GV BOCES School Improvement
May 2023 Newsletter
News You Can Use
Ringing In The New Professional Learning Year!
Performance-Based Learning & Assessment Discussions Continue
At the April 2023 Board of Regents meeting, the Board received updates on New York State's Graduation Measures Review Initiative, including the Performance-Based Learning and Assessment Networks (PLAN) Pilot and the Graduation Measures Blue Ribbon Commission. The presentation provided information about the project timeline, professional learning activities, and advisory process for recommendations on the PLAN Pilot design as well as an update on the work of the Graduation Measures Blue Ribbon Commission.
Additional information about the Graduation Measures Blue Ribbon Commission, including results of public discussions via ThoughtExchange, can be found on NYSED's Graduation Measures website.
Additional information about the PLAN Pilot, including recordings of recent webinars, can be found on NYSED's PLAN Pilot website.
NYSED Works to Sustain Culturally Responsive Practices
The New York State Education Department in partnership with the Region 2 Comprehensive Center, has created a webinar series highlighting promising culturally responsive-sustaining practices that are being implemented across school districts in New York State.
Please find the following materials now available on NYSED’s Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education website:
Introductory videos (Lester W. Young, Jr., Chancellor and Angelique Johnson-Dingle, Deputy Commissioner for P-12 Instructional Support)
Recorded content videos
Video Viewing Guide (to promote discussion and further professional development)
Continued Professional Learning
The School Improvement (SI) newsletter strives to continue providing professional learning for school administrators, teachers, and staff that fit your district's needs. This section of the newsletter will provide readers with timely and relevant learning aligned with evidence-based practices. If you would like more professional learning on topics outlined in the newsletter, please contact the SI department. Our contact information is located at the bottom of the newsletter. Enjoy!
Preparing for Leadership Institute 2023!
Initial Steps Using Guidance & Recommendations from the State & Federal Level
Reducing rates of suspension, amongst subgroups of students, has increasingly become a priority at the state and federal levels. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) released Recommendations for Reducing Disparities in and Reforming School Discipline in New York State guidance in December 2022. More recently, The U.S.Department of Education (USDE) released Guiding Principles for Creating Safe, Inclusive, Supportive, and Fair School Climates (March 2023). Both documents aim to raise awareness of the disproportionate rate of suspensions for students in various subgroups and offer research-based recommendations to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline as a response to student misbehavior.
The Safe Schools Task Force (SSTF), a group of key stakeholders, was formed in August 2019 to explore issues related to school safety in New York State; feedback from constituents led the SSTF to focus its attention on the use of exclusionary discipline and disproportionate disciplinary practices in schools. Data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) revealed that exclusionary discipline in New York is administered in a biased and inequitable manner, most directly related to a student’s race, presence of a disability, and LGBTQ+ identity; oftentimes, these inequities are intersectional (CRDC, 2019). Further analysis of the data indicates that 23 days of instruction are lost due to out-of-school (OSS) suspension for every 100 students (Figure 7) (CRDC, 2019).
Reducing rates of student suspension from school is a complex issue that requires a multi-faceted approach. One reason why reducing rates of student suspension is difficult is because it often requires addressing underlying issues such as poverty, trauma, and mental health. Pedro Noguera, an education scholar and professor at UCLA, notes, "many of the students who are suspended are coming from families and communities that are struggling with poverty and social dislocation" (2008, p. 25). In order to address this issue, schools may need to provide more resources for students and families, such as counseling services and after-school programs. Additionally, schools may need to focus on creating an inclusive and supportive school culture that promotes positive behavior and reduces the need for disciplinary action.
This can include providing opportunities for students to participate in extracurricular activities, creating a sense of community and belonging, and recognizing and celebrating student achievements. Below are several additional steps that district leaders can take to begin the reform and continuous improvement process around reforming school discipline.
Raise Awareness: Begin stakeholder dialogue with school stakeholders, such as teachers, staff and students. Provide these stakeholders with education on discipline, preventive practices (such as social emotional learning), and mental health literacy. Gathering feedback to inform and guide reform from school constituents.
Engage Parents and Families: Schools should involve parents and families in the decision-making process around disciplinary policies and practices. This can include providing information about disciplinary procedures, seeking feedback on disciplinary actions, and collaborating with families to identify and address the root causes of misbehavior (Skiba, Arredondo, & Williams, 2014).
Data Driven Reform: Experts suggest that using data is an essential component of reform efforts aimed at reducing rates of student suspension. By using data to inform discipline policies and practices, schools can target interventions to address the root causes of misbehavior, track progress towards reducing suspension rates, and hold themselves accountable for creating a positive and supportive school environment. Using data can help schools to identify patterns in discipline and to track progress towards reducing suspension rates. Schools can use data to identify which students are most at risk of being suspended and to target interventions to address the root causes of misbehavior (Noguera, 2019). This can help to create a culture of transparency and accountability around disciplinary practices and can help to ensure that schools are making progress towards reducing suspension rates.
By taking these initial steps, schools can begin to shift toward a more restorative and supportive approach to discipline that reduces rates of suspension and promotes positive student outcomes.
References:
Noguera, P. (2019). Creating the Schools our Children Need: Why What We're Doing Now Won't Help Much (and What We Can Do Instead). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Safe Discipline in New York, 2011-2017: A presentation to the New York State Education Department Safe Schools Task Force presented by Renee Ryberg, PhD, Research Scientist, October 29, 2021.
Skiba, R. J., Arredondo, M. I., & Williams, N. T. (2014). More than a Quick Fix: The Truth About Zero-Tolerance Policies. Educational Leadership, 72(7), 44-49.
