Like to call this meeting to order with our workshop and this beautiful choir and big crowd to celebrate you. We're going to start with the roll call. Missus Davidson? Here. Missus Hill? Here. Mister Forhan. Here. Mister Bragman. Here. Missus Paterson is absent. And now we'd like I'd like a motion for adoption of the agenda. So moved. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Opposed say, no. The motion carries four zero. Now I would like to introduce our wonderful missus Reed who's going to get the program started. Perfect.
Thank you so much president Davidson. It really is a pleasure tonight to see so many standing room only in here. The tigers really show up. I love it. It's always a great way to start our meetings to have so many so many of our students here, to celebrate Los Alamitos Elementary, and I'm gonna turn it over to our distinguished guest this evening, principal of Los Alamitos Elementary, missus Jenny Padilla. Alright. Welcome everybody. I'm gonna start us off with an amazing ambassador and brain buddy, Keegan Farner, who's gonna lead us in the pledge. Everyone, please stand. Right hand over your heart.
Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all. Now we will have missus Lopez and the LAE choir sing the grand old flag. Okay. Just a minute. Missus Lopez, would you come here, please? On behalf of the Board of Education, we know that none of this happens without people like you.
So on on from the board, we've upped our game. We've given the gold, you make a difference this year. Okay. I think she's holding the thing. You are not. Wow. I'm nervous. You're gonna be amazing. So remember, you have your script, and we are here for you. And I'm gonna introduce you every time. Okay? But how many are you gonna be speaking? So I'll always say your name. Okay? Okay. Okay. And you'll I get it. Okay. So for me, that's it for the first one. About that. So I take the reward for it. Mhmm. And I'll be happy to You all were fabulous.
I don't think Taylor Swift could have done a better job. You were fantastic. Can you give yourselves a hand? Yeah. Missus Padilla? Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Board president, Marlys Davidson, distinguished board, doctor Pulver, and executive cabinet. I am so honored to present our LAE board re board report. I am joined by two amazing fifth grade ambassadors, Lily and Abigail, who'll help me present tonight. So as you all know, LAE is the place to? Right? Okay. I was worried that wasn't gonna work, but it worked. And it truly is. This is my third year, and it really is amazing.
You'll see here pictured our staff. Everything I'm gonna share this evening is in large part due to them. I'm very thankful for all of them that are here. Some of them couldn't join us, but they are really a big reason for all the amazing things I'm gonna share today. We also have amazing tigers as you saw with our choir and the students with me, so it's really important that we celebrate our amazing tigers. We have individual and group awards that we give such as a for the day or you'll see our students enjoying popsicles with the principal. But you don't wanna hear from me, I wanna have Lily share some awards that are meaningful to her.
Hi. My name is Lily. There are many different awards that can be won at LAE. One of my favorite awards that are handed out are work cards. Work cards are little slips of paper that are awarded when someone does a good deed or they're being helpful. These work cards stand for responsible, observant, takes action, and respectful. When a student receives the work card from their teacher or staff at the school, they can put it in the box at the office, and every week, miss Padilla selects a work hard winner to receive a prize. Next, principal's award. Principal's award is one of the best awards an LAE student can receive.
Only a few kids per class receive it each semester. Students with top grade and overall good behavior all semester long may receive this award along with the spear stick and recognition of the flag ceremony. Okay. Alright. Good job. So our theme this year is collaborate to elevate, and our goal is aligned with the district essential question. How do we know where our students are? So our goal is to work together and see where our students are at and plan responsive next steps using informal assessment. So you'll see pictured here what you would see if you walked into an LAE
classroom any day. You'll see hundreds charts, you'll see manipulatives, you'll see, all those things so the teacher can see live in the moment where their students are at and make any adjustments that they need. You'll also see we have ways for students to reflect where they're at, when they turn something in they can show where they feel that they are so teachers can check-in if they need to with them. Also, we have multimodal communicators, so you'll see it doesn't matter how our students communicate, you can show your knowledge of phonics with an AAC device bottom left. And it's also important that we have active and engaging classrooms, and our staff really
knows how to bring teaching to life. You'll see here pictured our kindergarten alphabet parade, They were so hard learning their letters and sounds, and they got to show it. They were so excited. Our fourth grade teachers put on a really great California history day, so it could be an interactive experience. They learned how to wash clothes with a washboard. That was so amazing. And we have just a robust program with, you could see, our music program, our art program, and makerspace. So I'm gonna have Abigail talk a little bit about our makerspace program. Hello. My name is Abigail. Makerspace is very important to LE students.
In makerspace, we do a lot of fun things, make amazing projects, and learn new skills we can use anywhere. One skill I have learned is sewing, and we were taught to do different stitches and make mini pillows. After learning to sew in makerspace, it has inspired me to take a sewing class. Today, sewing is my favorite thing to do for fun, and I continue to make new projects. I'm grateful for makerspace because it allows us to be creative and show our talents. Here's one of my pillows that inspired me to sew more. Alright, so you'll see a graph of our CAASPP testing data. It's broken down by grade level and ELA math as compared to the state averages.
So you'll see our percentage of meeting in a seating is far above the state average. But at LAE, we're always looking for ways to support our students that are not there yet. We have a multi tiered systems of support team, MTSS, that's comprised of myself, school psychologist, wellness counselor, and our lead lab teacher. We're always looking for ways to support students individually through our SST process and additionally, if they're not making progress in our learning lab. We also look for systemic ways to respond. Currently, we have an intervention for our fourth grade students. That's an area a grade level that we're targeting.
We have an upper grade intervention teacher who's working with them on a comprehension intervention called Read Naturally, and she also pushes into the classroom to provide math support. So we really wanna ensure that we are doing more to support the students that are not there yet. It's also important that we have connected classrooms and wellness is very important. When you walk into our classrooms at LAE, you will see elements of RULER. You'll find in every classroom a charter so that students can show how they wanna feel whether in the class, and also mood meters so they could label their feelings. We also have our well space open five days a week, and I'm gonna let
Lily talk to you about wellness. The wellness space is a great place to regulate and stay calm. By playing with fidget toys, you're going to color on the color and roll. Well, on hot or cold days, it's a fun place to have fun with friends. You can play games and feel relaxed. Whenever you go to the wellness space, miss Eamon and miss Teresa are the kindest people I've ever met. They are so welcoming to everyone. I think every school should have this program, since everyone loves this program. Whenever you go in, it makes you feel so positive about yourself. And here's a fidget toy that I brought from the wellness space. At LAE, we have a very multicultural campus and we wanna value the cultures that
we have. You'll see pictures of what we recently did with Hispanic heritage month. We had recess and lunch activities. We had an assembly. And we also inspire, culture through things that we do school wide. This is our second year doing one school, one book. So I'm gonna have Abigail share a little bit more about that. One School, One Book is one of my favorite things at LAE. Last year, we read The World's According to Humphrey, and it was a very fun book to read. One school and book brings our school together by creating a topic that all students have in common and can talk about with each other. After reading the book, I wanted to pay hamsters so bad, I made a PowerPoint
of how I would take care of the hamster and show it to my parents. Shortly after, I was in the car going to PetSmart where I found my perfect Humphrey. He is so sweet and he can run really fast around the house. He eats and sleeps a lot, but he's very fun to play with. This year, we read Life According to Og the Frog, which was a very fun story, but I will not be getting a pet frog. And I just wanna personally apologize to all the parents that were asked for frogs, hamsters, and skunks. Hopefully you didn't get asked for skunks because that was last year too. Student connections are very important. I know what state of the district looks at, and we wanna make sure our students are connected from day one.
