesses. Both the Disabled and the

Students in Poverty subgroups appear to need improvement in all four subject areas.

The scores for the Black subgroup shows there are weaknesses in ELA, math, and
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social studies. The LED subgroup showed weaknesses in two of the four core areas,

social studies and science. The Male subgroup showed a weakness in ELA only.

Does the SIP clearly identify the areas of weakness reflected in local, district, Yes
state, or national assessments or other data?

Objectives:

Are the objectives stated in the SIP directly related to low achievement? Yes

Provide an objective indicating low achievement.

● Students in the following subgroups continue to meet standard on state standardized

assessments in ELA, Math, Science and Social Studies at a significantly lower rate
than other subgroups: Disabled students, Black students, SIP, and LEP students.
○ Based upon data analysis, we realize that we need to continue our focus on
literacy and numeracy.
○ Based upon data analysis, we need to continue our focus on strengthening
instruction through increased student engagement and differentiation for all
groups.

● Our teachers are continuing to grow professionally and to seek advanced degrees.
Those teachers lacking Highly Qualified status will either obtain it shortly or will
return to a sixth grade teaching assignment for next school year. Administration will
continue to encourage all teachers to seek Highly Qualified status, regardless of their
grade level teaching assignments.
○ Based on data analysis, we realize the need to continue our focus on
ensuring that all students are taught by Highly Qualified teachers.

● As a Title I school, there continues to be a focused effort on strengthening home-

school relations.
○ Based upon data analysis, we realize the need to continue to improve parent,
student, and teacher satisfaction with the Social/Physical Environment,
Home-School Relations, and the Learning Environment.

● Based on analysis of summative and formative assessments our school has

identified specific areas of literacy and content area reading needs by grade level.
These needs are addressed throughout our school reading plan. The plan outlines
ongoing professional development for all levels of instructional staff in order for the
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teachers to master the literacy competencies as outlined in the Read to Succeed

Legislation.

Has the SIP team considered how broad or narrow weaknesses are? Yes

Are the objectives measurable? Yes

Does each area of weakness involve many students or a few?

The areas of weaknesses involve multiple subgroups. The poverty index of Gaffney Middle

school is 82.75%. Therefore, since the Students in Poverty subgroup is a targeted group

showing weakness in all four core areas, then the weakness involves the majority of the

school’s student body.

Key Factors:

What does the school think is causing each weakness?

Gaffney Middle School did not list any contributing factors to the weaknesses. According to

the document, the column of contributing factors is optional.

What factors have contributed to each area of weakness? Of these factors, has the school
prioritized ones that can be influenced or controlled?

Although the school has not listed any contributing factors for the weaknesses present, the

greatest factor is the large portion of the school’s population being identified as low income.

Students who come from poor families have to deal with issues such as coming to school

hungry because their parents don’t have enough money for breakfasts. Children from parents

who have financial struggles lack proper health care screenings for things such as eyes and

teeth. These children of poverty are also more susceptible to being born with drugs in their
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systems (Johnston, 2020). In regards to the weaknesses the scores for the Disabled subgroup,

Black subgroup, LED subgroup, and Male subgroup, may also partially contribute to the cross

sectioning over into the Students in Poverty subgroups. The LED students only demonstrated

weaknesses in social studies and science. This may indicate that these students who are still

mastering the English language are struggling with the academic vocabulary in both of these

core subjects.

Do these key factors indicate what the school thinks has caused or contributed to low student
achievement?

The school focuses on continuing to strengthen instruction through increased student

engagement and differentiation. The school also mentions increasing efforts to strengthen

home-school relations. The school does not address any initiatives that acknowledge poverty

being a contributing cause. The school plan does focus on vocabulary strategies that could be

included to support the LED academic language barrier.

Strategies and Activities of the Action Plan:

Is there a strong relationship among the key factors, strategies, and activities? Yes

Is technology integrated into the strategies and activities? Yes

Are strategies and activities in the action plan clearly focused on what students, Yes
teachers, and parents will do to impact student achievement?

Are the measures of success toward achieving objectives clear? Yes

Have all weaknesses been sufficiently addressed? No

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Would the effect of implementing these strategies and activities most likely Yes
cause the school to attain its achievement goals?

Overall Plan:

How do the shared vision, mission, and goals emphasize the expectation that all students will
meet content and performance standards?

The Literacy Vision mentioned in the Gaffney Middle School’s SIP focused on providing a high

quality literacy instruction that supported the Profile of the SC Graduate, which centers around

21st Century skills. The plan states that teachers will attend professional development that

focuses on common instructional planning and integrating the LFS-EngageED lesson plan

template. Students will focus on vocabulary through an online Vocab-Ahead Word of the Day

every morning during homeroom. Students scoring below proficiency will attend a reading class

during academic enrichment time each day. Elective teachers will pull out students whose

score is below proficiency for a SRA-program. Last of all, in order to support the Literacy

Vision, the school will employ a Reading Interventionist part-time to work with the students

scoring below proficiency. The Action Plan did not address anything about reading and writing

being a part of all core classes. The plan mentions that by all of the school educators and

students using literacy throughout the day, then students will gain knowledge by the

submersion of literacy.

The Vision did not include anything about math but there was a statement in regards to the

mission of the school to engage parents regularly in the child's educational path. The actional

plan did establish a goal to cultivate relationships between school and community and school

and home. The SIP includes that administrators will contact community groups to ss if there is
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any interest in partnering with the school. Parents and other individuals are also able to provide

support if interested.

Does this plan have a chance of successfully improving student achievement?

