Academics

Essential actions to meet every student’s social-emotional and academic needs to achieve at grade-level and beyond.

District LeadersSchool Leaders
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Leadership

  • Create a comprehensive academic recovery and renewal plan that ensures that every student has access to instruction and supports that address their diverse social-emotional and academic needs. 
    • Gather input, feedback, and questions from school leaders, teachers, and families by conducting surveys and virtual town halls.
    • Conduct focus groups with families in underserved populations to learn about their experiences and concerns. 
    • Ensure the plan is accessible to all stakeholders by making it available in multiple formats (both digital and on paper), translated into relevant languages, and distributed through diverse channels, including town halls, email, newsletters, social media, and text alerts.
    • Include accommodations for students whose families choose not to send their child to school in-person at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. 
  • Define and socialize a community-wide instructional vision that guarantees every student: 
    • Equitable access to grade-level instruction and high-quality curricula in every subject.
    • Assessments that directly inform instruction and reveal individual students’ strengths and gaps in knowledge and skills.
    • Social-emotional and culturally responsive instruction that emphasizes relationship building, cultivates high-trust classroom environments, and focuses on student identity and strengths.
    • Clear expectations around instructional goals and grade-level proficiencies.
    • Scaffolded supports and interventions that support the acceleration of learning.
  • Ensure equitable learning environments for all students by assessing district and schoolwide systems and structures, approaches to teaching and learning, and community partnerships and supports, using an equity framework such as the BELE Framework.

Instruction

  • Create working groups, primarily made up of teachers, to identify the priority grade-level content, standards, and skills for each grade. Leverage Student Achievement Partners’ resources, such as 2020–21 Priority Instructional Content in English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics, and map priority standards to curricular programs as appropriate.
  • Ensure all schools and teachers have access to high-quality curriculum that is standards-aligned, culturally and linguistically responsive, and offers equitable access to grade-level content and assignments. EdReports provides reports that help to evaluate educational materials. 
  • Review and revise assessment plans to make sure plans are comprehensive, and that all district-required assessments have a clear purpose and inform the allocation of resources to address instructional needs (e.g. additional staff, targeted intervention programs).
  • Ensure that school leaders and teachers are using formative assessments (e.g. screeners, diagnostics, standards-based) to directly inform instruction, reveal individual students’ strengths and areas for growth, and identify any physical or emotional barriers to learning.
  • Survey students throughout the year to gather their feedback and input, assess their social-emotional and academic needs, and adjust instructional and support plans accordingly. Some examples include PERTS Copilot-Elevate Survey and the Tripod 7Cs Student Survey. 
  • Determine which evidence-based, broad-scale interventions to utilize to address unfinished learning and provide students with the requisite skills to engage in grade-level work. 
    • Assess the capacity for in-school interventions (e.g. specific intervention programs and materials, small groups, and one-on-one tutoring).
    • Evaluate the infrastructure and capacity for interventions outside of the school day (e.g. summer school options, extended day, Saturday school, high dosage tutoring, and homework help).
    • Allocate the resources required to implement intervention programs and structures (e.g. funding for additional staff, time, and space outside of school).
  • Evaluate the quality and quantity of services provided to English Learners and students with disabilities and attendance during remote learning to determine where additional resources and services are needed (e.g. counselors, occupational, physical, and/or speech and language therapists).
  • Expand offerings of high-quality summer learning programs that last for at least five weeks, are for multiple age levels, and are mandatory for students in need of additional support to address unfinished learning to be able to engage at grade-level.
  • Provide guidelines and resources to schools to ensure accommodations are made for students whose families choose not to send their child to school in-person at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. Virtual students should have access and be able to engage in grade-level work on the same schedule as in-person students.
  • Help schools and teachers make clear decisions about promotion and support conversations with parents about students’ progress and options.
  • Advocate for stakeholder needs and share concerns about state policies related to high-stakes testing and retention.

