Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Performance Monitoring Committee Meeting, Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 1h 09m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1079976457?rel=0

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:09] - All right, good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order this April 29th meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee. My name is Arben Estreffi, and I'm the chair of this committee. I'm joined by Ms. Chernoff, as well as Chair Mansfield. Go ahead and start with any public comment, if there is any for this evening.

[00:00:27] I don't believe so. So we'll move on to the 3.01, approval of the draft minutes from the March 18th meeting. Board members, are there any comments or updates to the meeting minutes? I'll go ahead with a motion.

[00:00:44] I move to approve the draft meeting minutes for the March 18th, 2025 meeting. Do I have a second? - Second. - Seconded by Ms. Chernoff. It has been probably moved and seconded. Any discussion?

[00:01:00] Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor of approving the meeting minutes, say aye. - Aye. - Aye. - That motion will pass unanimously. Meeting minutes have been approved and we'll move on to our information items. Starting with 4.01, Department of Academics, Goal 4 Aligned Actions, and now we'll hand it off to Dr. Ellis.

[00:01:21] Thank you, Chair Estreffi. I am actually going to turn this over to Dr. Single, who was not supposed to be here, but we are glad she's here today, and she is our supervisor of strategic planning and will give us an update on our Goal 4 metrics.

[00:01:38] Good evening, Chair Estreffi and members of the board. As is part of our regular cadence to present our strategic plan metrics to you each month, This month we are presenting on goal four. So in board docs, you have a copy of our metrics that go along with our aligned actions around community engagement, business partnerships, as well as communications.

[00:02:02] If you have had a chance to take a look through the metrics, you'll notice that we have seen improvements in the data over the past year. still working really hard to improve and work on metrics where we have not seen necessarily improvement or have met our target.

[00:02:20] But I do want to give you an opportunity to ask questions around the metrics, if there are any. Members? Yes. I'm going to have a couple of comments, things that I picked out and noticed.

[00:02:37] I just wanted to, it's really exciting when you see action that meets data. and I've really zoned in on metric 4.2a about business partnerships because I feel like seeing that translation from the workforce summit and just an absolute push towards making that a priority and then you see that huge increase I just feel like that's so encouraging because that's actual action to move the data which is what we want to see and on the flip side of that I just and I know community engagement isn't here tonight but like metric 4.1a with positive results on

[00:03:12] family survey it just seems like we sort of stalled out at 84 percent we keep increasing the goal but it's not rising yet and 84 percent is great i'm not like trying to harp on it i just wonder what kinds of things internally happen when you see that across a couple of years where you don't see a change how does that then get prioritized into action um don't know if that's an answerable question right now or just something to to get back to on but i would love to see that number continue to grow um but was very encouraged by by most of the data thank you and i do want to um

[00:03:47] just introduce some guests in the back of the room um from communications and community engagement thank you for being here tonight um miss dawson and miss salgren appreciate you being here they snuck in at the last minute so kind of uh with miss shirnoff so i mean when you're talking about surveys and things like that there's kind of a according to research only a certain percentage really, I mean, I would say 84 is really a good percentage for a survey. And so I don't know if 94

[00:04:22] is reasonable, honestly, because do we ever, according to research, get that 100%, 96? I mean, I don't know how reasonable that is. So I don't know that we would ever get to 100% on anything, but we do have some survey responses that are in the fairly low to mid-90s or so. So it is possible for some growth. That particular metric is actually comprised of multiple survey items.

[00:04:50] It's an index. So as they kind of come together, some may change in different ways. So it's really just a matter of trying to bring them all up into that higher rate. But yes, you're correct. An 84% is certainly a good positive response on a survey, but it's always the opportunity to go from good to

[00:05:07] great. So any other comments or questions? Seeing none. We get to move on to 4. 02. All right.

[00:05:31] the Department of Student Services multi-tiered system of supports, and then I believe is Mr. John Lodi, as well as Dr. Stephanie Lopola, Melissa Logan, and Ms. Jennifer Short, announced everyone.

[00:05:51] I don't know who wants to start off. Thank you, Mr. Estreffi. You've actually accomplished one of our tasks, which is to introduce our panel, so I appreciate that efficiency. And Dr. LaPaula and I will briefly set the stage on MTSS from the last time we met in March during a work session.

[00:06:12] Then we will transition to our school teams who will give you their lived experiences with the multi-tiered system of support. We've also provided two sets of documents in board docs. The first set is division-wide data snapshots that highlight both implementation and outcome data from last year.