So we have the second year of our TKK signing day. Our students and families come before school starts to sign and commit to be an LA e Tiger for six or seven years. We also have fun family nights like camp LAE, and I'm really excited about something new that we're doing this year with a LAFE grant. It's called positive play and conflict, resolution through basketball. So we saw that our students were getting referrals on the yard during ball games because they just had problems with conflict if the rules didn't go their way. So what better way to do it than with our two amazing IAs, John and
Ariel, who are our coaches now, and are gonna work with the students every Wednesday to teach those conflict resolution skills through basketball. So we're really excited about that this year. And now I'm gonna turn it over to Lily to talk about our ambassador program. I'm gonna talk about LA's E's ambassador program. Ambassadors is a program for fifth grade students who are interested in the leadership opportunities. My experience with ambassadors has been amazing. I love helping people in all different ways, including making fun concept for our weekly video on all things exciting LAE Tiger Tales. All the ambassadors love helping out at our weekly flag ceremony.
The ambassadors help show school spirit and LAE pride. I love how we make projects for ambassadors, like making posters for families, Kate and I, helping people in the upcoming Veterans Day Assembly. One of my favorite memories so far as an ambassador is when I go to interview people about why they're thankful for our custodians. Me and all the ambassadors are gonna con continue making LE the place to be. Hopefully, you guys have all seen our major upgrade. We now have a digital marquee. Thank you to our Friends of group. You'll see on the left our old one, and it's not bad, but you can
see our digital marquee allows you to scroll through so many more announcements. And I think the best news, I see mister Chu. Mister Chu doesn't have to go on a ladder anymore, which is, like, very safe. You're welcome, Elvia. Up and out with, safety. And then parents. I see a lot of parents in the audience and the parents are the heart of LAE. We're really appreciative for all they do. Be it fundraising, we just finished our biggest fundraiser of the year and we exceeded our goal again of $80,000. So yay tigers. And where I have to brag about our families is they do it all themselves. We don't contract with any companies.
Everything you see is the blood, sweat, and tears, and hours of our families. They do all the promotion, all the prizes. They set up the course. They even do the fun double dare obstacle course. I've been slimed three years in a row now, which never gets old. And I know our top six students really get excited, and our students love to watch that. They put on really great events. They support with things like walk to school, and I'm just always impressed how they want to make our events more inclusive. We have our calm spaces at all our events because we wanna make sure all families feel included and have access to our events.
Our core values are inclusivity and empowerment. This is our third year having the BRAIN program, which stands for building respect for autism inclusiveness now. We have 24 big buddies and 24 little buddies that work together, and I'm gonna turn it over to Abigail to share more about our brain program. I'll be talking about the brain buddies program and the impact it has made on me. Last year, I had a friend in the program, and I couldn't wait to be in fifth grade to sign up. She told me all about it and all the fun stuff she was doing with her buddy. And I saw her buddy playing with her, and I knew I wanted to be in the program. When I got into the program, I was really happy, and my friends also got
in with me. I mainly found a friend and her name is Leanne. We got to know each other, we learn each other's names. I see her at least three or more times a week and when I see her, it makes me really happy. Working with doctor Vu has taught me skills to better interact with Leanne. I know how she communicates, her likes and her dislikes, and how to best support her. I'm grateful that LAE offers the BRAIN program because students can learn about inclusion and to make long life friendships. And my buddy Leanne is here. Yay. That's how she she loves us. Yay. Also important is school communication. We have multiple ways to communicate with our families.
Hopefully, you all see our Sunday newsletters. Our parents are really good at making digital flyers. Instagram, if you haven't joined, shameless plug, we're trying to hit the thousand followers. Follow LAE Tigers. You could pull out your phones now. Maybe we'll hit it tonight. We have our video that we show every week, Tiger Tales. Our students see it on Monday. It highlights all the amazing events that are happening at our school, and we share it out with families that Sunday in the newsletter. We had to change it up a little bit and have hamster tails and frog tails in line with our one school, one book, so that was really fun. And I think my most favorite way to communicate with families is coffee with the
principal. I enjoy getting together, talking about topics like ruler. Recently, we had a meeting about parking. So even though LAE is the place to be, drop off and pickup really hadn't been. So we're working on that. And one thing that came out of it was a lot of planning, and I'm really thankful for our PTA and Friends of group for supporting. You'll see a picture of a sign that was made that came straight out of our planning meeting. So it's nice to see the time we spent put into action and seeing a difference in parking, you know, and pick up and drop off. So I have had to learn to make a lot of videos, and I think
our community knows. I think I've gone a little extra with the videos lately. I've learned to make movie trailers, tiger tails. So what I have for you to finish off is just a movie trailer. If there was a movie trailer about LA E being to place to be, this is it. Alright. And hopefully, I summarize why LAE is the place to be. Thank you so much, everyone. On behalf of the board of education, where's Keegan? He didn't leave with that bow tie. Oh there he is right there. Best bow tie we've ever seen at a board meeting. Okay? You get our infamous You are awesome for leading us in the flag salute.
Great job. Alright, girls. Come on. You are awesome. On behalf of the board, you get the you are awesome one as well. This one's a little tangled, but Papa will get it fixed up. There you go. Thank you very much for a wonderful job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Thank you. That was absolutely spectacular. Lily, Abigail, Keegan, you did a wonderful job, and the choir was fantastic. LAE is the place to be. Every time we walk on your campus, we such we see such great instruction and learning. And then there's so much going on, but it's all done with love.
And I love the collaborate to elevate because when you go through LAE, you see tremendous amount of teachers teaming, faculty teaming to build a stronger academic core, but to also make sure that every single child is protected, loved, and cared about. So we couldn't be more proud than to have LAE in the district, and you did a wonderful job, missus Padilla. Thank you, miss Padilla. It it is really fun. I I have to do this just because this is I think this is the largest elementary school group I can remember in my almost year being here, but I
have to do it once. LAE is the place to Be. I feel like the energy, like, needed to be higher. I still don't know if I got there, but we'll try again maybe before we're done. I so appreciate the way you shared. The school is such a fun, welcoming, safe place. And I know when you walk on the campus, I I even drop my daughter from the call off every day, and you get to see the activity even as you're driving by. Right? And so that new board welcomes us. You see kids on campus welcoming people. It just feels like a place you truly do wanna be. And I I appreciate how you built that culture on campus, and that's with all
of you parents and all of you students and the volunteers and the staff. So I appreciate that. I also just wanna point out again. I I know I remember visiting last year in the one school, one book was so it was like go time on that. And I love hearing that you're continuing that initiative and hearing how students are going to share in that experience in the book. I hopefully, there's not too many frogs being in demand for the parents. I would not want a frog in my house. But I love that you're doing that, and I hope to continue to see that grow. Actually, really, this is where we talk about modeling things across our district, that that is something that to see more and more across our district and to be replicated is is it's a wonderful way to unify a campus.
