DAVENPORT COMMUNITY SCHOOLS DEVELOPS PLANS
TO SUPPORT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

On Thursday, September 27th the Davenport Community Education Advisory Council, a committee within the Davenport Community Schools, sponsored two community sessions to engage parents and community partners in the new Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP) for the Davenport Community Schools. (The CSIP is a multi-year planning document, featuring specific learning goals for students at all levels, and is an important part of accountability as required by the Iowa Department of Education.) Outcomes from the sessions indicated that parents and community members had a significant interest in supporting three specific aspects of the plan:

Goal 1: Increase familiarity of students, families and community partners with district standards and benchmarks through promotion/awareness activities i.e., curriculum nights, resource materials, district website and community outreach.

Goal 2: Expand partnership with community organizations and families through communication, resource coordination, collaborative committees and program alignment with student support services in and out of school.

Goal 3: Create friendly, welcoming environments for families and community at every school and district facility with clearly understood expectations and safety protocols.

During the sessions, the district’s Director of Curriculum and Staff Development, Juli Staszewski, presented the framework of the CSIP which includes specific school improvement activities in six categories: Curriculum, Assessment, Instruction, Student Engagement, Parent and Family Engagement, and Leadership. Participants were asked to comment on specific strategies or add new ideas and concerns in each of these categories, to identify strategies that would have the greatest impact on students that they could best influence. Once the lists were compiled, each participant received three “votes” to award to individual strategies in order to assist in prioritizing the suggested activities. The three concepts listed above emerged as focus areas for the development of a Community Assistance Plan to support the district’s efforts toward school improvement.

According to Julio Almanza, Superintendent of the Davenport Community Schools, the involvement of parents and the community in the district improvement plan is critical to ensure student success for the long term. “Although the district is seeing steady progress in many academic areas and with most of our identified student groups, there are still areas requiring additional support and response,” he notes. Because of these “achievement gaps” that still exist in some subject areas and in some student groups across the district, primarily students with Individual Education Plans (IEP’s – Special Education Students) and our African American students, he explains that the district has been designated as a District in Need of Assistance by the Iowa Department of Education. As of the current year, there are several large school districts across the state of Iowa that have received this same designation – indicating that schools are finding it more difficult to meet the proficiency scores required by No Child Left Behind as the trajectories for improvement become steeper each year through the target date of 2013.

What this means is that the Iowa Department of Education has put together a team of professionals to assist our district in developing an action plan to address the learning needs of students and provided additional support for our local efforts to bolster student achievement, especially among the targeted groups mentioned above. For the past several months – following an intensive site visit by the team from the Department of Education, an audit of instructional practices and resources, research of best practices, meetings including teacher and parent representatives, and analysis of local student data – district leadership and staff have been working on a plan to address these specific needs. This District in Need of Assistance or DINA plan significantly influenced the district’s development of the new long-term CSIP. The two plans dovetail together to provide support for learning goals for all district students, both in the short term and during the next several years.

A copy of the DINA plan is currently available on the district website and is attached. The full CSIP document will be posted on the site as soon as it is approved by the state. (A copy of the CSIP student learning goals is attached.) Both plans focus on parent and community involvement, professional development for teachers in instructional strategies and interventions for students at all levels and abilities, more sophisticated data analysis and assessments, and improved systems for monitoring student progress.

Next steps for the CSIP community sessions will include the development of a “Community Action Plan” to align parent and community resources and support with student needs and learning goals.