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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Instruction

  • Ensure teachers build relationships with students and cultivate high-trust classroom environments where students feel they belong. Promote the thoughtful integration of Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into teachers’ practice, and engage in emphatic teaching that is emotionally attuned and culturally sensitive to students’ needs, experiences, and interests.
  • Ensure teachers understand the priority standards, requisite skills, and content for their current, prior, and the following grade-levels. Support them to leverage Student Achievement Partners’ resources, such as 2020–21 Priority Instructional Content in English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics.
  • Ensure teachers are using formative, diagnostic, and curriculum-embedded assessments including one-on-one conferences and advisories, purposefully and effectively, to:
    • Deeply understand individual students’ strengths and areas for growth.
    • Uncover gaps in knowledge and skills and any unfinished learning.
    • Diagnose student progress against the highest priority prerequisite knowledge and skills for priority content.
    • Identify any physical or emotional barriers to learning.
    • Reflect on the effectiveness of their instructional practice.
  • Ensure all teachers are engaging every student in priority grade-level work and providing equitable instruction to support students in completing grade-level assignments and receiving high-quality curriculum.
  • Provide teachers with the resources necessary to address unfinished learning by scaffolding and accelerating instruction using evidence-based practices, such as just-in-time supports and flexible mixed-age grouping. Teachers should focus on accelerating, not remediating or covering the prior year’s curriculum. 
  • Identify students in need of additional support and targeted interventions and allocate resources and implement structures to support them, both inside of school (e.g. additional staff, programs, time for flexible groups) and outside of the regular school day (e.g. summer school, extended day, Saturday school, and high-dosage tutoring).
  • Assess the capacity of instructional support staff (e.g. co-teachers, paraprofessionals, teacher leaders, teacher residents) to help students in need of additional support with unfinished learning in small groups or one-on-one. 
  • Identify students in need of additional support for unfinished learning to attend district summer learning programs that last for at least five weeks.

Special Populations

  • Revise IEPs, IFSPs, and 504 plans in coordination with general and special education teachers to reflect the child’s needs based on assessment data and parent feedback, and design accommodations and services accordingly. 
  • Ensure that English Learners are provided with linguistically and culturally responsive instruction that takes into account their language proficiency and affords them opportunities to engage in grade-level content through leveraging their home language(s), cultural assets, and prior knowledge. 
  • Plan to accommodate students whose families choose not to send their child to school in-person at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. Designate or hire a sufficient number of staff members to teach groups of students virtually.

Professional Learning 

  • Provide adequate time for teachers to work together in teams to: 
    • Explore and unpack equity issues and their impact on student learning.
    • Understand the priority grade-level content, standards, and requisite skills for their current, prior, and following grade-levels, and communicate across grade-level teams.
    • Share strategies for using diagnostic assessment data to support all students to engage in grade-level content, and understand each student’s strengths and areas for growth.
    • Identify students in need of additional support and targeted interventions.
    • Share knowledge and ideas about acceleration and scaffolding strategies to equitably address students’ unfinished learning with attention to students with disabilities, English Learners, and students who experienced barriers to remote learning and those with challenges that continue to impact their learning.
  • Learn from other local districts and national organizations, such as NCTM and NCTE, about what’s working and the research on acceleration strategies and targeted interventions.

Technology

  • Create space for teachers to debrief the value of remote-learning programs, practices, tools, and resources. 
  • Assess 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.
  • Develop a schoolwide educational technology plan that includes programs, tools, and digital resources that effectively address larger instructional goals, have a clear purpose, are sustainable, and move students towards ISTE standards.
  • Ensure teachers have access to professional learning and teacher training for the implementation of technology-based programs or instructional strategies.

Family Engagement

  • Establish structures and protocols for teachers to engage in regular, continuous, two-way communication with parents about the social-emotional and academic well being of every child. Consider using inventories where parents can share their observations about their child’s strengths, areas of growth, and interests.
  • Create systems for teachers to track communications with parents to ensure they are in contact with every parent at least once a quarter.
  • Provide information about grade-level expectations including standards, skills, and mindsets, that is easily accessible, parent-friendly, and translated into relevant languages. Offer guidance about how parents can help their child establish good work habits, routines, and time management. 
  • Partner with the PTA and other community-based organizations to provide opportunities for families to learn how they can support their child’s academic well being and growth at home (e.g. early literacy supports, giving diagnostics). 
  • Provide structures and protocols for teachers to engage with parents of children 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.