[00:06:36] It's the same type of data we share with all of our schools in the support of this work. The second document set is school-level data on the percentage of students who receive tiered intervention year-to-date for this year.

[00:06:53] So, for slide three, thank you. Our school board presentation from last year is linked here, so it provides a lot more detail than what we plan to share with you today.

[00:07:08] But I want to highlight a few things related to MTSS. First, connected to the instructional framework, which outlines our shared vision for effective instruction, the MTSS framework provides a vision for early systematic assistance for students who are struggling.

[00:07:27] And MTSS is a core strategy within our school board strategic plan and provides for holistic support to meet the needs of every learner. I do want to emphasize that MTSS is based in educational science.

[00:07:45] To quote one aspect of this, John Hattie's book, Visible Learning, was published based on meta-analysis. meta-analysis is just simply the aggregation of many studies looking at a particular point of interest. What visible learning has demonstrated, which incorporates over 50,000 studies and a quarter billion students that were studied on the influences of student achievement, response to intervention was the third highest variable of influence on student achievement.

[00:08:23] so we know this stuff works. All right, slide four, if you will. This evidence-based framework is comprised of four integrated and essential components that promote student success. First, screening is the universal process to assess student achievement, and equally important to identify students who are at risk of not meeting their end-of-year learning outcomes and goals.

[00:08:53] Generally, students who are at risk in the screening process are administered additional assessments to pinpoint learning gaps and identify appropriate interventions. This service delivery model leverages multiple tiers of support matched to the student's level of need.

[00:09:13] Tracking student progress towards academic goals is essential as this practice leads to higher student achievement, and helps us with evaluating the effectiveness of what we are doing. All of these components work together with a database-driven making process to determine student need, risk levels, and this drives ultimately the appropriate supports for our students.

[00:09:44] Slide five, please. So, the prevention framework is tiered. For efficiency purposes, resources and supports are layered and increasingly intensified based on the level of need.

[00:10:00] Now, we know not all students respond to first instruction alone, and that is 80% of our students will effectively respond to high-quality core instruction without the need for intervention.

[00:10:15] Tier 2, approximately 15% of our students who have a similar learning need can be grouped together to receive a targeted common intervention that is supplemental to Tier 1 support they receive.

[00:10:34] And then in Tier 3, approximately 5% of our students who have severe or persistent needs require more individualized approaches to meet their needs. Now, with that said, as you will see later, not all of our schools show the same breakdown of risk.

[00:10:52] This creates resource challenges, and we're going to speak to that this evening. And I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Impala, who will move us along. Thank you. And I'm going to transition into how we are supporting our schools from the division level and share some high-level data with you that we're seeing so far.

[00:11:13] at the end of April. You have the breakdown of all the schools in your handout, but I wanted to share some intervention trends that we're seeing thus far. So we have a team of 10, counting myself at the division level, and what we do each year is we tier schools based upon implementation and outcome data, and what you can see on the slide is the type of supports that we provide to schools based upon their entry point. We also use this in tandem with their goals and actions within their school improvement plans.

[00:11:45] So we help schools look at their data to help drive instructional and intervention decisions. We help provide school-based professional learning based upon areas of emphasis identified by the school. We conduct site visits and walkthroughs with leads at the schools and more and more and more.

[00:12:02] We are supporting team meetings. We are spending full weeks sitting alongside our schools in CLTs at the elementary level and ITs at the middle school level to help them make sense of their screening data to help guide some of those instructional and intervention decisions.

[00:12:21] So as you are aware on the next slide, I'm gonna highlight the MTSS module, and that is the place, the tool, that we have adopted as a division for documentation. And it has turned out to be a solution for our student reading plans as we received all of the information from the Virginia Literacy Act in terms of what needed to be included within those plans, we were able to make our system fit that, that we would be in compliance with the law and not have to use a different operating system.

[00:12:53] What has been nice is that this is in our second year of implementation across the division and we have made substantial changes to the module to help gain efficiencies, things such as creating data sinks for our most commonly used progress monitoring tools such as Lexia and FastBridge.

[00:13:12] And we were able then to allow our schools to progress monitor and not have to enter that data into the system. We've also been able to import scores that are required as part of the student reading plan into test history so that schools do not have to type those into the system as well.

[00:13:29] We've created a host of resources to help support the process, but it is not without us needing to re-examine that. At the end of every year, and we are working closely with the vendor to continue to make changes. A big highlight and win for us this year, too, was that our plans can now be translated into every language, which means that they are accessible to our entire family community.