So thank you for all you're doing. Thank you, parents. Really, everyone that's here, this is crazy to see this room in Overflow. We apologize there's not no seats at the same moment. I'm actually kind of excited there aren't because that shows a level of support you all provide to your children, to your students, and your community. So thank you. Missus Yells? Missus Padilla, an amazing job, and I really appreciate your leadership at LAE and, the way you do it with so so much joy, but also focus. You know what we want from our students. You know what our students are capable of, and, you find great ways to be
able to help them to get there. And I do have to just do really two really quick shout outs. One, there's a young man down here in the choir, and I noticed that when we said the pledge of allegiance, he immediately took off his hat. And I just really appreciate that. Nice job, young man. And then also, I loved all ladies, I loved all your visuals. Oh my goodness. What a great way to engage us in a presentation. So good job. Thank you very much. I agree totally with everything that was said, and I am so glad that mister
Chu is not on that ladder every Monday morning changing that board. So good job friends of Losal. Doctor Pulver? Boy, what a spectacular, presentation. It's always an honor to be able to see our schools be highlighted and to celebrate. It is an opportunity for us to really see. This is ONE OF THE THINGS I ALWAYS SAY IS THAT PEOPLE ARE THE HALLMARK OF THIS DISTRICT AND THIS IS IT COMPLETELY PERSONIFIED HERE IN THIS ROOM. WHEN WE SEE OUR STUDENTS, OUR AMAZING STAFF AND OUR FAMILIES COMING TOGETHER, TO Really
RALLY BEHIND OUR YOUTH. I OFTEN SAY THAT'S WHAT THAT'S OUR SECRET sauce is how many individuals come together to support our kids. You know, looking at your, presentation and seeing the number of staff, that was just overwhelming to me to see those that many adults who have their arms, ready to stretch out to support all of our students. And and that's in addition to the amazing support of our parents, the PTA, the friends of so many exciting things to be able to see from a from a truly a community school. And I think that's what you really see.
You see the fabric, you see the vitality, of everything that's going on, at LAE from academics to your multi tiered systems of of support to our ambassadors to our BRAIN program as well. It was great to see that, continuing on to our cultural celebrations, our RULER. But who knew? We we you know, I don't know. Do those fourth graders need any, more practice of washing clothes because we might be able to bring some down. And what a great skill to learn how to sew.
I'm a 52 year old man and I do not know how to sew a button, so I wish I was back at elementary school to learn how to sew. So great job. They're just life skills, passion skills, human skills that are, continuing to be developed and cultivated by these amazing students in this community. Thank you so much, Mrs. Padilla. Great to see. I know this has been special for Mrs. Nadia Williams back there as well. She's always an LAE Tiger as well. So, so happy to see everyone here. I do also have to say that I really appreciate that this is probably the
only time that doctor Paul Verwer wear a blue and gold tie. So I approve it. Because he doesn't wear Bruin colors very often. I love it. Great job. Thank you. That's a great call. Missus Padilla, you have a very special presentation. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Alright. So this was gonna be a surprise, and we tried by getting her here for her granddaughter, but it didn't work out. So it's not a surprise anymore. So I'm gonna call her up. I wanna bring up Claudia Chadick. She's very humble, so I know this is gonna be very hard for her. But I think it's very important that I speak her praises.
So I just want you to know that she goes above and beyond for our school and community even when managing so much in her own life. She says that working at LAE brings her joy, and you can see her dedication firsthand. Her arms in a sling. Yet, this morning, she was there for our bookshelving training. Right? She's not gonna shelve books till she's better, but she wanted to make sure that she was there. And as soon as she's fully recovered, she plans to help us every week. She's also a regular helper in our maker space, supporting students and teachers with her time, energy, and expertise. And I feel that her generosity extends beyond herself.
Her daughter and grandchildren are kind, caring leaders and a true reflection of the value she models every day. I feel like Claudia is the matriarch of an amazing family, and her commitment to our school and students is unmatched. Claudia, tonight we honor you. Thank you for all you do to make LAE brighter, kinder, and more joyful for every single student and staff member. You truly are our hero of the heart. Sure. If I could be. First of all, I wanna apologize for arriving late because I had a physical therapy evaluation. So I apologize for that.
That's why we ruined the surprise. I'm here. I did not know and, yes, my daughter came and confessed this morning and said she lied to me and I said, what? So, but no, it has been an honor truly to, be a part of your family's children. They are all amazing, hardworking. They always bring a smile to my to my life, at this present time. So I truly enjoy them. They're they're, amazing, all of them. So I thank you very much to the board and to miss Padilla for for
this great honor. I truly did not expect it, and I know there are so many other parents that do the same. So thank you very much. Claudia guess what? You get a medal. But now that we see that you are a little bit lamed up there. This you wear this all the time and it'll cure that faster than you know okay? But yours is from the board of education and it says you make a difference and indeed you make a difference. Claudia Claudia, the grandmas on the board, thank you for standing strong for us and
continuing continuing to contribute. Sorry. Continuing to contribute to the schools because grandmas and grandpas can give so much and and such a great resource and and with of wisdom and love and passion. We thank you. Thank you. And you are so deserving, and we are so honored to have you part of our family. Thank you. Now we're going to Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Doctor. Pulver. Doctor. I just want to say once again, thank you, Claudia. You are the best gift. I often say this. The best gift we can give one another is the gift of ourselves, the gift
of our time, and the gift of our presence. And clearly, you, do that, overflowing, to to have this be able to the LAE only gets to recognize one individual all year long as their official hero of the heart. And so thank you for all that you do. You give so selfishly of your heart. The other thing with this award that will come, you'll be able to try on a special jacket. Only those who have earned the hero of the heart, from their school will be able to get it and we'll personalize that for you. So it's one you can proudly wear, wherever you go.
Thank you for, so much that you give. It really does make a difference. And one of the themes that we have this year, that we've really been talking about is how, we've been changed for good. Los Al Unified has been changed for good. Our students have been changed for good. And clearly how we've been changed for good is by acts of service and love that you continue to give as well. So thank you for that. So now we're going to take a brief recess to take pictures. So Claudia, we wanna get pictures of you and your family. The staff, LAE staff. So if everybody will And our students that, that spoke.
So Lily, Abigail, and Keegan. And I think we already took the choir. So let's go ahead and get all LAE staff to come on up here. Like to welcome you back after a short recess for pictures. And now we are going into our workshop for us on assessment Oh, go ahead. With missus Reid. We're looking forward to this. Thank you. Thank you so much, president Davidson. I've been looking forward to this too. So we're in the same place. So tonight we're going to be doing part two of a series that really focuses on assessment as an instructional tool.
And so the focus tonight will really be on collaboration and data analysis and how our educators use data to inform their practices and and leverage student outcomes. And so I think it was about a month ago I was here and, delivered part one, beginning of the year standardized assessments. And at that point, we really had four objectives for this two part series. So last time we covered understanding the purpose of our assessments, as well as learning about our key beginning of the assessments. And so tonight, we'll be shifting our focus to look at how data informs instruction, as well as how we connect data and its outcomes to improve student outcomes.
And so just as a review of what we overviewed together about a month ago, we really looked at the purpose of assessments. So we reinforce that assess assessments really are instructional tools and are the first step in best first instruction. They're not just accountability measures. In fact, tonight, what we're gonna be talking about is if we use them solely as accountability measures, we really have wasted our instructional time. And so the focus of assessment really is what we do with the information that we procure through the time that we give up in our classrooms. We also explained how our standardized and local assessments complement each other.
