Clover Park School District announcement.
Take a peak into CPSD classrooms and you will see teachers and students engaged in learning about various subjects, from math to science, reading to foreign language, and to one of the many career and technical education courses offered. What may not be visible are the challenges and barriers each student faces as they strive to excel academically.
The COVID-19 pandemic shone a glaring light on the social emotional and mental health challenges students face as they navigate school, social media and the world around them.
“We know that students who are struggling with social emotional or mental health challenges can be, and oftentimes are, the same students who are struggling academically,” said Director of Teaching and Learning Suzy Kontos.
To support the whole child, CPSD has implemented a framework, Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), to support both the academic and social emotional needs of our students. This framework incorporates teaming of school and district staff and data analysis as a system of prevention. This framework works in alignment with district efforts to provide equitable access and inclusionary practices for all students and the development of professional learning communities in our schools to support effective instruction and student growth.
As part of the MTSS framework, each school is creating a matrix for common behavior expectations to build strong learning communities and meet academic growth goals. Additionally, school leadership teams use data analysis to manage and ensure implementation of effective instruction, as well as monitor growth for students receiving academic and social emotional learning support.
All schools have determined academic or learning goals through their School Annual Action Plan (SAAP). They use a universal screener to monitor students’ academic and social emotional progress that takes place three times a year.
The MTSS framework has three tiers of support for students.
Tier 1 level of support are provided to all students to build a strong educational foundation. This includes using quality curriculum and instruction for all students, as well as monitoring academic progress and growth. Students are provided equitable access to their education through culturally responsive inclusionary practices, which means that we consider a student’s customs, characteristics, experiences and perspectives to help plan instruction.
Tier 2 level of support provides students who need additional help with classroom interventions and resources to meet their academic and social emotional needs, as well as progress monitoring based on the individual needs of the student.
Tier 3 level of support provides the most individualized assistance for students using specialized systems and collaboration. MTSS teams meet to discuss resources and supports needed for students who face significant challenges throughout their school day. The team focuses on the strengths of these students to better understand what universal supports can be provided for each student, and their progress is monitored daily.
Each school identifies building resources available within each tier of support and creates a resource map. Schoolwide teams will use these resource maps to match student needs with supports and interventions available.
MTSS teams meet once a week to review data and make modifications as needed. Evidence-based practices are examined through data outcomes and changes are made to support the school, grade levels and content areas using a continuous improvement cycle.
Multiple pieces of data are reviewed, which include an academic screener from the Star Assessment for students in grades K-8. This data is transferred to the Freckle program that students use online, which allows students to work at their current level in both math and English language arts. Teachers also use the student’s data to guide small group instruction. State assessment data is used to outline the school’s instructional priorities.
Schools use data to monitor students’ social emotional health using both an annual Center for Educational Effective survey and a student perception social emotional health screener, as well as the review of student attendance and discipline referral data.
Carter Lake Elementary School uses the MTSS framework to support its school’s academic, social emotional and family engagement goals. Grade level teams implement district curriculum and professional learning community (PLC) teams to analyze data and plan instructional next steps to support all students academically.
To build community and strengthen social emotional learning, students are recognized at SOAR (safe, on task, awesome attitude and respect) assemblies, and the school has implemented class circles and student listening sessions.
To support family engagement, Carter Lake focuses on clear communication and holds family events during the year to showcase learning and incorporates learning activities for families to complete together. The school has also implemented listening sessions with families and invites parents to be a part of the school’s site council and family engagement committee.
School used to be a place where a kid learned that life isn’t fair; you gotta work hard; you gotta complete the work; and you gotta have thick skin.
All this special accommodation stuff doesn’t seem to be working out well for anyone.
I see anger and resentment in place of confidence and appreciation.
I think this is a wonderful multilevel approach to helping kids through school. Do you also have diagnostic testing for EIDs? My granddaughter had dyslexia, a reading difficulty and the teacher told her mother that she was dumb! A family friend payed for reading therapy through high school for her and she is fine now. My older sister had the same type of problem. She was very carefully tutored by our mother and now reads all the time for fun. Reading and math problems are a sure deterent to a child’s future happiness and vision of their self worth.
Also, getting the parents personally involved is crucial.
Go CPSD!