[00:13:53] The next slide, I just pulled this data today, not what is up here, that was obviously, I would not be telling the truth, that was pulled on 422. What I'm about to say is I did pull to see how many students have received intervention. 14,398 students or 17% of our students have received intervention at some point during the school year.

[00:14:15] Some may have exited from intervention, some may still be in intervention, but we are in a really unique position at the end of the year when we close out our plans to be able to look at our outcome data and fully know how our students responded to these interventions.

[00:14:31] So I don't have the outcome data at this time 'cause many of our plans are still open until the conclusion of the year, but I will have that likely end of May, very beginning of June. What you're looking at on this slide is according to the four areas of concern in which we provide intervention, these are the numbers and corresponding percentage of students that have received intervention at some point in the year.

[00:14:57] The next slide gives a breakdown of the areas within the areas of concern for which they're receiving intervention. So there are more learning gaps that fall within these four areas, but what I did was I just pulled the top three.

[00:15:13] And these are the top three reasons, if you will, why students are receiving intervention in these areas. The next slide tells you then the top three interventions by need.

[00:15:28] So again, these are the top three interventions that students have received. There are more, but again, just wanted to highlight the ones that are being used most frequently. So what I'm going to do now is I'm gonna transition conversation over to Frederick Douglass and Sterling Elementary to share how share information about what this looks like at the school level I'm Jen short the principal at Sterling Elementary as we were planning for this evening in our discussions we realize our processes are very similar so we're going to jointly share with you our processes and then we will individually share out our data

[00:16:08] with you okay as we prepare to work with our staff in you know really meeting every student's needs it's important that we are always looking to identify intervene and monitor any student who is not responding to core differentiated instruction and in order to do so we collect data from a variety of sources we compile the data and there are samples from our schools you can see Frederick Douglass sample at the top and ours sterling elementary at the bottom of how we bring that data together so that when we meet with our teams we have it all in one spot and we can get a quick look we do utilize apps such as click

[00:16:43] where we are able to import the data and really focus in on exactly what we need it to look like. If you move into the next slide, please, this gives you an overview of the process of our data meetings. You have a snapshot of each of our agendas from the winter data meetings.

[00:17:00] Spring data meetings have occurred, but this was prepared prior to those. And our purpose in this time together is really to dig into that data, to make sure we know exactly where every child is and exactly what their needs are. What are they doing really well with, and where do they need additional support?

[00:17:17] You have a sample on the left of the data that we review, and some of those you also saw on the slide that Stephanie showed to you. If you go into slide 14, this will give you a little overview of our data meetings in particular.

[00:17:34] So at Frederick Douglass, currently, they're holding full-day data meetings. We've transitioned from the full-day to the half-day data meetings at this point, and During that time, the grade-level teams come together, so it's the general education teachers, the administrators, our school-based or division facilitators and coaches, as well as our EL, our special educators, and our reading specialists at those levels.

[00:17:56] They take a look at the data. In our school, we call it a workbook page on our data sheet, so every teacher is triangulating the data, pulling at least three sources. A lot of them will color code to get a quick snapshot across what it's looking like. We utilize our decision trees, which on slide 14, you see a snapshot of what their office has provided us as a resource, so we know what we should be doing for our students.

[00:18:21] In our school in particular, the last bullet, we've created progressions, so we know exactly what is that lowest deficit area for each child, and that's where we begin the intervention. So when Dr. LaPaula showed you the three top areas, for instance, in literacy, if the student has a need in phonemic awareness, we would start there before we went into phonics or fluency or moving into vocabulary or comprehension.

[00:18:45] So we utilize those progressions for both math and for literacy. I'll turn it over to Frederick Douglass. Good evening. So we are really proud of our teachers and our staff because we manage a high volume of interventions, both at Sterling Elementary and at Frederick Douglass Elementary.

[00:19:07] So at Sterling Elementary, they have 227 MTSS intervention plans, which is about 49% across all students at their school. And at Frederick Douglass Elementary School, we manage and maintain 225 intervention plans, which represents about 37% of our student population.

[00:19:35] I also think it's important to note that at Frederick Douglas Elementary School we have 158 students identified as students with disabilities and we also have 189 EL students.

[00:19:50] And we quite frequently are managing the intervention plans and providing the services that these students need in both subgroups. I will also say that it's important for us to acknowledge both in conversations between Sterling Elementary and Frederick Douglass that prior to policy 5350, we were already doing these things, giving students exactly what they need, personalizing their learning and differentiating it and giving them those services.