So this year, as a reminder, we're in our first year of new literacy assessments that fall under senate bill one fourteen known as the California dyslexia mandate. And so we talked about AMIRA, EZ CBM, quick phonics survey, as well as our map data, about a month ago. In addition, we talked about what was next, really highlighting our district collaboration, the launch of our district wide grade level collaboration days that now have taken place. And so as we enter into part two using data to inform instructional practices, we're really shifting from understanding our assessment tools to exploring how teachers use the data gathered
from these assessments to inform and improve student outcomes across the district. And so we have now facilitated six separate collaboration days with each of our grade level teams, as well as with our middle school six eight English, six eight math, and our high school grade nine and ten teams. Our English teams as well as some course specific mathematics teams at the high school, which included intro to algebra, algebra, and geometry. And so, really, we're investing in time and structures that allow teachers to really move beyond testing and to take actionable step towards instructional planning.
And so the idea is that, we're setting our teams up at the school site levels to be able to interpret data and use that data ongoingly through the school year in a system that really does improve student outcomes and really makes best first instruction the most effective, part of the school day as possible. And so, our assessment days really focused on the use of our NW map assessments. And so, we give those in grades two to 10. And as a reminder, it's an adaptive online assessment where it really does take students
to a fall out point. As questions get more difficult, students either get them right and they continue to increase in rigor, or as they get them wrong, it really levels out to find exactly where their instructional level is both in mathematics and English language arts. So we are giving that three times a year, and our mid our beginning of the year assessment cycle ended in September. And so we'll be using, this data not only in our beginning of the year, but middle of the year and end of the year sessions to help look at and track growth over time for our students.
That's really is the big picture for us here at the district level is to make sure all students really are showing growth throughout this course of a school year. And so just as a reminder, the metric that we use from map is called a RIT score or a ROUSH unit, and it's a stable score used by map growth. I like to think of it like a location on a learning ladder. The scale is continuous. It's really not tied to a grade level. A rate score of two ten means the same thing in third grade as it means in seventh grade. It's tied to skills, and deficits or successes of where a student is at when
we attach that rate score to grade level content standards. And so the range from kindergarten to twelfth grade really runs from a hundred and two three fifty. So although we only give this assessment second through tenth, this assessment is used nationwide in multiple places beginning at kindergarten and through twelfth grade. And so, we were really specific on our outcomes for our professional learning days as you can imagine. We spend a significant amount of funding and a significant amount of teacher time to have all of our teachers meet here at the district office and spend a full
school day together. So I do wanna give, a lot of praise to my counterparts in my office, our director of assess our director of education services, Melissa Davis, as well as our director or sorry, coordinator of educational technology, mister Dan Bennett, who co facilitated different components of each of these days with our teams. And so we really had four main outcomes we're hoping for teachers when they would leave our day, that they would identify class and individual student needs by instructional area, that they would redesign whole class instruction and draft small group plans for the next
six to eight weeks, and they would align their plans to their current unit pacing guides when we looked at what was upcoming next in their in their teaching cycle from September until the December. And that grade level teams or course alike content teams would set two to three grade level instructional priorities that we would monitor through the course of this year and then recheck in at with our middle of the year assessment. And so part of the day really started by And so part of the day really started by establishing norms within our teaching community. And I think it's really important to to acknowledge with teachers who spend such amazing
time with our kids and give a 110% of themselves that when we're talking about the data, sometimes they can feel personal. And so, we did spend a significant part of the morning really talking about what this work would look like so that we continue to reinvest in a culture that puts student outcomes first and where we acknowledge and focus on students and not adults, and we use data as evidence of what we need to do and not what we haven't done. And so each of our teams that came through, we did spend the morning talking about staying action oriented, really collaborating and not comparing, celebrating strengths as well as needs
within our data, looking for patterns before solutions, and then also focusing on assumption of positive intent. So part of data is knowing that it's going to lead you to ask more questions. Right? It's not always about finding the answer. It's about asking the right questions. And so we always have to come in with the mindset that everyone has a positive intent when they're asking questions. So it's really about that seeking to understand. Missus Rick Yes. What can you explain because I I didn't understand. Mhmm. More what is focused on students not on adults?
It's that the data is the data and it's not the data because of an the way an adult interact with the student. So it's not a direct measure of your teaching ability. Right? We're focusing on students. This is where students are at currently as learners and our goal today is to come together and ask questions of things that we can change and opportunities we can create to move students forward. It's not looking at data and saying teacher a isn't as good as teacher b because their data is lower or not as robust. Great. Not personalizing it. Not personalizing it. Thank you very much. Absolutely.
And I think that's easy for the education services team to do because we don't have intimate relationships, one on one relationships with these students. For us, we're looking at 3,000 data points. It's very easy to get caught up in the numbers and making assumptions about things that need to happen. When a teacher comes into the room, you know, they know those 34 students individually. They have hopes for them. They know how hard they work. And so, I think it's about resetting the conversation. So that we're all really assuming positive intent as we do this work together. Mhmm. And so, when we look at MAP, it was really important to review and overview
some of the reports that the system can give you that are really kind of the pieces to leverage as a teacher. So when I first started teaching, it was the infancy of educational technology and so we did a lot of data by hand. And so the analysis was limited. Now, the analysis is very robust and so it's actually more overwhelming to determine which analysis, which report, which synthesis of information is actually going to leverage the highest student outcomes. And so we really focused on looking in four areas or four reports, with InsideMaps
during our set of collaboration days. We started with the class profile which really overviews a a teacher's classroom. It groups students by their rate score, and it uses instructional areas to provide specific groupings. You're actually able to drill down to a standards level where it will group students by that standard that are ready to be introduced or developed in that area. Really making the information come to life in terms of an elementary teacher seeing where their small group instruction could lie. Similarly, for middle school or high school, making it relevant period by period of where
a focus may have to change based on student information. We also looked at achievement status and, summary quadrant where it looks at learners in really four areas. Low achieving low growth, low achieving high growth, high achieving low growth, and high achieving high growth. What's really interesting about our district is we tend to lay very heavy in the quadrant of high achieving low growth. And so, there's a lot of questions to ask why when we see high achievers that maybe aren't growing at the rate of other students in in that same quadrant.
And so, it really looks at your class performance as an overview as well as group students by achievement and growth, and then it informs student supports. It's a really great tool for a teacher who's going to be setting up a pair share or shutting up partner work where you really wanna make sure you're flipping between like minded peers having an opportunity to engage as well as peers with countering learn contradicting learning styles or abilities have an opportunity to interact and have time in the instructional space together.
So it gives a lot of good information about student abilities as well as how they're growing as a student at that time. Yes, missus Davidson. So going back to this grouping, I can because I'm back where you were at where we were doing it all ourselves. So the the program itself takes the data and if I'm walking in as the teacher this has program is already grouped to my kids by where they are on the ladder to so that I can have them working together on specific skills.
Is that what you're saying? I I flipped you just a couple slides forward to kind of illustrate. So this is Classroom, data review that a teacher would get. So when they open up in the program, they have this for both reading and mathematics. And if you look over to the right, missus Davidson, you're going to see this what almost appears to be like a bell bell shaped curve. So kudos to the principal and team who put this classroom together. But those are students grouped and I can't my my, vision is now not great. I can't tell if this is reading or math report I put up there. However, those students right there, it's math, are grouped by their writ band.
So each of those segments, those stacks of kids, missus Davidson, tell you those students are ready to learn at the same level. And if I toggle between standards or between reading ELA, it'll regroup the students for me. So I automatically have a look at where kids are at. I could easily see as a classroom teacher here, I could have four separate learning groups when it comes to mathematics and differentiate, specifically. I can go into that rip band in my learning continuum and then sort by standard to see exactly what students are ready to be introduced to, develop, and reinforced.
