Educators at Triad are working to close the gap created by distance learning during 2020.
Elementary School Principal Lee Claypool told the Board of Education recently that the district’s investment in a number of intervention programs are helping to get students back on track.
She said the district has doubled the number of students it can offer specialized assistance to 60 from 30 – by adding a second Title I teacher, both of whom provide additional instruction to at-risk students.
Claypool spoke about a new reading intervention program used by Title I teachers called SPIRE, which helps to identify “phonics gaps and decoding issues” in students.
She said the program is organized to project a student’s reading comprehension based on grade level and month of the school year. As a student progresses, they achieve new levels.
SPIRE guidelines indicate kindergarteners are expected to achieve four levels of comprehension, first graders reach six to seven more levels and second through fourth graders should achieve three levels each year.
Success is measured by a beginning of the year, middle of the year and end of the year assessment.
Claypool shared two examples of students who have “made amazing gains” through the program.
She noted one first grader whose benchmark assessment indicated he was at a kindergarten reading level at the start of the academic year. His mid-year assessment showed he is now on par with his grade level.
“That’s a huge celebration,” Claypool said, adding that he has already mastered five levels in a year when he is expected to learn six to seven.
Another first grader has made similar strides.
Claypool said “he was more critical,” as his benchmark testing indicated he was on par with a new kindergartener when he began first grade.
Now, he is reading at the level a first grader should in January, meaning “he’s less than a half of a level behind.”
She noted that both students will be in the Title I program for three to four more weeks before they “graduate.”
“We want to get rid of ‘lifers’ in Title I and these two students are making the gains that we want to see,” Claypool said.
The program has also been effective in groups of students, she said.
A group of six second graders has also benefitted from the SPIRE program.
Claypool said the group tested at the level students should be at the start of first grade, at the beginning of their second grade year.
She noted that the students’ assessment scores suffered following the pandemic and summer break.
“Their regression had gone even further than you would expect (following the summer), which I believe is a result of the pandemic,” Claypool explained.
The group recently tested five levels higher than their beginning of the year assessments, though they are only expected to master three levels in second grade.
“That’s an amazing amount of work by these students led by these amazing teachers,” Claypool said.
Along with individualized instruction, Claypool said “we’ve pushed in whole grade-level intervention in the Kindergarten classroom” in an attempt to reduce the students in Title I programs in first and second grade moving forward.
Chief Academic Officer Morgan Fagnani said state testing projections also indicate “a lot of the things we’re doing are working.”
She noted that the percentage of third, fourth and sixth grade students projected to have passing scores in English-Language Arts are lower than previous years.
Meanwhile, a smaller percentage of eighth graders are projected to pass state tests in math.
Fagnani noted that the highest achieving eighth graders are bumped up to Algebra I, meaning their scores are denoted separately. She said this skews the data a bit, as the top third of eighth graders are left out of their grade’s math score.
Science and social studies are the subject areas with the highest projections, Fagnani said.
She explained that ELA and math tend to build on concepts from previous years which can lead students to fall farther behind, compared to completely new topics in science and social studies.
Despite teachers estimating “slightly lower” than in years past, Fagnani said the projections may be lower because teachers are worried about absences due to quarantines and other pandemic precautions.
“My personal opinion is that in most of the areas, (scores will) come back a little higher than what the teachers are projecting,” she said.
Fagnani also noted that Triad students outscored the state average in almost every area for end-of-course retakes in Fall 2020.
“This year, it’s been really easy to focus on the negative,” Fagnani said. “This here shows that what we are doing is working and we have to celebrate those things.”