[00:20:22] And sharing with parents. And sharing with parents. Thank you, Ms. Harris. Next slide, please. So in addition to the process that Ms. Short shared, the process beyond just the data meetings, it also includes creating groups and planning for those interventions.

[00:20:41] So once we've identified those students using the LCPS decision trees, which we are very grateful to have for students that need Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention or supplemental instruction. Our teachers and our support staff, our leadership team, they dive a little bit deeper into the data. Again, as Ms. Short mentioned, using a variety of reports that we've listed to determine the focus goals for these interventions. And we enter these types of intervention needs into a spreadsheet so that the team that's meeting during these data analysis

[00:21:20] meetings can create groups of students with similar needs that need a similar type of intervention. We found that due to the high level of need both at Sterling and at Frederick Douglass Elementary School that most teams end up sharing the students across classrooms within their particular grade level during literacy and math intervention blocks, which we have hard scheduled into our master schedule and this has made it possible for us to really provide the intervention needs for the volume of students rather than

[00:21:57] just homeroom teachers seeing their own students next slide please so as a requirement for the Virginia Literacy Act parents are partners in this process and so we do attempt to gain parent participation over the course of the past school year Frederick Douglass has been successfully able to receive feedback from at least 40 parents through a Google form that we send out to families and we also include this as a process in our first quarter parent

[00:22:37] teacher conferences and so any student that's high risk based on the vows assessment we send out this family communication to invite them to participate in goals and then our reading specialists which at Frederick Douglas we have 2.5 FTEs they regularly review these responses and they reach out to families and then they provide that information based on their feedback to the teachers to kind of oversee the development of those literacy plans.

[00:23:11] Next slide, please. So after the reading specialist received that feedback, then there's another sub-team meeting that consists of the leadership team, which includes our reading specialist, our school-based instructional coach, and our math resource teacher.

[00:23:31] And they collaborate together using the information that the teachers contributed to on the intervention spreadsheet to actually create the MTSS plans. This also includes students with disabilities, so those students that have IEPs, the school-based instructional coach, reading specialist, and the math resource teacher.

[00:23:56] they actually have taken over for the interest of time away from students instructionally they actually take time out of their schedule to manually enter those intervention plans in the Phoenix MTSS module system and then they send that information to the families so now Miss Harris will share some of the data from Frederick Douglass and then Miss Short will share some of the success stories for MTSS for Sterling Elementary sure so again this data is from fall to winter because we are right in the middle of spring testing season

[00:24:36] which is that's the best season of all coming from one of the testing coordinators so we do have some some wins here the vows is as you know the early literacy assessment right now we're giving it kindergarten through third grade but next year that will go to fourth and fifth grade as well so here are some of the gains that our students made from fall to winter in the high risk to moderate risk 12 students were able to go from high to moderate from high risk to low risk so that's a pretty big gap but three students were able to make that leap and then from moderate risk to low risk was 31 students so I

[00:25:16] highlighted that because that was truly a celebration to go to not have that risk factor anymore and then on the next slide so the map testing we give map testing to first graders for math and then second third fourth and fifth for the other subjects and again I highlighted our really success stories so from tier three to tier two eight students were able to make those those gains and then from tier three all the way to tier one that was nine students so that's pretty significant jump there and then tier two to tier one was 18

[00:25:54] students so we are definitely seeing movement across bands with our data oh sorry that was reading excuse me now math map again we are seeing gains from tier 3 to tier 2 with 21 students tier 3 to tier 1 this time was not as many it was three students but then again from those like what we would call bubble kids the tier 2 kids to tier 1 without being the risk factor was 27 students so that was pretty significant when we were analyzing the data all right so on the next slide you see our VALS data looking from fall to winter and probably fairly

[00:26:32] similar at Frederick Douglass with our students who enter in kindergarten for instance for many that's their first schooling experience so learning their numbers learning their letters how to hold a pencil those are all new experiences for them so we see on the left-hand side where they started in the fall and on the right where they were at the winter as Miss Harris mentioned they're still undergoing testing which would be done in just a couple of weeks we pay attention to the students who are growing but also those couple little dips that we see we analyze that data as well in celebration the students who move from high-risk to moderate you can see from the yellow up to the or excuse

[00:27:08] me from the red up to the yellow we had 24 students and then we had 10 students who moved from the red up to the green which also just shows us that our response to what their needs are really does matter our students who were able to move from the yellow into the green. We had 39 of those students at that point in the year.

