Rockford Sun

North Boone school officials received an update on district improvements and other efforts during a recent meeting, focusing on strategic plans in the district.

During the meeting, Curriculum Director Kari Neri, the district is targeting strategic goal number 1, which will focus on student achievement, while also lining up with strategy 3, focusing on developing an equitable curriculum and assessment system to create an effective learning environment for all students.

“Part of what we are doing to meet that goal and that strategy is our instructional coaching program and also taking a look at student data,” she told the board.

Neri noted during the presentation that the program, which debuted this year, features four instructional coaches in the district. During the first semester, she noted that the coaches completed 12 coaching cycles, during which 69% of students attained proficiency in the coached area, and 84% of students showed growth as a result of the program.

“So at the start of the year, some of our coaches were assisting new teachers,” Principal Nicole Difford noted during the presentation. “You know, we have new teachers to their buildings, new teachers to the district. So they're there for support. They analyze data for school improvement goals and work alongside the principal and their school leadership team.”

The new teachers, according to Difford, attend team meetings, so those could be grade-level teams or content area teams in their buildings. Overall, the goal will be for five or six coaching cycles to occur each semester, for a total of 20 to 24 cycles.

“Our elementary coaches are assisting some of our teachers that are currently undergoing our K-4 literacy pilot, and so they're helping to support that,” Difford noted during the presentation.

Neri told the board during the presentation that during a coaching cycle, the coach meets with a teacher to develop a goal or learning objective for a particular subject. After setting the starting level for students, the coach can direct students who may fall below the starting point and provide them additional direction, including finding an appropriate starting mark. This ensures students who need additional help get to work with the teacher.

Difford added during the session that planning lessons occur with teachers, but a teacher may not be in a coaching cycle, though they could plan some lessons.

“And so they might do that one or two days, or assisting teachers with their SLOs or their student learning objectives, which is part of our teacher evaluations,” she explained during the presentation. “So some teachers have reached out to get help with that. They have provided some professional development opportunities. They've also created resources for instructional strategies and assessment strategies.”

During the presentation, the board also heard about assessment data from the district, including comparisons of fall assessments and the recent winter assessments.

Moreover, during the presentation, the board learned that four grades declined in math achievement, one grade level stayed the same and four, mostly in the upper-grade levels, improved.

Reading proved to offer better results, with only two grade levels slipping, one staying the same and five showing improvements according to the presentation. 

Neri noted during the presentation that winter numbers can often trend downward, but students typically raise their numbers in the spring, showing large growth from fall to spring. She added during the presentation that teachers and coaches are working on math with students.