So it gives us a lot of that information. Probably, you and I were trying to solve by multiple choice tests and and doing hash marks and using index cards to put across my table to try to determine the best way to group my students and provide, lesson planning. Mhmm. An Andrea? Yes. I'm with Marlys long ago. Is there any conversation going on now if you looked at this chart and a colleague looked at theirs that they might regroup during that instructional period and pull the two groups together in one class and two groups in another?
Absolutely. And we'll talk a little bit about the collaboration day in a couple slides and some of the conversations that came about. So this actually makes that type of work much simpler. And it also makes it less biased. And so when we talk about the value of a classroom teacher, the value is their connection. We talk about it all the time. But sometimes that connection can also sometimes get in the way of seeing a need of a student. Right? Because students that work really hard, even though they're struggling, sometimes we air on the side of of of of maybe not wanting to give them exactly what they need
when this can make it very direct. You're still gonna use your conscious as a teacher to make best choices for kiddos, but being able to see black and white exactly where kids are using data. So I'm gonna take myself back. So we also looked at a student profile. So much like that classroom profile I just highlighted, there is a two to three page student profile that really narrows down the overview of a student's performance and instructional areas of strengths and needs. It also provides proficiency projections and raw data like Alexa level for reading.
It also provides a cast projection which we'll talk about in a couple of slides. And as a student takes the map assessment more times, that data becomes more robust because if you recall, the map, assessment gives us an achievement level as well as a projected growth percentile. And so looking at the rate by which a student's growth is, matriculating is also part of that data that you can see. We looked at the learning continuum. So you wanna think of that as like, an open continuum of standards that are
designed in rip bands. So that if I'm working with the student in that column of rip band we looked at, I can go into my learning continuum, look at that rip band, and I can scroll down to the standards that are ready to be introduced to a student that's at that at that learning point. And so that learning continuum really does reference rip bands and then skills and standards. You can actually toggle on the computer if you want it to show it in skills. So I'm gonna maybe do some strategy groups in reading where it's very specific like students are working on rhyming. They're being able to identify an an author's voice versus the standard where it says
common core state standard 2.1. And so it's great information for a teacher to use both ways. Both to make sure they're teaching the standards but also to quickly look at what's the skill that I'm gonna be teaching here. And so the learning continuum really is a great tool to use on planning small groups and targeted lessons, and that's where mister Forhan, I think it becomes more powerful for teachers on a grade level team to be able to see students across the grade level and those rip bands to look to see if they wanted to use an MTSS model perhaps for a portion of their day to level students and really
be able to target instruction. More specifically across three classrooms than just across one. And so, as you can imagine, there are numerous reports. And so, we've also been, generating some resources and education services to support teachers. And so this is just an example of that. This is an NWE map growth report cheat sheet, and this is just the first half of that, where we've taken the report name in the left hand column, what it shows to remind teachers like this is what you'll get, and then the best use case. This is the best report to go to if you wanna, determine small group learning
planning. If you wanna use something for a parent conference or an IEP. If you're building groups for engagement or growth strategies or student goal setting, this is a great report to go to. So that teachers can become familiar with you these using these resources. I think we see our job in education services as how can we maximize the time more efficiently and effectively when teachers sit down to do collaborative planning. Because what we don't want when teachers have an hour together to plan is that they spend forty minutes trying to figure out where the information is that they wanna
use for their planning time. So we're doing everything we can to support that effectiveness of the time that teachers have together. And so, as I shared earlier, this is just an opening view of what a teacher would see when they open up, their map portal. That eighty two percent is showing the teacher that eighty two percent of their students have been tested at this point. Across where we see those stacked up student names that we've blurred out, those are students that are grouped by their writ band, which means they're ready for the same instruction in those bands. And then what the teachers would see below is a listing of all of their
students in their class from high to low. They can toggle that from low to high. It also shows their the percentage of rapid guessing a student may have done as well as the test time of that student because obviously with that administration, if you're seeing a data point that doesn't make sense for a kiddo that you have information on that you've been teaching for last month, you thought it'd be much higher and then you see they're at 25% rapid guessing, that's a great opportunity for a teacher to have conversations with students about test taking strategies and not rushing through and making
best choices. Something that's great about map is it also has this feature that we have turned on where if a student is rapid guessing, a prompt will come up during the test and it will have the teacher come over to clear it so the teacher can in that moment have a conversation, about rapid guessing as well as a slug that can come up if a student's just perpetuating on a problem gives us that opportunity to talk about, you know if you don't know the answer what what are the strategies in your toolbox? Can you eliminate one? Does one not make sense at all?
Can you get it down to two and then make an educated guess? Because those are lifelong test taking strategies that we're able to provide support for, when this is live in action in the classroom. And so the teachers dashboard at their desk will show what's happening during the testing, administration as well. Can I just ask you, what was you said rapid response or rapid guessing? What was the other one? Slug. A slug comes up on the screen. Oh, okay. Let the student know that they're they're taking much longer than needed for for for
a particular question. Okay. That that's great. I like that. Because you know sometimes you can have a little one that just kinda sits there then is not quite sure. So this helps us keep that test moving and it's okay. Part of part of the mantra of this, right, is that if when it's adaptive, it's okay. We're just looking to see what you know. So if you've really read it over twice and you you you don't think you have a great guess, you know, you're gonna pick one and move on. Part of this is also getting through the test. And so, our our day of collaboration and data analysis, we really did run a step by step process.
So we brought all of our teams through the same process, so that we really are providing a schema and a foundational support system. So if a teacher leaves from fifth grade to third grade next year, we're using that same process by which a team would come together. It's really about a class level review, so really identifying strong and weak domains. We went through an activity called my class story, where we gave teachers time to look at their class level reports, and then ask them like a story to pick out three things, a beginning, middle, and end of just notices from their data that
they can share out loud, and we provided some sentence stems to get them started. The idea is we remember things that are in a story format. So as we're talking as a team, if I can share with you in a story, three things about my data, it helps us all understand, right, where our kids are at and helps us support each other with resources and tools. So they were using their data Yes. Not just oh, their own classroom data. So when they, came to the training, we had a personalized binder for every teacher. And inside the binder, we had printed for them every single student profile report, all
of their classroom level reports as well as a copy of every family report that they could use, during their upcoming parent teacher conferences. So it was all ready for them and color coded in a binder. So they were using their own data throughout the day and really able to be strategic about things happening in their classroom sitting with their grade level teams. That is phenomenal. Yeah. That is phenomenal. Yeah. So big shout out to Jenny Wampler. That is Melissa's assistant. I'm gonna call her like the binder queen because she really led the charge on
making sure we had accurate information for all those teachers second to tenth grade who came. That's crazy. Yeah. Crazy. Mhmm. But I think it it says a lot and it says what we care about and we prioritize and having tools and resources that look good, that are ready and available for teachers, that it's a professional and then this is the expectation of being, you you know, a professional educators that we're going to spend time looking at data and we're gonna have it ready for you because we do value your time. So I think it's it's a really integral part even though it seems No. And and that it's not theoretical.