[00:27:27] The next slide will show us our MAP data in the area of math and MAP is an adaptive test so as they perform well or they're maybe not performing as well it will continue to adapt. So sometimes there's a direct correlation to the standards of learning that we have in our classroom and sometimes it's an extension or something that is a review. So when we're taking a look at this we We can see the movement on the tiers as well, which you see in the chart to the right.

[00:27:54] And something of note, our students who were in the fall identified as needing tier three interventions, their conditional growth percentile was 62.7%. What we consider to be meeting that mark is the 50th percentile. So that's saying that they're performing about or making gains about as well as or better than 50% of the peers across really the nation who are taking this assessment.

[00:28:15] we want our students to grow more than one year's worth of academic growth in a year though if they are not quite at level yet so we are really aiming for that 55th to 60th percentile and we did exceed that in the area of math you can see reading is next and again fall to winter is what we're looking at here how we grew the green band and we were able to minimize the yellow band and the summaries and the chart to the right you see that our tier two students moving up to tier one we had 23 students. And then the final chart for you to review is our EL tier movement. This is part of

[00:28:51] our school improvement plan. Our focus this year was on student collaboration as well as rigor with a real emphasis on our students who receive special education services as well as English learner services. And our aim is to continue to grow the green and minimize the yellow and the red and you can see the summary that we have there as well. So as you can imagine we are very proud of the success of our students, and especially our teachers, for embracing the culture of providing students exactly what they need, in particular taking collective efficacy and

[00:29:29] onus on the responsibility of all students at Frederick Douglass and Sterling Elementary School. That being said, we do want to be fully transparent and share that there are some challenges and limitations especially with our schools meeting such high volumes of students with intervention plans and so we just wanted to share just a high level overview of some of the challenges so in particular with the adoption of the new ela standards and the new math standards

[00:30:05] our focuses during our collaborative learning team meetings have really focused on meeting the implementation of these new standards, especially with the new HMH core literacy program, and then also just making sure that we are aligned and adjusting our instruction in terms of past practices and past years to make sure that we are doing exactly what we're supposed to do with our new math standards.

[00:30:32] That said, our discussions around interventions at times becomes very limited in the 50 minutes of planning time once per week that we have with teachers for CLT discussions, and so our data meetings that we hold quarterly, they must provide adequate time and devotion to those MTSS modules.

[00:30:57] Our teachers are oftentimes finding time on the fly or in between running students, between recess, lunch specials, to connect with our VALS tutors, our schools, both being Title I. We have the fortune to be able to offset some of the demand in servicing students by hiring part-time interventionists. But even those interventionists, those times are limited so that they can connect with the teachers. But I will acknowledge that very informally,

[00:31:31] we do it between the quarter, but we do dedicate time during those process meetings to devote time for teachers to be able to connect. And as Melissa mentioned, there is time that is devoted during the data meetings, but sometimes the plans don't get finished during that time, just given the sheer volume of plans that we have. So that does impact teachers having to leave the classroom to finish the plans. It also impacts workload. So in a school where more students receive intervention than maybe a school 10 minutes down the road, it's additional work that our staff does have.

[00:32:06] I feel blessed that they do it with a happy and thankful heart, but it is an additional workload as you're trying to help them also find a balance between school and home as well. So another challenge that we have experienced is students with an IEP and have reading goals also are required to have an MTSS plan.

[00:32:23] And so while they have an IEP that is specifically designed for their weaknesses that were found through the eligibility process, we're also doing an MTSS plan, and the parents are getting that input from the progress notes that go home quarterly with the report card.

[00:32:42] So that is related to the IEP goal, but then the MTSS goal doesn't necessarily align to the IEP goal. So that is also a struggle. And our special education teachers collect data on the IEP goals on a regular basis so that they can then create those progress notes, and they are not in the habit of collecting data for the MTSS goal.

[00:33:06] So another challenge with the MTSS module is just adhering to those mid-year updates. So as Ms. Harris mentioned, the special education teachers are collecting data for the MTS -- or for their IEPs, and those progress reports, they go home quarterly, but we had to kind to learn how to navigate the system especially learning that special education teachers had to now enter MTSS plans but the way that the plans were written by someone else which we thought we were doing them a favor by having the

[00:33:43] reading teacher or the school-based instructional coach or the math resource teacher enter that data for them but the two worlds aren't connected student services versus teaching and learning and so we learned as an aha moment after the first quarter that the data is collected differently and so we kind of had to monitor and adjust our approach approaches and similarly with the misalignment there is some misalignment between VALS and Lexia with our schools working very closely with all content based offices as well as research and assessment.