I believe that Brian hit the nail on the head. The public school system is ensuring that our young, once they go on the post-secondary educational institutions, will demand and require the same m e, or greater, level of coddling and “safe space” provisioning. The world, our nation included, is a challenging environment, with increasingly hostile competitors. My fear is that we are developing a significant portion of this newest generation to go forth into that world without the necessary attitudes and tools to make the changes it desires…they are doomed to engage in the battle, unarmed.
“Peak”? How about “peek”: “a quick or furtive look.”
The “whole child” isn’t the responsibility of the District: it is the primary purview of the parents, family, friends, neighbors and churches. The District’s job is to educate our children not psychoanalyze them, a task for which they are ill prepared and professionally unqualified. Don’t just blame parents for this phenomenon! For the last several decades the public education industry has managed bit by bit to increasingly isolate parents from their children’s education.
So how’s this “word salad” of charts and tiers and inclusion and cultural competence and social emotional learning, etc. etc. etc. working out for the District academically? Not so good at 27.9 percentile among all districts in Washington: 72.1% of schools do better than CPSD!
Yes COVID had a role to play but more in the way of exacerbating a District headed in the wrong direction to begin with…with the exception of a few schools (4 of which are on JBLM) that improved since 2016.
Children, especially those going through puberty (8th graders have the highest discipline rates for example) are stressed: it’s a normal part of growing up and part of the educational experience. “Culturally responsive discipline” (race based discipline) isn’t the solution: it’s part of the problem. Just take a look at crime rates in “soft-on-crime” locales to see the impact and the stress that is generating in the population at large.
Adding to that stress, unnecessarily, are the educational professionals who have turned their children’s young lives upside down as though trying to work through unresolved adult issues through children. Gender fluidity, homosexuality, pronouns, anti-racism-racism, CRT, EDI, sex education, anti-police and other authority figures, denigrating our Country, blaming history on the current generation, the lack of value of the unborn, making masculinity toxic, drugging normal childhood behavior, something for nothing society, circumventing the rule of law, moral equivalency, anti-religion, secularism, group identity tribalism, regressive-ism masquerading as “progressive-ism”, situational morality, letting the “exceptions rule” rather than ruling by exception, etc. etc. etc. Go ahead and destroy the very institutions and belief system that underlie society, casting these children adrift from their foundational underpinnings and see if you don’t breed generations of children who are becoming as confused and irresponsible, indeed stressed, as those alleged adults who should be their role models.
A child’s education should be challenging not effortless and uninspired. It’s a lesson about life. Rather than attempting to provide a stress-free environment they should be taught how to deal with stress as part of their growth process. It almost appears that the District has focused on graduating students in a stress-less environment, feeling good about themselves who can’t read, write, do math or understand the politically correct “scientific” absurdities that are part of today’s political indoctrination.
This shift from academics to the “whole child” is a shift from objective measurement and accountability to one of subjective measurement and no accountability. As such, it more serves the needs of teaches, staff and Boards than it does students and parents.
Lakewoodcares.org
info@lakewoodcares.org
Third word in this Clover Park School District announcement = “peak”…..which can mean:
+ NOUN – the pointed top of a mountain.
+ VERB – reach a highest point, either of a specified value or at a specified time.
+ ADJECTIVE – greatest; maximum.
Similar-sounding words:
peak is sometimes confused with peek
Just thought I would ed-u-micate someone.
THAT was your takeaway from John’s heartfelt article that is the resounding opinion of any critical thinking American that cares about the future generation? All you need to do is watch the news showing the stats on juvenile crime that is insanely higher than it’s ever been to realize that our children are on the wrong track.
after reading this 3 times, I am more confused than ever. is all this for every, individual student. If so, most will be graduated before the job is done. Also, even though you don’t say it, I read discrimination going on. Not saying any more about that. because the more said, the worse discrimination gets. because, actually your are trying to placate one or two races.
“Each student strive[s] to excel academically.”
Does that sound like a focus on equity?
Only if race/ethnicity is the important component of who gets what in the way of support. This is the key sticking point on the use of the word “equity”. The moment it is defined as “equal outcomes for ‘marginalized’ groups based upon race or ethnicity” you’ve crossed into Marxist critical theory based not on economics but rather skin color. If indeed skin color doesn’t matter why the emphasis in EDI policy?
Same theory just different groups. One only has to read the District’s EDI policy to see that it is focused on race/ethnicity. Rather than focusing on the “whole child” the District should consider focusing on the “whole school”. Rather than EDI I think Equality of opportunity, Individualism not “group-ism”, and Unity not diversity are better aligned with the US’ experience.