Teacher coaching and Saturday school proposed to help McAdams High School rise from F-ratingKaren Fioretti
After earning its second F-rating in a row from the Mississippi Department of Education, McAdams High School is the focus of an intense effort to improve the student and school performance.
The state requires that the district provide a school improvement plan to the MDE, which will assign staff to regularly assess whether the school is making progress, according to Superintendent Bryan Weaver. But in addition to those requirements, the district is focusing its own resources on the effort, as well.
A consultancy will be brought in to coach teachers from October through December, helping them develop their own skills in creating and executing individualized education plans for their students in key academic areas.
The board also approved offering a six-week Saturday school where students can be coached further to improve in core tested subjects.
“This is the district’s way of getting on top of it and being sure we improve McAdams,” said Weaver.
Board Chairman Christy Moody said failure is not an option.
“We are an F-rated school, so everything we can do is mandatory. We cannot be an F-rated school next year,” she said. “We have to do everything we can do to help our children. I want to know that we’ve done everything we can for these students.”
Teacher coaching
The Board approved a $105,000 expenditure Monday night to have Performance Based Education Company, Inc. (PBEC) spend the months of October, November and December coaching teachers on educating students to the level required to meet state standards.
The scope of services provided by the consultants indicates four main goals for the program:
- Provide instructional and assessment coaching, lesson planning, differentiated instruction and resource identification for teachers in the areas of seventh- and eighth-grade ELA and Math, English II, Algebra I, U.S. History and eighth-grade Science.
- Assist teachers with individual student data management.
- Assist teachers in instruction that focuses on student growth.
- Ensure that teachers and administrators utilize the College and Career Readiness Standards to guide instruction.
As part of the contract, the school will have the use of a $20,000 software program that allows administrators and teachers to see where individual students have shown strengths and weaknesses in prior testing. That will allow teachers to develop individual instruction plans for each student, focusing on growing skills in weak areas. It also allows for the input of benchmark testing data so that progress can be tracked for each individual student.
“We will know where each student is and then work on weak areas for each student,” Dr. Dwight Luckett of PBEC told the board. “We know what each student has scored and now where they can realistically go.”
As part of the program, PBEC will also help McFarland plan for follow-up and evaluation of the teachers as they develop the skills needed to advance student learning.
Saturday school
Both the consultancy and new Principal Andrew McFarland endorse the implementation of a six-week half-day Saturday school, particularly during the second semester, where students can receive coaching in tested areas such as Algebra I, English II and both seventh- and eighth-grade English/Language Arts and Math. The school is proposed to run from 8 to 11:30 a.m. on each of the Saturdays.
“We have to provide the opportunity and if they choose not to participate, at least that opportunity was given,” said Moody. “To get the students to come, we need to get the parent buy-in.”
McFarland said that now that the concept has been approved, he will hold a parent meeting and is also looking at incentives for students who attend.