The Gaffney Middle School Plan does not seem to address the specific needs of individual

groups that were identified in the initial analysis. The approach to increase literacy by pulling

students out of elective courses and academic enrichment will cause the student to resent

being pulled so often. Also, the methods in which they are being used are not necessarily the

most engaging methods to increase students’ literacy levels. The plan did not mention any

specific strategy that is geared to help students overcome their specific barriers.

Teamwork is a major component of school success. Is there evidence of teamwork in the SIP?

The SIP does include a team that includes the school principal, teacher, Parent, Community

Member, Read to Succeed Reading Coach, School Read to Succeed Literacy Leadership

Team, University Partner member, Elective Teacher, School Secretary, a Special Ed teacher,

and five general ed teachers. However, the improvements from the SIP seems to lack evidence

of a team input because of the lack of ELL and the Disabled groups not having specific

strategies to overcome the barriers these children face. For the Black subgroup and the

Students in Poverty subgroup, there was not any mention of breakfasts being provided or any

sort of embracement of cultural diversity.

How well did the school establish a critical relationship among its problem areas or
weaknesses, the presumed causes of these weaknesses, and the plan for improved student
achievement?

I do feel the school completed the SIP enough to get by for the state evaluation, however, I do

not feel the school provided enough ways for there to be equitable opportunities for significant
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student growth. I do not feel that the weaknesses were analyzed enough there for the plan

lacks the potential it could have toi really help to really help the students achieve success.

How is technology integrated into the plan?

● STAR 360 (Reading and Math) testing

● USA Test Prep
● Vocab-Ahead Word a Day
● Professional Development for Teachers in Technology Instruction
● One-to-One initiative for grade 6th, 7th, and 8th

How is technology used to prepare, implement, and collect/analyze data used in the plan?

● The school integrates technology into professional development, curriculum

development, and classroom instruction to improve teaching and learning.
● One-to-One initiative for grades 6th, 7th, and 8th.

Selecting an Academic Improvement Area

The academic improvement target I would choose differently is “we need to continue our

focus on strengthening instruction through increased student engagement and differentiation for

all groups (Gaffney Middle School, 2017). The reason is this objective is too broad and does not

address the targeted subgroups that were identified to be struggling in achieving meeting or

exceeding in the core areas in which they were lacking. The objective also signals that the

school has already been focusing on these things and scores are still lacking. Instead, the

objective needs to expand on the student engagement and differentiation by including specific

ways and why that is included. For example, the improvement target could include the need to

strengthen instruction through the use of formative assessments to increase students

engagement and differentiation as well as guide classroom instruction. This target is purposeful,

measurable, and pertains to meeting the specific needs of each of the targeted subgroups.
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Formative assessment creates equitable opportunities for students of all levels and provides

the necessary guidance to foster a meaningful instruction that is constantly being molded to the

needs of the class. Research also provides evidence that students identified as particular

subgroups that struggle in areas of math and literacy really do benefit from a teacher using

formative assessment to gage students' understanding. One research study, by Same et al,

discusses information derived from a study that consisted of “5,233 15-year-old students (635 of

whom were Black) who participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (Same

et al., 2018 p. 15)” and how the Black students showed a strong positive correlation between

the teacher’s formative assessments and student’s scores on a reading test. “The evidence

from this study was classified as promising because the study was correlational and controlled

for selection bias” (Same et al., 2018 p. 15). Formative assessments offer teachers an

opportunity to understand every student's level of understanding and the ability to address any

misconceptions in real time. Teachers can have misconceptions about formative assessments

too. Based on a conversation with some colleagues, I realized that teachers have differing

opinions of when, how often, and for what purpose a formative should or could be used. This

indicates that professional development on effective formative assessment, especially to

improve classroom instruction for the subgroups identified in the SIP, provides a clear and

distinct initiative that can have a positive impact on students' achievement and growth in

literacy.

Conclusion

Gaffney Middle School, a Title I school, is faced with declining scores in specific subgroups that

encompass the majority of the student body at the school. The Disabled subgroup and the

Students in Poverty subgroup are struggling in all four core areas. The Black subgroup is

struggling in all core areas except science. Although these are not the only subgroups that are

considered not met in the majority of the subject areas, it does indicate a large percentage of
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students at risk of finishing high school or ever being able to attend a higher education. These

scores show that Gaffney Middle School needs to spend the time necessary to disaggregate the

school report card data to find the trends where students are failing to meet the state’s baseline

scores. The SIP Team should take the time to conduct research into vetted and proven

strategies that differ from the previous routines and formats. By failing to accept that changes

needed to be made, the problems will never be sorted, and all of Gaffney Middle School’s

stakeholders will lose out on the possibilities of what could have been.
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References

ACT (Ed.). (2021). ACT Aspire - K12 Education Solutions. ACT.

http://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/act-aspire.html.

ACT Inc. (2021). Understanding Your ACT Aspire Summative Results.

https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/assessment/pdf/ACT_Aspire_-
_Understanding_Your_ACT_Aspire_Summative_Results.pdf.

Gaffney Middle School, School Improvement Plan1–54 (2017). Gaffney, SC; Cherokee County
School District.

Johnston, K. (2020, December 22). How Poverty and Education Are Related. MoneyWise.
https://moneywise.com/borrowing/student-loans/ways-poverty-affects-education.

Regional Educational Laboratory, Same, M. R., Guarino, N. I., Pardo, M., Benson, D., Fagan,
K., & Lindsay, J., Evidence-supported interventions associated with Black students’ educational
outcomes Findings from a systematic review of research1–53 (2018). Chicago, IL; REL
Midwest.