EPortfolio - Part 2 Blog

The Leadership Disposition for this course is ” LD #10: utilize data to make school improvements to benefit all stakeholders.” My initial thinking around this Leadership Disposition was surface level, I had a conception of the role of data in making a school improvement, but less knowledge about the concrete steps and process of actualizing a school improvement plan in this way. The goal that I set was: As measured by CMAS writing test scores teachers will implement three times per year interim writing assessment cycle and utilize the data to determine skill gaps, and reteach writing skills with intentional grouping strategies. Teachers will be able to implement this intentional grouping in their classrooms, and execute a re-teaching strategy based on the data analysis of their student’s interim writing assessments. 

In order to accomplish my goal, I first worked with ELA teachers at my school to develop, and implement a 3 times annual interim writing assessment with all students. The assessment was modeled after CMAS writing tasks, and was blind graded by ELA teachers using the CMAS rubric provided by the state of Colorado for this portion of the test. (photos on right). Next, I planned to write and facilitate professional development sessions with ELA teachers around the analysis and ensuing instructional strategies of the student writing data. Next, teachers participated in this professional  learning, and  were able to target individualized skill gaps in their grade level. By grading, and then analyzing individual student writing, they were able to identify what writing skills students needed to be re-taught and practiced further. Teachers selected students to intentionally group for re-teaching in each of their classes .

Finally, In order to reach my goal, I repeated this cycle of interim writing assessment, professional learning around analysis and teaching strategies to implement from the resulting student data, observation and feedback of teachers implementing their re-teaching plans, and then re-analyzing student work. 

Through implementing this plan I have experienced a lot of success, measurable growth, and impact. First, I was able to measure growth from our middle school students between the writing assessments. Each grade saw a significant score growth on the writing assessment based on the CMAS rubric.

This is a foundational example of Domain 3- Instructional Practices from “Transforming Professional Practice. (Strike et al., 2024) This domain focuses on a leader’s responsibility to closely monitor curriculum, and assessment practices and use the evidence to guide further student learning needs. Furthermore, Domain 3 also defines a leader’s role in working with teachers to adjust instruction based on this evidence (Strike et al., 2024).This is exactly the route I took, and found great success collaborating with teachers in this way. 

An area that I strive to improve in is in the professional development opportunity fo teachers in 8th grade ELA. This grade saw the lowest growth overall from the three. I planned and facilitated a subsequent professional learning opportunity aimed at helping teachers identify, and plan instruction to address the relevant skill gaps. However, this professional learning and strategy was challenging to develop at this level of student learning (8th grade) where their overall proficiency was higher, but growth was still needed.  Although this effort does align directly with Domain 7 from Strike et al.’s text, I desire to grow more in the area that the text explains around building collaborative learning communities, and using evidence to better guide teacher growth, and therefore student achievement (Strike et al., 2024)..

I will continue my growth in Leadership Disposition #10 “utilize data to make school improvements to benefit all stakeholders” through continuing one more cycle of assessment, data analysis, professional learning with staff, and adjusted instructional strategies through our CMAS exam. In doing so, I will continue to hone the skills I have identified here, and practiced throughout this course. I will see through the change initiative with my staff, and be accountable to executing all the parts of this plan that were articulated from the beginning. I will also continue to grow in this leadership disposition after receiving the final CMAS results, and analyzing them to determine the effectiveness of this plan. Utilizing the growth plan tools found In Appendix B of Strike et al’s text, I can have context and resources to plan the next steps to continue to develop this Leadership Disposition, and grow student achievement at GALS (Strike et al., 2024). 

References 

Transforming Professional Practice: A Framework for Effective Leadership

Strike, K. A., Sims, P. A., Mann, S. L., & Wilhite, R. K. (2024). Transforming professional practice: A framework for effective leadership (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.