I mean, I thought you were teaching this theoretically. Yeah. But to actually be working in those workshops with their own data Yeah. That that's just Yeah. Phenomenal. We were really nervous to to be honest as we started this because the window closed on a Friday for students to complete the assessment and we had our first day today on Thursday. So to be able to turn over the resources and be prepared, I know I went to doctor Polvor a couple times really. Not quite sure if we were going down the right path, but I feel very
great about the work that happened. Yeah. We got to action. I think that was really you know, we've been talking a lot this school year about motion and action. So just making that decision to move forward. So after we looked at class level review of information, we moved to small group planning. So really using that learning continuum to group students by skill and readiness with those grade level teams. And that led to grade level collaboration. Really identifying those common patterns across classrooms and prioritizing those key focus areas. And so, there were commonalities, like for fifth grade example across all school sites, and
then there might be a school site that that wasn't the commonality. And so, whether it was informational text comprehension or numbers and operations, teams identified two or three instructional areas that they were gonna be specific about targeting and then relooking at when we came back middle of the year. And so it really was about that instruction integration, connecting the identified skills to upcoming unit pacing. So if we're going to, for example, be focusing on literary text analysis and we're starting a novel next week, what can we purposely now change about the way we're
teaching this novel to focus in on main idea and details? And so, one fifth grade team shared that they were going to implement stop and jot. They hadn't used that in a couple of years, but stop and jots were going to be specifically focused on main idea and details. And so, they are going to use some exit tickets and then check-in midway through the book with a, a formative assessment to see is what we're doing changing. And then obviously, the big test will be when we come back in December and do our middle of the assessment. We have our January day to day is already on the on the calendar to
go through this process again with our teams and really check back on those instructional focus areas that each of the teams chose. And so this is an example. We created this, action plan template that we gave to teams when they chose their focus areas. And so you can see, this team chose a focus area of informational text, and the evidence from their map data was that fifty five percent of students below grade level in written informational text, it was a weakness in main idea in details. And so what was going to be their instructional strategies and approaches, whole class direct
instruction, they were going to move to a shared reading of their Martin Luther King, unit that's module eight in Hooten Mifflin Harcourt. They were going to do guided reading with informational text using their social studies readers on westward expansion, and they were going to be focusing on using their thinking map, their graphic organizer for main idea really tree map and flow map, so that they're really focusing across content areas and informational text at the same time. Their plan support structures was going to be a b and a a, so some
like minded and not like minded peer grouping support time structures in the classroom for direct instruction as well as flexible grouping two times a week with their guided reading groups, and then their monitoring plan, so their how and when They were going to be creating some common informative, checks, some exit slip quizzes, and some short answer journal responses directly related to main ideas and details and informational text. Their PLC check-in was gonna be in four weeks, the October, and then they're gonna revisit in their winter map analysis in January as well.
So we walked teams through creating two or three of these instructional goals that were grounded in data that they saw across the grade level and they could use as collaborative time during their PLC time. And so every teacher or every team, left with student groups based on specific instructional needs, two to three grade level instructional priorities, an integration plan aligned to upcoming units and pacing guides. So it's really not about using the data to redo your scope and sequence. It's about using the data to say, here's what we're teaching next and here's tweaks
we're gonna make and how we're teaching things to improve components in our data that we're gonna be monitoring. Integration plan aligned to the upcoming units, and pacing guides were also supposed to be something that wasn't out of the ordinary. So we don't want teachers to think is that you come to one of these days and all the planning work you've done is out the window. Right? You're having to revisit and redo everything. It's absolutely not not what we're asking for. We're asking for small changes in areas where we see the data need support. What are you already teaching? What are you already introducing to your class? And then how can we change how we either deliver it, assess it, or the
time we give to it with, like, task complexity to hopefully see a change in some of our data. And so we really left the day with reflection commitments and so for example, one strategy I'll implement this month to, like, commitments to the team or one area we'll monitor as a grade level is the way we closed out each of our, collaboration days. And so I think it's really important to note that that's how the data is used at the school site, but map data is also really important at the principal level, as well as at the district level and so when we had our principals
joins our principals all came to at least one of the collaboration days for the full day so they were able to really see how these reports were used able to support a grade level team. Some of our principals came to multiple grade level days. But really the purpose for a principal with this data is to be able to lead, data driven instruction and continuous improvement. To analyze school wide trends, right, to review map reports, to identify grade level and subgroup performance patterns so that when they're working with their, support staff, their school psychologists, their committees really looking at how does this affect interventions that we're doing, you know.
What are we seeing in terms of of cast data that that may mirror this now or holes that we may have to guide teacher collaboration, so facilitate grade level department meetings focused on interpreting data and setting instructional goals, to monitor intervention effectiveness, whether that's using WIC growth data to evaluate tier one or tier two supports to really inform family communication. So this is our first year sharing our family reports with our second through eighth grade families. And so our elementary parent teacher conferences just wrapped up and all of our parents
received a family report that shared their students beginning of the year, rate score and information on both math and reading. And our middle schools are actually going to tack it slightly different. They're going to be mailing home on October 27 all of the family reports and then hosting a Zoom with, mister Castillo and mister Quartermarsh to answer questions from the community about, the family growth report and and map assessment testing. Moving forward those, assessments those family reports will come home in the backpacks of middle
schoolers, but this first time we really want to make sure every family received one and then there was an open opportunity for families to have a q and a with the teams as well. And so ultimately missus Davis will be working with our principals to also align their school plan for student achievement with our map data since that is one of the components that we have written into our SPSAs. And then here at the district level street. I just wanna say, I I know as a parent, I got that email about that meeting probably right before we started this meeting. So I know I know that that's exciting. I think there there's a lot of questions about, like, what it means.
And even as a new middle school parent, like, where does this go? How do I use it? What do I do? So so I appreciate that, and I I'm really hopeful that we'll have that. I will we be able to record that meeting and share it out with parents if they want to That's a great question. I'll have to I'll have to find out. But when is the time we talk to the Just knowing on Monday night, it would be hard for some folks, but I know that Yeah. We're definitely gonna be putting together an FAQ Okay. To send out post that. Mhmm. So then here at the district level, right, this data is really valuable for us because we don't know these students individually, and we're trying to make, big decisions about
programming, professional development, coaching, and areas to support. And so for us, having this data really is about ensuring equity, consistency, and then strategic alignment across the schools. It helps us track progress by growth site and demographic group, as well as identify strengths and areas for targeted support when we look at the professional development and the coaching support that we give. It also helps us support our professional learning, so it helped us design and lead the teacher trainings like the map data collaboration days where we focused on using the data to inform instruction. It helps us allocate resources so different schools have different needs and so this helps
us have a great lens about where to put more, where to put less, how to shift some of the resources we have to make sure that our intervention programs, our instructional materials, and our staffing are really going to where the greatest need is. It helps us predict assessment outcomes, which we'll look out in a minute. So using map, the map cast correlation data to help forecast our proficiency rates and maybe adjust instructional focus. I know that cast isn't our end all be all metric for us. Our end all be all metric is that every student has a year of growth
every year that they're in school and that we're meeting their needs and that they'll be productive Gryphons when they lead us and have every door open to them. But we also wanna make sure that we're painting a great picture of the teaching and learning that happens inside Los Al Unified Walls and and value the teachers time and how hard our parents work to support the learners when they're in our classroom. And so, it also helps me report to the board, communicate progress towards district goals and literacy and mathematics along with eventually using longitudinal map trends when we've been giving
this assessment for multiple years to look at how choices we made in curriculum or professional development may have impacted the way students learn. And so this is a big table of a lot of information, but it really breaks down where our students are compared to national norms as well as where the low cell unified norm is. And so, MAP probably would not like that we're putting out a low cell unified norm because the real crux of MAP, which I do wholeheartedly believe in, is that
it's about growth for students. It's not about comparison of where students are at. However, I don't know a way to share data and information without giving people some apples to apples, oranges to oranges benchmark of comparison. Especially when we're talking about a Roush unit that really isn't a common everyday term for people that aren't in the field of education. And so the way to really look at this chart, and this chart was on the back of a letter that I wrote to families that went home with every family map growth report and will go home with the middle school map growth reports
as well that share with families what map is, why we're giving the assessment, how often we will, and then how to read this chart. And so if you just look at second grade for example, the reading band in Low Sal ran from 145 to two twenty six for general education students. And so our lowest score was a 145, our highest score was a two twenty six in second grade. The reading mean in Low Sal was 180, The reading median in Los Al was one eighty, and then the reading mean nationally is one seventy.
