Your top indicators were that it should be data driven and that we should strive for continuous improvement.
At our recent faculty meeting on this subject your groups were asked to respond to the following questions:
- 4a: Are we using data effectively to plan for and deliver intervention strategies. Could we do better? How?
- 4b: How do we keep our "eyes on the ball" as we strive to continually improve our professional practice?
In responding to this feedback, I can offer the following:
- We already do a great deal of tier three intervention work, both as a part of our RTI process and via one-to-one and small group pull-outs throughout the school day. We can probably add more of these, but in order to be able to do so we will need to find additional available staff members and, likewise, time in instructional schedules which can accommodate these additional pull-outs. Not impossible, but perhaps more challenging than we might like in the short term. Nevertheless, we may be able to find additional opportunities to do more tier three interventions this year. And, as we move forward with our RTI intervention and schedule planning for next year, we will keep an eye out for these opportunities as well.
- I believe we're already using multiple indicators when it comes to the data that we use for creating RTI placements, interventions, and especially when we're considering students for special education services. But new opportunities to acquire and utilize data, or to extract and compile data in new ways using the tools we already have are always coming up. As new tools and means become available to us we will be sure to assess their usefulness, and apply them to the work we're already doing with the data we already have.
- There will always be more testing and evaluation to be done for special education services than there will be time in the day to do it. But, I can assure you, we will continue to work hard, as a team, to make this process ever-more efficient and expedient.
For question 4b, many of you expressed similar feelings to those cited above. We are doing great! But several groups felt that opportunities for training in curriculum and best practices were also necessary to help us improve ourselves as professionals in this regard.
I agree with both assessments. We are doing great! But we do need ongoing opportunities to stretch and grow as professionals, to find out what works and what doesn't, and how best to apply it to our students and their learning. And I want to assure you: I will work hard to continue to bring relevant and meaningful training opportunities to you via our job-embedded professional development time once a month. Likewise, as other professional development and training opportunities avail themselves to us I will do my best to bring them to you or send you to them.
