Raise Student Achievement with Customized Professional Learning

Area of Focus: ELA

DeSoto County School District is the largest school district in Mississippi with a total of 33,140 students and 38 schools. Prior to the partnership, the district’s ELA Director and other staff members visited Generation Ready’s lab-site school (Riser Middle School in West Monroe, LA) for an understanding of the work conducted in a Middle School Literacy Initiative (MSLI). DeSoto County partnered with Generation Ready in August 2015 to work with three of the district’s 6-8 Grade Title I middle schools (Horn Lake Middle School, Lake Cormorant Middle School and Olive Branch Middle School) to implement their own MSLI.

As a result of the partnership, the percentage of students in the grade level proficient and above grade level proficient groups increased from 38% to 53%. For all schools, DRP scores increased 4.9 DRP levels. Further, the largest growth was seen in students that were severely at-risk with an increase of 7.2 DRP levels.

Area of Focus: Mathematics

Our Generation Ready math consultants worked closely with the school’s leadership team to support the development of units of study, then modeled for and guided teachers as they strengthened their instructional practice in math.

Teachers learned to engage students in standards-aligned curriculum that was differentiated for all learners. The consultants supported teachers in establishing small group work where students collaborated around challenging problems.

We also helped to engage students in cognitively demanding math tasks that required them to demonstrate their ability to model with mathematics and/or construct and explore the reasoning behind arguments to arrive at a viable solution.

As a result of our work, the school received an “A” on the NYC Progress Report and a “Well Developed” for the 2013-2014 Quality Review.

Area of Focus: ELA

P.S. 198 is an elementary school serving a high poverty inner city community in Brooklyn. 94% of the 503 students are from minority (Hispanic and African American) backgrounds. The first Common Core-aligned state tests were administered in 2013 and the results were disappointing, prompting the school to adopt a new curriculum and enlist our help to adapt and supplement the curriculum in order to meet the diverse needs of their students. During literacy instruction, teachers began asking higher order questions and generating stimulating discussions resulting in student engagement in rigorous classroom instruction. All teacher teams were involved in the creation of rubrics for writing standards 1, 2 and 3 as a more effective way of monitoring students’ progress.

As a result of this work, teachers now use the writing rubrics to increase the expectations of the writing they receive from students. Teachers also use more actionable comments when giving feedback to students on writing tasks. With more focused teaching, there was a significant increase in students meeting state standards.