So we're currently in second grade about 10 ROUSH units above the national norm. That's almost a full a full grade level of growth. So the new norming metric that came out from map shares that a typical each grade level is different. Obviously, the lower grade levels have the most writ growth because you see the most new learning. The older grade levels have a shorter band of writ growth, but it's about 14 points in second grade and it gets to only be about four points in tenth grade of growth in a year that's anticipated.
And so we'll be sharing those norming growth points with our families middle of the year and end of the year as well. So they can have a metric as to whether the growth their student had would be on par with what is normal nationally as well than low sal unified. So you can see that we are performing above the national mean in all grade levels in both mathematics and reading. And so I think this is also great for some families. I get a lot of phone calls. I don't feel like my child's doing well and their child's doing great. They're right where they should be as a third grader.
But sometimes in the bubble of LaSalle Unified, being right at grade level can feel like I'm not doing that great. And so I think this story does share that that feeling is probably validated. Our students are performing above a national mean. However, it also can validate the fact that your students doing great. They're performing above the standard on a national exam that's given to 13,000,000 students in The United States in the fall. So that's that's a that's a lot of data points. That's a that's a lot of data points. So our our kids are doing really well and our teachers are doing a great
job. I I don't know if I can articulate this this question well, but if my child say had 180 in the very first test and then came back at the midyear test and still had one eighty, it would mean that he or she still grew in learning, just stayed at that one rung. Right? Just stayed at the one eighty rip band. Then we would look at what the percentile growth was. Okay. And to see if there was growth within your percentile band. But it would mean that their learning is at the same place. They haven't grown in the skills that this assessment, assesses.
Oh, so they would still be at the same point? They still be at the same point. Okay. Thank you. I think it also really especially for LaSalle and one of the things that makes me so proud is that, you know, we are not one of the highest funded state. I mean, we are what what are we at? 44 or 40 somewhere around low forties, nationally funded for, public education. And we personally lost our our funded very low because of we don't have a large free and reduced lunch, population.
And so for us to be able to do the work we do and to be above what the national mean is, with the resources that we have, I'm just exceptionally grateful of doctor Pulver and his team for being able to do that and consistently do that, in LaSalle. So thank you. So as I shared earlier, one of the caveats that made this assessment also attractive to education services as we start to explore replacements for our benchmarks is the its
ability to predict, cast performance. And so one of the most powerful features of map is its ability to predict each student's likelihood of meeting or exceeding standards on the cast assessment. And so teachers can view these projections directly on the map student profile report. And so it lets them know right now where there's where each student falls in terms of projections. We as a district can see district wide where our projections are at. And so the correlation between map growth, the rate scores, and s back scale scores range from point eight four to point nine two depending upon the subject area and
grade. And so it's a 84 to 92% confidence rate as to the likelihood and probability that that, student will be meeting or exceeding standards. And so overall classification accuracy, the proportion of students correctly classified as proficient versus non proficient on SBAC based on their map rate range then is consistent at 84 to 91% across content areas both in math and ELA. And so, I wanna give a little example to highlight that.
So for a third grade student using their fall map rate, cutoff score of one ninety one, the classification accuracy is 86%. So reaching important note reaching the writ cut score does not guarantee proficiency proficiency on SBAC. It rather provides a strong probability of information. So we know that if a student is at one ninety one in the fall, it's 86% confidence that they're going to be meeting or exceeding, their SBAC score. And so for the winter and the spring, those numbers change obviously because students are
projected to grow right over the course of a school year. And so I think it's really important to note that this is a strong predictive relationship and that this is probabilistic not deterministic and so it's it's not a guarantee right? This is just our best bet with a high correlation that we're headed in the right direction. I don't think there is a metric, another assessment, a test prep guide, something that we can purchase, or facilitate that's a 100%. And so, we're about 86 to 91% depending upon the grade level on content area
and depending upon the time of year that a student test that will be able to determine if we're on the right track for a student to be labeled proficient on the SBAC. And so our next steps are really supporting ongoing growth. And so we really feel that our impact over the collaboration days and through this process is really that we empower teachers and we informed instruction. So teachers now have clarity and confidence using the data, that instructional plans are aligned, actionable, and measurable, that students benefit from targeted instruction tailored to their growth readiness, and I think that's really important.
Right? Every student's ready to develop in different areas. District wide consistency ensures equity and opportunity and outcomes for all learners. I think that was a great thing that we brought back this year. It was a prior practice and part of the culture here in Los Angeles Unified for many years prior to the pandemic that grade level teams from across the district came and looked at data and had large discussions about teaching and learning. And so bringing back those opportunities, I think, not only builds camaraderie, which I think is really important as well, but also gives us a lens by which all to look at foundational information in the same way.
And so next steps in the data cycle, we'll have our middle of the year assessment in the December. That will be our rental analysis and check-in. We'll do our continued grade level collaboration, so we'll be coming back together in January with our teams to relook at the outcomes from our middle of the year assessment. And then education services and site leadership teams will be providing follow-up support and refresher trainings along the way to help PLC teams at the sites really continue to be more effective and efficient at using, this information. So I'd I'd love to take any questions.
Oh, good. No. I just think your brains and the brains of your, committee, your staff never stop working. Every time I had a question in my brain, you answered it within the next ten minutes. So congratulations. This is unbelievable amount of work. Thank you. I I so appreciate you sharing this. You you know I'm a advocate for for map testing. I think it's great. It's a great tool that I use. One question just about, as students are coming into our district, if a student enters our school in October, they've missed the fall window.
Are we having them take is there a certain cutoff time where we're gonna try and still have them take it three times, or will we just move them to the next next window? It'll just be middle of the year, end of the year. Mhmm. But great question. So, obviously, the last five years have been interesting in education. And we have come back to to really really wanting to focus on our data. But I I also get concerned sometimes doing that that where, you know, we hear
out in the community things like teaching to the test and and, and staff being concerned that that's our complete focus. And and our focus isn't, moving our our students forward and, and and wanting them to change. And I just wanna say how much I appreciate how this aligns with not you're not throwing the the, baby out with the bathwater. You're saying we do great things here, but how can we better, throughout the year
be focused on, be focused on that and and evaluating that so we can make that move within what they're they are doing and, and not just shifting the whole thing. And to me, that is so incredibly powerful, and that also allows us to be able I'm hopeful to get the best results faster than trying to start redoing starting from ground zero if that's what it came down to. And also, really appreciate the time and the focus with our staff and that I
know this is a lot, but you you're really walking them through it and giving them things that are really actionable that they can take away, and that is so incredibly powerful. So I'm just I'm I'm really grateful that we found this and and the great work that you and your team are doing right now. Well, I really wanna thank the board for keeping the main thing the main thing as doctor Cropp used to say. Because it can be very difficult, you know, for everyone on the education services team when you see an outward measure like CASP and you know how well our students
are performing when you look at other metrics in particular as our students traverse to the high school that your focus has always been wanting all students to learn and not teach to a test, but teach skills and strategies and really learning concepts that benefit students as they grow grade level to grade level. And I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think that we're always working to find a way to, of course, highlight our students in the best way possible on a CAASPP assessment, but at the same time, make sure that our instructional time really is vested and valued in what's best first
instruction in teaching and learning for kids. So I wanna say thank you as well. Well and I I act what I really appreciate because when we were talking about going back to when we first started state testing back in the early two thousands, We were we were trying to identify the holes, the standards that needed to be addressed. But then we were buying workbooks that some of them had great passages. But when you went into those workbooks you were missing out on what were the grade level texts and readings and the history that we like you said, they're going
to be using the gold rush units to look at informational text. They're going to be reading about Martin Luther gonna take the Martin Luther King, unit out of the language arts text. Those books we're buying because we value what they say become the tools by which we go back and teach the standards. And that's just phenomenal. That's not teaching to the test. It's just addressing specifically needs and standards within the work that we're supposed to be doing. So I don't know how you organized all this and put it together. It is incredibly phenomenal.
