Marshall School Board OKs school improvement plans
Plans focus on areas like reading and math
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MARSHALL - Marshall public schools brought forward plans this week for helping students improve in subjects like reading, math and science this school year.
Members of the Marshall School Board voted to approve Site Continuous Improvement plans for each of MPS's school sites, from Park Side Elementary up to Marshall High School and the Alternative Learning Center and Career and Technical Institute.
The SCIP plans brought to the school board focus on setting goals for improving student performance in broad areas including literacy, math, science and social emotional learning.
"The principals have spent a lot of time working on putting these together," said Superintendent Jeremy Williams. "Every site has a literacy goal, every site has a math goal and every site has a social emotional learning goal, as the three kind of key areas that we look at."
Williams said at Park Side Elementary, the SCIP included goals like building parent engagement and early language development. The plan also focused on using reading supports for students.
Southview Elementary had "some pretty strong stretch goals in all areas," Williams said. Southview was also looking at a new writing and phonics program for students in grades 3 and 4.
At Marshall Middle School, Williams said there were two literacy targets in the SCIP plan focused on word recognition and reading comprehension. The middle school was also working on implementing new math standards and curricula, and building a new social emotional learning curriculum.
Marshall High School Principal Brian Jones gave board members an overview of the SCIP for MHS.
Jones said MHS's literacy improvement is measured using the Capti reading assessment test, which is given to all students in grades 9-12 in the fall and spring, he said.
"For the purposes of the school improvement plan, we look at reading comprehension, that particular subtest, to measure how our students are doing," Jones said. "And we look at the percentage of students that are above grade level. We've set some targets through our school improvement plan."
Jones said Emily Snyder, one of the teachers who provides reading interventions to students, was working with MHS language arts teachers to incorporate lessons on reading efficiency into language arts classes. Language arts teachers were also going through state READ Act training, he said.
In math, Jones said MHS looks at students' scores on the MCA test given in grade 11. This year, teachers are also in the process of looking at new state math standards.
In science, MHS primarily looks at grade 10 students as they complete a biology course, Jones said. This will also be the school's third year of taking the MCA IV life science test.
"Some areas that our science teachers are always working on are, how to create science to where it's more inquiry-based, more hands-on and just understanding the scientific process," Jones said.
Jones said MHS looks at a variety of measures to assess students' social emotional learning. They include the percentage of students who are passing classes, participation in extracurricular activities, and reductions in chronic absenteeism. Regularly attending school, and participating in clubs or activities, help students develop stronger interpersonal skills, Jones said.