Wooster
Ohio
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Wooster City School District
The Wooster City School’s Board of Education met last October to discuss the Strategic Plan of the district. It was evident that work on the plan had broad-based community input and had taken place many times over many years. The board entertained a recommendation that the district use a cause-and-effect model (logic model) to show how the district will achieve what was suggested as the common theme of all former strategic plans and the state's goal for all districts. The objective is that "All Students Have Higher Achievement Every Year." The logic model was created with that end in mind and showed what strategies lead to this outcome. For each strategy that the board indicated as a priority, buildings created Action Plans.
This fall, the principals are leading staff through a review of those Action Plans to ensure that the initiatives we reflect in those plans are evidence-based and 1) result in congruency of our learning expectations to that for which we hold students accountable, 2) promote the use of data to make decisions about teaching and learning, and 3) provide effective intervention. It's a process of narrowing our focus and honoring what works without heading down a new path. We're using the fourth R - Reflection to make certain we have appropriate Rigor (aligned learning expectations), Relevance (assessment data-based decisions), and Relationships (interventions that produce results).
Teams in each building have begun reviewing the evidence and are successfully implementing new systems of support for all learners - no matter what their exceptionality. One positive outcome of the meetings are the systems of support for classroom teachers, too. We know that these opportunities for professional collaboration are a common element in the highest performing schools in the world. At our board meeting on September 27th, a proposal to grant two full days of professional development were approved. Our goal is to arrange structured conversations for Monday, November 28th and Friday, April 16th. Data indicates that these days, the Monday after Thanksgiving and the day many observe as Good Friday, have low student attendance.
In the meantime, each grade level, team or department is meeting to share what we know and building upon the collective pedagogical (teaching) expertise of our highly qualified staff.
This fall, the principals are leading staff through a review of those Action Plans to ensure that the initiatives we reflect in those plans are evidence-based and 1) result in congruency of our learning expectations to that for which we hold students accountable, 2) promote the use of data to make decisions about teaching and learning, and 3) provide effective intervention. It's a process of narrowing our focus and honoring what works without heading down a new path. We're using the fourth R - Reflection to make certain we have appropriate Rigor (aligned learning expectations), Relevance (assessment data-based decisions), and Relationships (interventions that produce results).
Teams in each building have begun reviewing the evidence and are successfully implementing new systems of support for all learners - no matter what their exceptionality. One positive outcome of the meetings are the systems of support for classroom teachers, too. We know that these opportunities for professional collaboration are a common element in the highest performing schools in the world. At our board meeting on September 27th, a proposal to grant two full days of professional development were approved. Our goal is to arrange structured conversations for Monday, November 28th and Friday, April 16th. Data indicates that these days, the Monday after Thanksgiving and the day many observe as Good Friday, have low student attendance.
In the meantime, each grade level, team or department is meeting to share what we know and building upon the collective pedagogical (teaching) expertise of our highly qualified staff.