And I think teachers while, you know, getting this binder of every single one of your students, I would so appreciate that. Our eighth grade our middle school teachers now are have lost that English reading. Now they have all English classes. So that's really more students. And so you are making it so much easier for them to address the needs of those individual students and saving a ton of time that it could be very exhausting. So thank you very much. Well, it's really to the whole team as well. So I have a I have an amazing team, missus Davis, doctor Bennett, missus Grandin,
miss Cruz, our administrative assistants, everyone really has to get a 100% engaged to pull off six full days like that. Couple of things. One, just a reminder, at our state of the district, we talked about how, you know, 87% of our budget is people. And so that does not leave a lot of dollars to help in other areas. So we're talking about 13% of our budget. And part of that 13% is the investment in map.
You know, assessments like these. These these cost, dollars. Releasing our teachers, for for these days, multiple, times throughout the year to have a full day to not only look at the data but to assess it as well. And so, you know, that and when we're a lower funded district, it gives us even a smaller, portion of funds to be able to really kind of invest. And that's why I think it makes such a difference to have incredible teachers, incredible staff, who really, can can be a difference. And then perspective I think is also really important.
So the state of California and its infinite wisdom, we have CAASPP. And yet the CAASPP results just got released a week ago, wasn't it? And yet so if I'm a teacher and I'm trying to understand data, one of the things that we keep, superintendents in other districts, throughout the county, we get frustrated how CASP data doesn't really give you much data to improve instruction. And so when Mrs. Reed launched the presentation today, she really talked about, you know, how do we connect,
student outcomes, or really how do we see data to inform instruction. If a teacher has very limited time, which they do, Mrs. Reed, what would be the best sets of data for for a teacher to really invest in trying to understand? Is it using CAS data or is it using MAP or other data to really drive instruction? Because their casted as last year. And well, I'll let you answer that piece. Well, I think they all play a specific role. Right? They all need to be triangulated, which is some of the work that we're gonna be doing as we come together in January. So obviously, your map data is your most pertinent information about the kids you have
in front of you, and it's fresh information. You're getting it the week after you test. Similarly to the information that we get from EZCVM, a Mira, a quick phonics survey, it's real time information that's actionable with kids in the classroom. As we look at that data across a grade level to particular school site, it's going to show us over the course of a school year, standards are area we might be low. That's where I think CASP information becomes important. Looking back to see, is that a trend that's happening year after year? This is what I'm seeing informational tax being low this school year. We come back in the middle of the year, it's still low.
I then look back to my cast data as a grade level the year before. If informational text was low there, it really pinpoints for me that this just isn't a problem with the students have in front of me, but really an instructional design issue as well that we need to go back and systematically change things in our scope and sequence, change things in our task complexity potentially or the materials that are in front of students. So I think they each play a role. The problem is the cast data as doctor Pulver shared comes out We're already in school almost five weeks. It's for the students that were in the grade level, before.
And even if I get the information from the students that are coming into me, it doesn't drill down to the standards level. CASP or SBAC information only goes to the claim or target level. So it can identify skills, but it's it's kind of late at the game. And then the scale scores move around from proficient to not proficient. And so it it's not a stable metric like the writ, the ROUSH unit is that we know we're getting equitable growth over time. So it's it's a lot of information, but I think triangulating it to look at
trends over time is where the CASP information really becomes important. And then how would you, respond if maybe a parent or a staff member said we're spending so much time doing these assessments, and it's taken away in, key instructional time in the classroom? Well, I think it's a great question. We had some board members that actually had that question because they were having conversations with either staff or parents. And so I think it's important to note that we've looked at the amount of time that our assessments are taking and that there's still a relative amount of time that we've always used to assess students at the beginning of a school year.
I would actually argue that if you don't spend the time assessing students new to your classroom, you could be potentially wasting ongoing time, not teaching the correct standards, not reteaching, or not scaffolding the work in a way that students are ready to learn. And so I think, you know, research shows that the first step to best first instruction is assessment. That second step is analyzing your data and then the third step is planning the best first instruction. So I think we can miss out on a lot of opportunities as especially for
students at the but each end of that bell curve, right, our high students and our low students. Lack of engagement and frustration when you're not having a planned classroom that meets the needs of all the learners in your in within your, setting. I also would just from my own experience as a teacher, when when we used to do and and I worked in Los Angeles Unified, and we would do these quarterly or periodic assessments, and then we would have to do the data. And we would have to grade them kind of like what we talked about. That also felt like more of a waste when it came to test taking because we were doing it. And then it was gonna take me weeks before I'd have the data, before I could do the students.
You're doing this map testing, and while we're gonna have periodic PD time, teachers can use that data when they walk out of the room. Right? And so I think that's really impactful. And when it goes to the CASP question, I think I love that this also cast was that snapshot of where they were last spring. But you have an actionable data with your class where you can do the grouping like you showed us on the slides where cast I'm trying to figure out, they were in this class. What am I doing? Here it's here are my 32 kids. Here's I'm gonna group them into a a, a b, whatever it might be. So I I love that they're using it. I get that it feels like sometimes we're over testing our kids, but we've always
been assessing them. It's just a different kind of assessment with quicker, actionable data. And that's the thing that's great about so when a teacher finishes assessing their students, the data is available right away. They don't have to wait for Ed services to to bring them into a training. We did start the trainings the week after, so I feel really good that we were in like a ten day window of your assessment closing that we met with you whole group. And the point of having a structured process by process day for every grade level is that they can then start to learn to go through that process as soon as their data is ready and not waiting for Ed services.
It really is kind of a trainer of trainer models in a way that we're equipping teachers with the skills to be able to access this on their own in their PLC time or individually when they have the space to look at their data and make those instructional changes. Anybody else? We really thank you. We as a board, we ask that you look at test scores, that you look at assessments, and that we moved from the wellness after COVID where we were directing so much at mental health, and the teachers were calling for more focus on academics.
And I I know I feel like we as a board have to absolutely applaud you for responding in the most incredible ways that are actually I I mean, you could write the book. You could write the book. So thank you so much. Thank you. You're and Melissa, thank you. And Dan Bennett and your whole team. Thank you so much. Do we have any public okay. With no public comment, we will move into closed session to address labor negotiations and, faculty workers.
Student discipline. Student discipline. And employee. Yep. This one. Thank you.