Year Two Student Achievement Projects
During the second year teams work collectively, under the tutelage of experienced coach-educators, on a project to improve student achievement in their school buildings or districts.
Projects are an excellent opportunity for participants to integrate and apply the skills they learned during year one of the Institute. It is also an opportunity to build the capacity of instructional teams and provide a tangible benefit to schools and districts. Most projects incorporate complex sets of skills that are interdependent and require high-level coordination.
Some examples of school achievement projects include :
Discipline by the Book
Shenandoah Elementary School
Noble Local School District
By encouraging enforcement of school-wide discipline through creative incentives such as the Accountability Book and the VIP Book, this leadership team reduced behavioral referrals by over 23% and helped to increase short-cycle assessment scores in reading and math.
Math Teams
Union Elementary School
River View Local School District
By breaking kindergarten through second grade classes into smaller learning groups, this leadership team provided more hands-on math practice for each child and contributed to increasing the percentage of third graders passing the Ohio Achievement Test by 17% in one year.
Evidence-Based Teaching
West Elementary
New Philadelphia City Schools
A focus on collaboration, research, and data collection provided this team with the information and buy-in necessary to help improve third and fourth grade math scores and earn a new “Effective” rating for the school.
Triumphing over Adversity
Washington Elementary School
Coshocton City School District
Despite experiencing difficulties implementing a bi-weekly assessment system and learning midyear that the school would be closing in June, this leadership team saw significant performance improvement in third grade math as well as in fourth and fifth grade reading.
Community Involvement
Waterford Elementary
Wolfe Creek Local Schools
District administrators have expressed interest in replicating this team’s successful community outreach effort - employees of AEP and a local bank as well as three retired teachers were recruited to serve as volunteer tutors for struggling third, fourth and fifth graders.
Professional Development
East Elementary
New Philadelphia City Schools
Based on the results of a staff survey, this team utilized trainings, short-cycle assessments, and curriculum mapping to fine tune teaching strategies and significantly improve third grade math scores.
Targeted Student Intervention
Barnesville Middle School
Barnesville Exempted Village School District
Although the ultimate results were mixed, this leadership team successfully implemented an ambitious program of student intervention and enhanced parent-teacher communication that significantly improved the math achievement test scores for many of the school’s least successful students.
Developing a Learning Community
Central Elementary School
Coshocton City School District
The Central Elementary team focused on the goal of creating a positive learning environment through staff lunches, improved teacher/parent communication and committee work to improve internal understanding of issues facing the school, including the upcoming integration of students from Washington Elementary.