School Improvement Spotlights
Evidence-Based, Reading Practices Spirited Dansville CSD
This past spring, special education teachers at Dansville Central School District participated in a five-part overview exploring evidence-based reading instruction to self-reflect on their current instruction provided within the district’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS). The sessions’ overviews explored the five literacy pillars identified in the Report of the National Reading Panel answering the question, “what needs to be taught?” (NICHD, 2000). From the National Reading Panel’s (NRP) review of scientific studies of effective reading instruction, the following essential elements were identified:
Phonemic awareness: Phonemic awareness is awareness of the smallest units of sound in spoken words (phonemes) and the ability to manipulate those sounds. Phonemic awareness falls under the category of phonological awareness, which includes the understanding of broader categories of sounds, including words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Although the NRP identified “awareness” as the goal, subsequent research specifically on orthographic mapping has yielded an understanding that phonemic proficiency is both critical to and a result of orthographic mapping, and it continues to develop throughout the elementary grades (Kilpatrick, 2015).
Phonics: Phonics is a way of teaching that stresses the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences (phoneme-grapheme representations) and their use in reading and spelling.
Fluent text reading: Fluency is reading with accuracy, appropriate rate, and prosody (expression).
Vocabulary: Vocabulary is the understanding of words and word meanings.
Comprehension: Comprehension—the understanding of connected text—is considered an “essential element” of reading, but it is more accurately the goal of reading and the result of mastery and integration of all the components of effective instruction (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008 as cited by Stewart, 2019).
Within each session, participants investigated research findings to bridge theory to practice, explored seminal frameworks and models to identify necessary pedagogy, and gathered a collection of recommendations to enhance instruction. A collection of significant takeaways included:
The “reading brain” oscillates between at least two informational processing pathways and simultaneously uses the existence of orthographic and phonologic units for production (Dehaene, 2009; Burkins & Yates, 2021).
There is a hierarchy of phonological awareness and skills which develop in complexity to phonemic awareness, whereas the maxim is currently perceived as blending and segmenting, leaving manipulation (e.g. adding, deleting, and substituting phonemes) as instructionally helpful/neutral but not essential unless students require additional Tier-2 and/or Tier-3 support (McGuiness, 2006).
Phonics approaches clearly demonstrate an initial delay compared to whole-language approaches, however after additional time intervals, phonics approaches exhibit asymptotic growth of decoding comparatively, whereas whole-language learning actually may cause regression (McCandless, 2006).
An evidence-based reading approach is not solely a heavy-handed dose of phonics, however it does incorporate systematic phonics instruction embedded with language comprehension skills (i.e. developing: background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge) (Scarborough, 2001). When addressing phonics in isolation, there are a variety of approaches to teaching and learning the sound-spelling correspondences of the English language which incorporate: Analytical, Analogy, Synthetic, Linguistic, and Embedded phonics approaches. Currently, “bottom-up,” or grapheme-to-word and sound-to-print approaches, characterized by Linguistic phonics is posited as yielding the highest impact to developing students as decoders (Moats, 2020; McGuinness, 2006).
The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) shows us that if we attempt to work backward to isolate subskills from deficient reading comprehension assessments, we will unlikely be successful. This is due to the fact that “First, reading comprehension difficulties can occur even when a child has excellent language comprehension if they struggle to decode, and vice versa. Second[ly],[...] decoding and language comprehension are both multivariate entities whose components need to be understood in isolation if we are to identify and ameliorate children’s difficulties with reading comprehension.” (Such, 2021, p. 12).
One of the most important aspects to achieve reading comprehension (and the successful demonstration of related sub-skills, such as determining a central-idea/theme) is the possession of background knowledge. As Recht and Leslie (1988), determined (as in replicable studies), “Prior knowledge creates a scaffolding for information in memory. For poor readers, the scaffolding allows them to compensate for their generally inefficient recognition of important ideas” (p.16).
Learning, trialing, and shifting evidence-based practices is an essential component of effective education and instruction. As Wiley Blevins, a reading specialist and author of multiple texts addressing the teaching of phonics, claims: “I find that the best researchers, the best teachers, the best minds in education are people who are always looking and growing, who always admit that they don’t know everything.” He continues recognizing ineffective perspectives and programs are those that “really fight to stay cemented in what they’ve been doing for decades and ignoring new information that we have. [...and…] that’s dangerous.” Praise to the regional teachers willing to learn, grow, and challenge in the name of what’s best for children.
Reminders
Upcoming Professional Learning Opportunities (PLOs)
July
APPR Re-Certification for Lead Evaluators of Teachers (July 2023 Cohort)
Developing Curriculum Part 2: Operationalizing Prioritized Standards
Developing Curriculum Part 3: Deriving Learning Intentions from Prioritized Standards
Developing Curriculum Part 4: Creating Success Criteria Aligned to Learning Intentions
Developing Curriculum Part 5: Designing Tasks to Reflect Success Criteria and Ensure Learning
Online Book Study: The Art & Science of Teaching Primary Reading
CoSer 526 Roll Over
Leadership Institute 2023: Registration and More!
Every year, the Genesee Valley BOCES Professional Learning Services, in conjunction with the Superintendent Instructional Sub-Committee (SISC), plan and design a regional leadership opportunity. The event, well-known as Leadership Institute, will take place at Holiday Valley Resort in Ellicottville, NY, on August 2nd and 3rd. Please click the link below to learn more about the registration process, keynote speaker, event agenda, team accommodations, and much more.
Follow School Improvement on Twitter
Don’t forget that you can follow the School Improvement Team (SIT) on Twitter. The team is often posting information about upcoming professional learning opportunities, educational resources, and strategies for the classroom. You can stay in tune with what is happening at Genesee Valley BOCES and the SIT by following #gvbocessit.
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Location: 80 Munson Street, Le Roy, NY, USA
Phone: 585.344.7923