School Improvement and Accreditation

Boring, but Important!

Our school will be visited for accreditation later this month. We invite you to share in our process!

Each school in our district will be visited by a Quality Assurance Review team. This is the first time our district will be accredited as a whole system. Our accreditation by AdvancED, the responsible organization, is important to officially show that our schools meet national-level standards of education, and this status will last for some years to come.

This process begins by having each school conduct a self-assessment on the seven standards used for accreditation. The visiting teams will look at four standards in particular at the school level. These standards are not just about how a school is currently operating, but also on how it sees its future.

These standards are not met by the staff alone! The visiting team will be looking to talk with several members of our community (staff, parents, and students) and learn about their perception of our school’s philosophy, purpose, and goals.

The self-assessment was done largely by our administrative team last spring. Each standard had several criteria, and our scores were averaged into a general rating: Highly Functional, Operational, Emerging, and Not Evident. The following information comes from our self-assessment’s summaries of the four standards the visiting team will focus on. This is your opportunity to learn a great deal about how Woods Learning Center operates! Please feel free to respond to this information and our claims, and ask if you have questions. Your school improvement team contacts are Jim Gaither and Karen Bayert. All members of our community are welcome to participate in the visit.

 

Standard 1: Vision and Purpose. Self-Rating: Highly Functional.

Woods Learning Center was established with a strong vision and purpose by a collaborating team of educators. This vision and purpose has continued and evolved for twenty years through its identity as a school of choice. The school is administered by a team consisting of all site teachers and a number of other staff. Parents and students have always been a part of its evolution.

Our mission statement was developed primarily through meetings of the administrative team, but was presented in multiple ways to parents and students, such as through a town hall meeting, in weekly newsletters, in our brochure, on our website, and in our handbook. This mission was deliberately chosen to emphasize our long-term goals.

Because our mission is to guide students to become lifelong learners, we are very devoted to making each student’s experience as personally meaningful as possible. This requires a great deal of teamwork to meet everyone’s individual needs in one classroom, as well as everyone’s interests through personal research projects, for example. Students lead their conferences with parents and teachers as the primary person responsible for their own education.

Our evidence shows that we tend to keep our families, that our families are highly involved, and that they transition well. We have been recognized with an excelling status in the school district. Families are invited to view school data related to our school improvement plans, to discuss the mission, and to participate in conferences. Personalized information is maintained for each student in portfolios and, new this year, in “learning logs” that demonstrate proficiency in the standards and progress towards learning goals. Students and parents receive assessment profiles created by the district at parent-student-teacher conferences, where the data is examined, explained, and goals are set.

Our goal in this area is to review more regularly and formally our vision and mission among all our community members, so that our staff, students, and parents are well beyond merely being aware of them, to being an active part of their evolution.

 

Standard 3: Teaching and Learning. Self-Rating: Highly Functional

Our school district has implemented an essential curriculum based upon the state standards. This curriculum is publicly available on the school district website. Our school uses a standards-based assessment rubric, which we believe informs students and parents of their learning better than traditional grades, while also allowing a great deal of room for a student to demonstrate his or her full potential.

The administrative team at Woods Learning Center has met regularly over the years to revisit the curriculum sequence at our school. One example is with our independent research projects, as we are looking at the sequence of expectations through each of our classrooms.

Recently, students have been taking part in more formally setting learning goals with their teachers, especially in the areas covered by our school improvement goals (reading and writing). They are informed of the expectations put upon them, and are encouraged to not only meet these expectations but to find ways to exceed them that match their interests and strengths. Our students have always compiled portfolios of their work as evidence of meeting standards in the various subject areas. Older students write reflections on their learning in these standards based on this evidence. This year students will compile their goals and results in a personal data notebook or “learning log” which also includes a portfolio of work.

School test data is reviewed by the staff at various meetings and retreats. For many years we have conducted an in-house writing assessment.

Students at Woods Learning Center are expected to work towards their individual potential. All students are encouraged to work beyond the expectations of grade-level standards, and this work is recognized as advanced proficiency. Students with special needs are able to fully participate in all aspects of our school because of an inclusion philosophy with extra support as needed. The special education staff members mostly work in the classrooms to help all students remain engaged. A homework club and tutoring are available for additional help. Our students demonstrate an ability to work comfortably with students of many differing abilities, and our data suggest they have a good sense of belonging and self-esteem no matter their ability, economic status, or home culture.

Lastly, our school has a strong commitment to technology and a variety of media and resources in its instructional program. Our staff devotes time to learning technology as part of our building professional development. Our school does not use textbooks as a primary source of information, and students, especially in science and social studies, are expected to be exposed to a variety of sources and media.

We believe that this is a particularly strong area for us, originating from the very proposal for this school program. It is, however, our constant mission to continue to grow and improve the teaching and learning in this school.

Standard 4: Documenting and Using Results. Self-Rating: Operational

All students from third through eighth grade in our school district are expected to take the PAWS every year, and the NWEA growth assessments at least twice a year. These standardized tests provide important bias-free data that form part of the overall assessment of our students and our program. Woods has had an excelling or “unclassified” status in each area each year that this has been done.

One particular intervention by our district to increase reading scores on the PAWS was the implementation of reading rubrics that are to be used by every school.

In addition to these data, our school measures student performance using the state and district standards. All students in the district are required to be assessed on these standards using a 0-8 proficiency scale. Our school uses this scale for all assessment reporting, and has been working to standardize our use of this scale.

Our school has developed a number of assessments as a part of the school improvement process. These include the in-house writing assessment, as well as a spelling assessment that was established to measure the effectiveness of a spelling curriculum implemented in 2004.

Our school believes firmly that students should be intrinsically motivated to do well. This has meant that we discourage prizes and awards as motivation, but that we wish students to feel a sense of accomplishment at doing something well. We began a serious ongoing discussion two years ago to find how to celebrate and recognize achievement. We decided that the best place to begin was to better inform students of their results as a school, as a class, and as individuals. For most students, this has given them a feeling of satisfaction or a motivation to do better, in and of itself.

We have always examined our data and have strived to improve each year. Our challenge in this goal is that so many of our students already were doing so well. In addition to this, our small numbers at our school mean that the score of one student can significantly change the grade-level results, making it difficult to see significant trends versus the diversity of student abilities from year to year. We also are unable to look at most subgroups because of our small size.

 

Standard 7: Commitment to Continuous Improvement. Self-Rating: Operational

Because of the involvement of our staff on our administrative team, we are able to have continuing discussions regarding our school improvement plan on a regular basis. Our team not only meets every week, but also has a regular devoted time to discussing school improvement. We have used our school improvement plan to develop our mission, and our vision is reflected in our school improvement plan.

The school improvement team has the leadership responsibility for the plan. Two parents were involved in this team over the last year. The team’s work to implement, monitor, and communicate this plan is clearly documented and recorded, notably in the meeting agendas and notes. To communicate with our families, we use our newsletters, our website, and host various meetings and events, which include our actual school improvement night for parents and our back-to-school night.

Our school district has demonstrated a very public commitment to continuous improvement by setting five major goals and by providing professional development in one method of continuous improvement. Employee evaluation documents have been developed to require and recognize continuous improvement.

Our school has devoted a great deal of energy to professional development in the school improvement plan goals. We believe that if we work as a team in our continuing education, that we will work as a team to implement what we learn. At the beginning of each school year, we examine the achievements of the previous year though various forms of data, and our goals are reset so that our new group of students will benefit from our new goals and our lessons learned.