Closing Opportunity Gaps: One School’s Path to Being Recognized for Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing!by Keith Ruffolo, Principal, Cedar Hills Elementary In 2019, Cedar Hills Elementary School was recognized as a Blue Ribbon Award winner for exemplary achievement gap closing by the US Department of Education. This article outlines seven themes that lay at the heart of our school's progress. For each theme, I have included links to example documents that help illustrate our work in that area. Shared Leadership The Oak Creek-Franklin Joint School District uses a shared leadership structure that begins at the district level leadership to the building leadership teams to school improvement goal teams to our student learning teams. This allows for all staff to be focused and meaningfully engaged in our district and school improvement with all the arrows pointing in the same direction. Focused School Improvement Following the district strategic plans and school improvement goals, we worked to create a focus strategy for each goal that would help move us towards accomplishing our goals. Each year we worked to create a visual that was posted in every classroom to help remind not only staff but students what we were focused on as a school. Here is what they looked over time:
Capacity Building Cedar Hills Elementary has embraced capacity building as a strategy for success so that staff feel confident and supported with any initiative through providing professional development, collaboration time, and financial resources. Here are some areas of focus that capacity building was provided:
Continuous Improvement We use continuous improvement structures, strategies, and mindsets in our school and district from the district office down to the classroom. It involves the following:
Social-Emotional Learning At Cedar Hills, we have implemented a variety of strategies, structures, and mindsets around social-emotional learning.
Curriculum During our Student Learning Team meetings, we focused on our instructional planning starting with the learning requirements. We created assessments and instructional practices that directly aligned back to the learning requirements. We also choose high leverage instructional strategies to implement. Here are some examples:
Universal Screening We created systems and structures using our universal screener (STAR Renaissance) and secondary assessments (Fast Bridge) to identify students who needed the most support and determined the most appropriate interventions in reading or math. We also created time and space for all stakeholders (Principal, Learning Coach, School Psychologist, Special Education teachers, English Language teacher, and classroom teacher) to collaborate and plan what intervention and who would best serve to deliver the intervention. We then focused on using scientifically research-based interventions delivered by the classroom teacher, English language teacher, special education teacher, or Learning Coach, with fidelity as part of our master schedule. Here are some examples: Lastly, the final section of the Blue Ribbon application asks, “what is the one strategy or practice that led to your success?” Our staff unanimously stated one word, community! At Cedar Hills, we have a family-first mindset that focuses us supporting each other through the challenges and successes we experience through taking on new initiatives or supporting staff and students. Our vision statement, You Belong Here!, can be seen and felt throughout Cedar Hills as referenced by regular comments/actions by students, staff, families, and visitors to Cedar Hills.
Elementary Edition - Secondary Edition - District Level Edition |
