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Granite School District > Superintendent's Office > Sup’s Vlog > Academic Achievement

Academic Achievement

Question – Merit Pay for Counselors

Question – When teachers get paid for their students’ performance, what will be the criteria used to pay counselors for their students’ performance?

Response – You appear to referring to the state’s plan to tie teacher evaluation – and ultimately compensation – to student achievement. The state plan hasn’t been completely formulated yet, but teachers will be accountable for state-mandated test scores, and teachers who do not teach those assessed subjects will be in some way accountable through shared attribution of those test scores or accountable to other sorts of assessment. It is the intent of the USOE to create a system of accountability for all educators that is rooted in academic achievement of students; it is likely that counselors will be included in that system in some way as it is developed.

Question – Reading Specialists

Question – Are Reading Specialists ever going to go back to working with the lowest students in the lower grades? When they started they were there to lower first grade classes during Lang. Arts time. Then they started
working with K, 2nd, and 3rd. Now they are coaches and don’t pull the low kids. I feel we really need them working with the low students and to help lower class sizes during reading time. This would help all students. Thanks for listening.

Answer – When we first instituted reading specialists the funding was restricted to use in first grade and targeted the lowest scoring first graders who were served in a pull-out program. Our reading specialists were very successful at intervening with the most struggling readers in first grade, and we broadened their services to other grades hoping to intervene with older students who still struggled with reading.

Over time and after detailed analysis of reading data, it became apparent that individual students working directly with the reading specialists improved their skills while with the specialist, but were not necessarily able to sustain that learning into the next grades. It also became apparent that, while we were serving the lowest of the low in terms of reading ability with the specialist, many other students remaining in the classroom were also struggling mightily and below level in reading. What we found was that many teachers struggled differentiating reading instruction during “reading time.”  In the context of limited resources, it is clear that the interventionist model is much more resource intensive than the coaching model.  The solution to difficulty with differentiation is not to homogenize learners but to empower educators.  In other words, it is a better use of resources to address best practice in reading instruction for ALL students in ALL grades rather than serve only a limited number of the most at-risk readers. This coaching model impacts more students individually while also building the expertise of our teachers throughout the district who ultimately must be able to differentiate reading instruction for every student in their classes.

Finally, given the successes children are having with the shift to a coaching approach, I do not see us returning to that old pull-out model with our reading specialists.

Thanks to the Teaching and Learning Department for their assistance in responding to this question.

Superintendent Snapshot – PERFECT ACT

Welcome to the latest superintendent snapshot where the superintendent recognizes two special students who received perfect scores on the ACT. If you have a question for the superintendent, please submit it here. Have a great weekend.

P.S. Abraham wasn’t really in an “animal training” course. His outfit was for spirit week at his school.

Superintendent Snapshot – Electronic Textbooks?

All,

Here is the latest superintendent snapshot discussing the future of textbooks. To submit a question to Superintendent Bates for his blog or snapshot, email him at superintendentsblog@graniteschools.org.

Attendance Concerns

Question – I have a student who has been on hot lists for many years. He has been to pre-court hearings every single year and documentation is in his cum folder. He was #1 in our school for the number of days missed by a student, I have been told he missed over fifty days. His mom has outright told me that she can’t make him come to school, and doesn’t know what to do with him.

My concern is that I know this student is headed for dropping out. I know this student is red flagged for grades, for attendance, for social issues, etc. I know that his history shows that he has gone to court several years in a row with no consequences given to his parents or him. I am being told to be patient and let him miss the required number of days. In my mind, this equates to, “let’s wait for this child to fail, then we can help.” If we wait for him to miss more days, he is further behind and closer to dropping out. I want to be proactive and my school day is full of activities that make other students want to come to school. I try talking to him about missing school, but when I tried, his mom told me that me talking about it just embarrasses him and makes him want to attend even less. I am very frustrated because I know this boy is smart, has potential to be college bound, but I just have to sit here and wait for him to fail. Is there a solution to our attendance policies that are allowing students to miss 17 days of school before we take notice and start procedures?

I think if this is fixed, and we start holding parents and/or students accountable for their absences, we will start to see more positive results in student learning and probably even graduation rates.

Response – Attendance works! Student attendance at school is essential. Research shows that students with excellent attendance achieve higher grades and experience more academic success. Excellent attendance is defined as being absent from school less than 5% of the time.

You make a great suggestion about getting this “fixed.”  At this time, the law gives schools and districts few tools to hold students accountable for their attendance (or absence) other than the natural consequence of an impact on grades when objectives aren’t mastered.  Please know that we are as aggressive as possible in referring students to court – where additional accountability tools exist. 

The tools we do have are as follows:  Granite School District attendance policy is designed to encourage students to attend school and to be in compliance with state law (Utah Code 53A-11-101-105). This policy can be found at https://www.graniteschools.org/depart/schoolaccountability/studentservices/attendanceprogram/Documents/Attendance%20Policy%202010-2011.pdf .

Students and their parents have the primary responsibility for being in attendance at school, but as you are aware, this does not always mean the problem is addressed. Granite School District provides a useful tool to help parents in this responsibility to monitor their children’s attendance. This tool is part of the parent’s account in ‘Gradebook’. The tool allows parents to automatically receive word of absences, tardies, missing assignments, and failing scores whenever they occur.

Granite School District is currently piloting ‘Attendance Works’ at several of our schools. ‘Attendance Works’ is a national and state initiative that promotes awareness of the important role that school attendance plays in achieving academic success. The three objectives of ‘Attendance Works’ are:
• 1. Build public awareness and political will about the need to address chronic absence.
• 2. Developing coalitions to advance state and local policies that promote attendance.
• 3. Provide technical assistance and tools to help communities, schools and school districts monitor and work together to address chronic absence.
You can find more information about ‘Attendance Works’ at http://www.attendanceworks.org

Our hope is that through some of these programs, parents will better recognize their critical role in ensuring student attendance for academic success.

Thanks to the Prevention and Student Placement Department for their assistance in responding to this question.