OSP Connected
June, 2019-Office for School Performance-Volume 30
Message from Dayle
Just a simple note to say- thank you for your hard work and thank you for caring for our kids. I hope summer provides the rest and reflection you need to come back in the fall ready for a bright start.
As always, if you need a good book, let me know! I have extras of my favorite and am always willing to help you find a good read to fuel the brain, heart or passion!
Happy Summer!
HSD Focus 2018-2019
INSTRUCTION: Language with a Clear Purpose
This year is coming to a close and with it we have to celebrate all of the learning opportunities that many of you led and/or were involved in. We celebrate around 100 elementary leaders receiving ongoing PD through the math and language arts PD structure and all K-12 schools taking back to move forward PD modules emphasizing that language is the key through our Elementary and Secondary Leadership Collaborations.
Looking forward into the 2019-20120 school year and focusing on a year of implementation, our instructional focus remains in the areas of Purpose, Engagement and Assessment and Classroom Environment from the 5 Dimensions of Teaching & Learning. This will mean a need to invest in professional learning (PL) to support teacher agency on what they are working on and the goals that they have through backwards mapping and PLCs. This emphasizes professional learning through student outcomes, data, collaboration, modeling, coaching etc., etc. in order to provide differentiated supports.
As you indulge in your summer plans, also take the opportunity to get caught up on the pile of books, magazines and articles you’ve been meaning to read. Here is a list of some books for your summer reading. In addition to these books, jumpstart the school year by attending summer PD sessions and the Hillsboro School District Summer Summit on Thursday, August 22nd at Century High School. This is a conference style professional development with sessions offered by district teachers and staff members! Please register through Serebra on MyHSD before going on vacation.
We will also have summer PD opportunities throughout the summer. Check out the following links and register on Serebra:
BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: Recharge in Order to be the Best for Your Students
A wise educator once shared, “A disregulated adult cannot support a disregulated student.” Summer is an opportunity for educators to recharge and practice self care in order to come back in the fall stronger and support the needs of all our students. As educators, we often put ourselves last, instead prioritizing the needs of our students, colleagues, and families. Take and opportunity this summer to practice self care in one (or more!) of the following ways:
Catch up on annual appointments and implement healthy habits. New research out of the University of London concludes it takes 66 days to form a new habit, which is almost exactly the number of days in our summer break!
Build joy into your schedule.What type of activities bring you joy? Reading a good book? Hiking with your dog? Playing in the sprinkler with your kids? Create a summer bucket list and make a plan to accomplish everything on your list before August 26th.
Shut down, unplug, reboot. Consider stepping out of the educator mindset completely for a while. This doesn’t have to last the whole summer, but that off the grid backpacking trip you might have planned is a perfect opportunity to clear your mind.
Get ahead and get excited. Finding professional growth opportunities during the summer that spark your passion as an educator is a great opportunity to recharge. Professional growth and learning can come in many forms. Think outside of the box: engage in a Twitter chat, read that book that’s been sitting on your night stand all year, check out lecture series and author book tour opportunities around town.
CAREER & COLLEGE READY: Parent Engagement
We have gained a lot of ground in our work around Career and College Pathways over the last 5 years. We have worked with our students, teachers, and our community and industry partners around the current and future needs of Hillsboro and the Hillsboro School District. We have begun to focus earlier with our students to help them be more aware, eligible, and prepared for the future. As a part of our work in the 2019-2020 school year, we will be shifting some of our focus to our parent partners. Parents are their children’s first teachers and are a very important piece of Career and College Pathway success. Research has shown that “there is a positive relationship between family engagement and improved academic achievement. This is true across socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and educational background for students of all ages” - National Dropout Prevention Center. Regardless of what a student is studying or planning to do as a career, parental/guardian influence is significant and essential. When a parent/guardian walks alongside their student in their career and college pathway journey, they can help their student discover his/her passion and figure out how to utilize their talents to contribute positively to society.
Summer Summit 2019
We are currently gathering recommendations for Summer Summit facilitators. If you would like to facilitate a session or would like to recommend someone please email Arcema Tovar for Elementary and Becky Kingsmith for Secondary.
Thursday, Aug 22, 2019, 07:30 AM
Century High School, Southeast Century Boulevard, Hillsboro, OR, USA
DCA Corner
Each month we will highlight a dashboard, report, query or feature in DCA that you can use to make thoughtful, well-informed, data-driven decisions to better help students be successful.
This month, we will let you know about the multiple state assessment reports that are available and highlight one that may be particularly useful to you, especially if you are a classroom teacher. There are a total of 14 individual reports focused on state assessment results. There are more choices for analyzing state assessment data than any other report category in DCA. In addition, additional flexibility for accessing and analyzing state assessment data is available using the ad-hoc query tool.
State assessment reports are divided into four categories:
State Assessment by Teacher
State Assessment by Grade
State Assessment by School
State Assessment by Student
These reports allow you to look at state results in a wide variety of ways. For example, there is a report that allows you to check student’s state achievement levels for two consecutive years. This is a great way to look at student progress from one year to the next and assess growth levels for students. You can find this report in the State Assessments by Grade section of Reports.
One assessment report that many have found particularly useful is the “SBAC by Teacher and Course with Growth Percentiles” report.
Before talking specifically about the report and what it delivers, let’s spend a minute on student growth percentiles (SGPs.) For those of you who may not know, SGPs are a normative measure of student growth. SGPs quantify the growth an individual student made in one year relative to all other students in Oregon with similar score history in state assessments. What do we mean by normative growth? We are referring to the amount of growth a child makes in comparison to his or her peers. For instance, when a child goes to the doctor’s office, his weight and height are measured. The doctor can tell us if the child’s growth in the last year is “typical”, that is: is he growing the same, less, or more than other children his age? Often this is expressed in percentile terms. The child’s height may be at the 35th percentile which means that the child is taller than 35 percent of other children his age and shorter than 65 percent of children his age. Normative growth is the basis for student growth percentiles. So, in terms of performance on the test, a student in the 80th percentile means that the child performed better than 80 percent of the children in his/her peer group. Hence, this student may require less instruction to achieve the next highest performance level on the test than students having lower SGPs. These indicators of growth can be a useful tool for teachers who may be differentiating instruction in their classrooms to address particular student needs.
In addition to SGPs, the report also shows overall, color-coded performance levels in math and ELA and will display performance levels on each of the claims under math and ELA by clicking the small + signs in the report. Here is a snapshot of what the report delivers:
Finally, since the report is run by teacher and classroom, it also calculates the median SGP for that classroom, which teachers can use as part of their SLGG planning.
To access the report, navigate to DCA and then select Reports > State Assessment by Teacher > and SBAC by Teacher and Course with Growth Percentiles.
If you have questions about these reports, DCA in general, and/or would like training in your building on using DCA, contact Tom Luba (lubat@hsd.k12.or.us.)
Coffee Conversations - Inclusion: A Family Perspective (Episode # 8)
Inclusion is beneficial to all kids! In this month's Coffee Conversation, Special Education Teacher Adrienne Stimson-Clark sits down with Parent Heidi Robinson to talk about inclusion from the family perspective. This is a two part series - please click on each video below in order to view part 1 and part 2.
Remember you can see all the Coffee Conversations in the Student Services online handbook.