MARSHALL — Site Continuous Improvement Plans for the 2018-19 school year were approved by the Marshall Public School board at its regular meeting on Monday.

“They are a part of our QCOMP plan,” MPS Superintendent Scott Monson said. “I feel like our staff and our administration does a really nice job of putting them together and coming up with relevant goals that will drive what we’ll do. Obviously, they are focused on continuous improvement. They tend to be goals relating to reading, math, the achievement gap and in some cases, things that are relevant to the site, like graduation rate or attention. The administration and site leadership teams do a nice job of putting these together and I think contractually, we need to have these considered and hopefully approved.”

At the preschool level, the district strategic goals are to achieve the goals of the World’s Best Workforce for all students, to increase the academic achievement of all students through effective instruction, a challenging and engaging curriculum and aligned assessment and to identify barriers to learning and provide intervention and support.

The literacy goal is that 72 percent of all 3- and 4-year-old students will be proficient in all language and literacy standards measured by Worksampling Online System Assessment spring language and literacy assessments.

In the Early Childhood report, coordinator Tiffany Teske revealed that in 2017-18, 69 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds were proficient in the spring language and literacy assessments.

The targeted math goal is that 70 percent of all 4-year-old students and 56.5 percent of all 3-year-olds will be proficient in all math standards as measured by the assessments. Teske said that in 2017-18, 67 percent of 4-year-olds and 46 percent of all 3-year-olds were proficient in all math standards.

Having identified the achievement gap last year — 59 percent of the Marshall early childhood non-white students were proficient in the assessments — the goal this year is to have non-white students reach 61 percent proficiency.

Two reading goals were identified for Park Side Elementary students. The first is that the percent of students at each grade level/cohort at or above the normed RIT will increase by at least 3 percent annually as measured by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) spring Math and Reading assessments and that 70 percent of students at each grade level will meet or exceed their growth target as measured by NWEA’s fall to spring growth targets.

The second reading goal is that the percent of students at each grade level cohort who are “reading at grade level” as measured by the Benchmark Assessment (BAS) in the fall will increase by at least 3 percent or 60 percent proficient — whichever is higher — in the spring.

Several key strategies and 15 key activities round out the action plan at the site.

Targeted reading goals at West Side Elementary include:

• 68 percent of third-grade students will score at or above their mean norm RIT scores on the spring NWEA reading assessment, representing an increase of 3 percent from the spring 2018 MAP assessment using 2015 norm scores.

• 70 percent of third- graders will meet or exceed their annual fall to spring growth target.

• 60 percent of fourth- graders will score at or above their mean norm RIT scores on the spring NWEA reading assessment — also a 3 percent increase.

• 70 percent of fourth-grade students will meet or exceed their annual fall to spring growth target.

According to principal James Gagner, student engagement activities to help reach those goals include the 40 Book challenge as well as Book Battles. There are also curriculum alignment to standards and intervention alignments put in place.

At Marshall Middle School, the student performance targets in reading are that 85 percent of students at each grade level will be at or above the mean normative RIT score as measured by the NWEA spring reading assessments and that 70 percent of students at each grade level will meet or exceed their growth target as measured by NWEA fall to spring growth targets.

The reading target at Marshall High School is also being increased by 3 percent, up to 77.84 percent proficiency for ninth-grade students as measured by NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) reading exam. A second goal is for 70 percent of ninth-graders to meet or exceed their annual beginning of class to end of class RIT growth targets.

For 10th-grade students, the proficiency target is 78.3 percent and the RIT growth target is also set at 70 percent.

One key strategy includes district-wide professional development activities. Sheltered Instructional Observation Protocol (SIOP) training and English Language (EL) relating training are key activities specified for that.

There are also focused goals and strategies in math as well as in improvement of graduation rates and reduction of achievement gap.

At MATEC, the reading target is for 56 percent of students in grades 9-12 to score at or above the normed RIT score for their grade level using NWEA MAP reading assessments. Last year, grade 9-11 students had a 63.63 percent proficiency rate.

A second goal set is for 70 percent of MATEC students to meet their fall to spring NWEA reading growth targets.

The board also voted to set a special board meeting date on Nov. 7. While the district is hosting community input meetings, from 6:30-8 p.m. on Oct. 24 and Nov. 7 in the Marshall High School media center, Monson said the special board meeting — scheduled at 4 p.m. on Nov. 7 — would give school board members an opportunity to weigh in regarding MPS’s long-range facilities plan.