Professional Learning

  • Create a professional learning plan that reflects your district’s instructional vision and integrates recovery and renewal priorities into a yearlong PD scope and sequence that helps teachers:
    • Build equity and anti-racist mindsets to ensure equitable learning environments.
    • Gain a thorough understanding of priority grade-level content, standards, and skills for current, prior, and the following grade levels.
    • Provide every student with equitable access to grade-level assignments and strong instruction by scaffolding and accelerating learning.
    • Address unfinished learning and gaps in requisite knowledge and skills.
    • Build teachers’ capacity to embed research-based literacy strategies into the content areas. 
    • Create strong relationships and connections with students and cultivate high-trust classroom environments through Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) and Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
  • Partner with other local districts and learn from national organizations, such as NCTM and NCTE, about what’s working and the research on acceleration strategies and broad-scale interventions. 
  • Revise teacher evaluation frameworks and/or teacher observation protocols to include the effective use of diagnostic data and acceleration strategies to provide equitable access to grade-level content for every student, and the inclusion of blended and online learning strategies where appropriate.

Technology

  • Form a working group composed of representatives from Information Technology and the classroom to set a vision and create a strategic plan for the continuation of educational technology programs, tools, and/or digital resources that meet instructional goals. The group’s work could include, but is not limited to:
    • Complete an audit of tools and digital resources teachers and staff used, valued, and would like to continue incorporating into their practice.
    • Reviewing data to determine which specific programs, apps, and tools improve the quality of teaching and learning, by amplifying instruction, facilitating differentiated learning, expanding opportunities for practice, and increasing student engagement.
    • Continuing support for technology and/or innovative programs that are sustainable and effective (e.g. 1-to-1 computing, accredited virtual learning programs at the secondary level, college guidance and test preparation, etc.). 
    • Mapping the ISTE Standards to the district’s curriculum to ensure students have opportunities to achieve them.
    • Planning sustainable technology learning and training for educators and families to ensure its effective use in pursuit of larger instructional goals.
  • Designate or hire an Education Technology Specialist, if the district does not have one already, who has expertise in both instruction and technology, to support districtwide educational technology programs and tools by overseeing quality-assurance systems and professional learning and training for teachers.

Family Engagement 

  • Develop opportunities and curate resources to help families understand the social-emotional and academic expectations to support their child’s growth from home. Make information about grade-level standards, skills, and mindsets easily accessible and translated into relevant languages.
  • Assess the parent community’s interest in learning instructional strategies for supporting their child’s academic well being and growth at home (e.g. early literacy supports, giving diagnostics) and provide opportunities based on need and interest.
  • Help schools provide parent-friendly, language-appropriate snapshot of every child’s assessment results and classroom work to increase clarity and transparency about their academic progress.
  • Offer guidance to schools and teachers on engaging with parents of children who are at risk of not being promoted. Provide support for school leaders and teachers to have clear two-way conversations with parents about their child’s progress and options.
  • Establish partnerships with community-based organizations to provide tutoring and assist parents to support homework outside of school hours and facilities.

Postsecondary

  • Set an ambitious goal to maximize the percentage of the Class of 2022 that enrolls in a strong postsecondary pathway by Labor Day.  
  • Articulate clear priorities for all faculty members and district/school leaders, who are working with 12th graders, to create the conditions to achieve the targets.
  • Coordinate and collaborate with administrators of local two and four-year colleges to ensure alignment.
  • Create a district or school-level team and designate a person who ultimately is responsible for reaching the set goals. The PRT should include:
    • Anyone who must agree with the recommendations of the leader (e.g. a lead counselor or a budget director)
    • Key stakeholders who can offer unique insights and input (e.g. an educator or head of PTO)
    • Leaders who are critical to moving the work forward (e.g. the leader who owns district or school data systems)
  • Organize a case management team that is responsible for working directly with the Class of 2022 and local college admissions officers to:
    • Determine which data matters most. 
    • Train case managers to initiate new advising relationships.
    • Conduct the first wave of student outreach.
    • Analyze data and articulate priorities to understand, from both the student perspective and the case manager perspective, the projected enrollment rate and the EPSC rate based on institutional outcomes.
    • Identify a manageable list of priority risks that could diminish postsecondary enrollment and affect large percentages of the student population.