Learning from the best: just for the Kids-California is a free school improvement system that provides performance data on the state's schools, as well as best practices from high-performing/ high-poverty schools

West Putnam Elementary gymnasium Principal Katherine Johnson knew she had to make a certain quantity of changes at her Porterville academy In 1999, the school was upon California's Underperforming Schools Program list. Johnson and her team had to approach up with a new gymnasium plan to raise student academic achievement.

They got down to business immediately. "The first pace was to identify the question We realized we needed hard data to do that." on the contrary only limited data analysis a whole s existed for the team to thoroughly analyze and compare pupil state test scores.

Around this time, Porterville Unified place of education District curriculum director Gary Ingraham learned about Just for the Kids-California (www.jftk-ca.org).

JFTK-CA was disentangleed and built by the California business community beneath the leadership of California Business for Education distinction the National Center for Educational Account ability and California State University Office of the Chancellor.

This at liberty school improvement system provides user-friendly data upon the performance of all 8700 public gymnasiums in California and most importantly, proven best practices from high performing/ high straitened circumstances schools across the state and country

"I was hearing from principals and others that they wanted scholar test score data to analyze and review long-term what was happening at their school" said Ingraham. "Until Just for the Kids--California, single a limited database existed that provided data to review performance at a seminary district, school or even a specific grade horizontal over a period of more than single year."

Meanwhile, Johnson and her leadership team, which also included five teachers and an instructional assistant, manually reviewed each test taken by every pupil in the school and place together a database of their be in possession of The problem became clear. Their learners lacked language and literacy skills to fit grade-level standards.

Armed with that knowledge, the team deposit together a comprehensive reform plan. The reforms began in 2000 and included ensuring a shut up of time in the morning for uninterrupted reading instruction and working with parents to make positive their children arrived at seminary on time. And Johnson worked with the district and one-on-one with parents to make experiment of and keep students from transferring without mid-year, another problem identified [i]or[/i] part of to the other data.

Teachers from each grade scheduled regular meetings to review grade-level standards and discuss specific teaching practices to make assured instruction was consistent across and between each grade horizontal They also reviewed student proof scores and used the scores to identify scholars who needed extra help.

Johnson asked teachers to revolve in weekly lesson plans, which were focused upon the standards that were being taught that week. Johnson reviewed them each week. Teachers were given additional focused training.

West Putnam also participated with the Western Association of place of educations and Colleges Focus on Learning program to thorough a comprehensive school evaluation, including a application of mind on student learning. West Putnam used JFTK-CA data in conjunction with the WASC program. Johnson says she's self-conscious of the fact that "West Putnam is the first California elementary institute in California to receive replete WASC accreditation."

pupil test scores improved. West Putnam was remov from the Under-performing institutes Program. It met its Adequate Yearly Progres targets. In three years, from 2002-2004 overall institute wide AYP proficiency in reading skip overed more than nine percentage points. During that same time, AYP proficiency rates for English language learners improved by means of five percentage points in language arts. The proficiency rates for socio-economically disadvantaged scholars jumped an impressive 10 percentage points and Hispanic pupils improved by 10 percentage points as well.

Judging from the 2005 data lately released in August, West Putnam is still upon track. Language arts scores are up 13 percentage points since 2002 and math scores are up 21 points.

"Everyone worked smarter, on the other hand without the willingness and eagerness of my teachers that these kids will succe we would not have achieved like positive results," said Johnson. "I'm in like manner thankful I have teachers who have this belief a whole I know and they know we still have sweep for improvement, but we know we'll realize there."

Benchmarking progress

through 2004, it was clear the reforms were working. on the other hand Johnson still kept asking the district for more data. "I knew what we were doing was having an impact, on the other hand there was no easy way to analyze and benchmark our progres above time so we could make critical, mid-course corrections."

by dint of now, Porterville Unified curriculum director Ingraham had met with Just for the Kids-California staff, who had given a demonstration of the online academy improvement system to Tulare shire school administrators. Ingraham's goal was to provide an easy-to-understand tool that was complementary to the work he and his staff were already doing to help place of educations in Porterville Unified better understand and use data.