REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Director of Learning Report

Instruction, Curriculum, and Assessment

Asha Riley, Director of Learning

April Update

May 5, 2011

TO:                 Michael Green, Superintendent

FROM:           Asha Riley

RE:      Instruction, Curriculum, Assessment, and Professional Development Monthly Update

How will we teach them?

Answer:  Students will be exposed to the kinds of instruction that will promote academic excellence

Action Steps:

• Professional Development Survey - Now that we have set some focus points for professional development in our district we are developing opportunities for staff to grow in those targeted areas. Not only will we be providing intentional building and district wide professional development I'd also like to begin to provide staff with opportunities to grow through self study or small group collaboration around a particular topic. In order to understand the learning needs of our teachers I put together a survey in which staff can give us input. After the results are in I will be partnering my counterpart in La Center to provide online book studies and other online resources that both district's staff can access and benefit from over the summer and into next year.
• Upcoming Summer Substitute Training - This upcoming summer we will be hosting three days of training for our substitute teachers. We see this as a proactive approach to ensuring teaching and learning is occurring when teachers are out of classrooms for professional development, illness, etc.
• Online Academy Possibility - I have recently begun to assess the feasibility of developing an Online Academy here in Woodland. Tegan informs we have approximately 180 students who currently are home-study students and several have indicated an interest in partnering with us if we had an online academy. We estimate we'd need at least 50 students to make this option a reality for the community. In order to assess the level of interest I will be hosting a forum Thursday May 26^th in the High School Commons as well as sending out letter including a short survey to families. Attached is a copy of the letter we have sent out to families inviting them to participate in the survey and Online Academy Forum. After we have collected the results of the survey and heard the home-study communities input on the topic we will report back what our next steps in this direction will be.

How will we know they learned?

Answer: Implementation of assessments that both inform instruction and indicate student achievement in a timely fashion.

Action Step:

• State Testing - We are in the midst of administering the State Measure of Student Progress assessment in grades 3-8, and will soon be facilitating the State End of Course Assessment for our Middle and High School Math students. These assessments are a summary of a students' achievement of learning over the course of a year (and in some cases like science a, series of years). We expect to get the results of these assessments in August. So far testing has gone very smoothly, including our roll out of 6^th grade online testing this year. I am extremely grateful to Mo Anderson, Chris Wiseman, Cari Thomson and our Tech. Department for their proactive organization for online testing.
• Third Round of Math Assessments - At the end of May we will have finished our last round of math assessments in grades K-6. It has been exciting to see the growth in our student performance as well as how these assessments have impacted instruction in our classrooms. I will soon be providing a summary report of how our students' achievement of math standards progressed over the course of this year and how we will use this data to inform our professional development goals for next year.

Asha Riley

May 5, 2011

Dear Family of Home -Study Students:

Woodland Public Schools is considering developing an online academy here in our community to serve families who prefer to educate their children in a home setting.  We would like to gather input from the local community to help us determine the usefulness of this type of program in Woodland.  We invite you to join the discussion in two ways:

First, by participating in a short online survey that will help us determine the level of interest in our community, and identify the programs and services that will best serve the needs of home-study and online students.  You can access this survey via a link on our District website homepage, or by using the web address listed below.

Second, we would like to invite you to an Online Academy Forum. At the forum, we will share the results of the survey, introduce some possible online options for students, see if there is interest in developing a parent home study co-op, and listen to your input on how an online academy in Woodland could serve your family’s needs.

Online Academy Forum                                             Online Academy Survey Link