[00:34:21] We have talked about some of the additional training needs, particularly with Lexia because we understand that this program has a vast array of resources. But perhaps if we received additional training in Lexia, then we might be able to kind of better use their resources, particularly during the literacy instruction.

[00:34:45] And then there is sometimes the duplication in data, as we've previously mentioned, between the MTSS plans and those IEPs. And then another component to this is we do communicate with the families at the beginning to solicit their input, but when families, they go into the LCPS parent view and our teachers are working daily with these students during intervention, they're not able to to see those real-time updates as we're entering that progress monitoring.

[00:35:20] And so, oftentimes, the parents, they don't get those real-time updates, and there's no place in ParentVUE for them to kind of access their child's progress along the way. So, I know we've shared a lot of information with you all.

[00:35:36] What questions might you have for us? - Thank you very much, first of all, board members. - So, I'd also like to know how PALS tutoring goes to MTSS and special education because you do have those kids who have been identified and then you have your EIRI and then you have your MTSS.

[00:36:01] So how are you working with that or not working with that? How is that working or not working? How about that? Not you, but. Sure. So during our quarterly data analysis meetings, we actually, from the VALS, once you enter into VALS and you're identified as a student needing an intervention, you stay with that intervention throughout the entire year but we are grateful that our VALS tutors are they are really retired teachers it sounds like you know them they are amazing and so they work very closely with with our teachers you would never be able to tell that they they are not certified teachers

[00:36:41] and so they work closely with our teachers to make sure that there is alignment and communication Well, but they're using focused on phonics, aren't they? Focused phonics. And then you could be doing Lexia. And then they could also be getting possibly OG or something like that.

[00:37:02] So that's a lot. And so I'm wondering, I mean, while we're figuring these things out with VLA and everything, something to look at. I am also wondering, so Bridges, is that more print-based?

[00:37:22] So it looks to me like a lot of the math is more print-based, hands-on manipulation, but a lot of the literacy is computer. That is correct. We actually invite our VALS tutors to our data analysis meetings to get their first-hand input.

[00:37:43] Just as one thing I think is important for you all to know throughout this process, we've learned what's working, what's not working, kind of monitored and adjust along the way and so initially last year our VALS tutors they were not a part of those meetings but we found that their input is helpful and then for Bridges because it is a print based program we do an end of the quarter end of the unit assessment and we actually as a grade level team to include coaches and administrators we hand score their progress and we talk

[00:38:19] about it right at the table I add to that with the literacy tutors in the Lexia and thinking about that as a computer-based program versus being led by an actual individual and probably all schools do a little bit of a combination of this but we do use Lexia more for the independent work so students will read in text or do partner reading and they do time on Lexia and Lexia will give you a kind of a prescribed time that each child should be aiming to get and the teacher can get feedback from the program to see where they're making errors, and it even gives some lessons that are rooted in the science of reading.

[00:38:55] So our literacy tutors, as you mentioned, Mrs. Logan, they connect with the teachers to see what's that target skill. So for instance, if one of our students is really focused or a small group is focused on phonemic awareness, they might not do focus phonics. They might actually redo the Hegarty phonemic awareness lesson for that day to give them some additional repetition.

[00:39:14] So it really is targeted based on what they need, but the first instruction in the supplemental instruction comes from the teacher does that answer that question so it comes from the teacher not the reading not the reading specialist so it could be the teacher could be the reading specialist could be an el or special educator could be the literacy tutor and sometimes they'll get it from additional

[00:39:36] like more than just one individual as well um so many thoughts um i am very grateful to the mtss team who's really kind of walked alongside of us as a school board I know you know this is near and dear to my heart I have lived this I was at Guilford Elementary as a school-based instructional facilitator feverishly filling out plans and getting teachers up to speed just to try and

[00:40:12] alleviate some of the load of a upside down pyramid school I like to call it because Mr. Lodi you're exactly right we know that this stuff works when we see those percentages the this is such a heavy lift and I just I just see like a pie chart of teacher time and administrator time and resource teacher time and every single thing that you say that's part of this process is siphoning off this time right like you have more students that need intervention so you have more plans so that's more administrative tasks which equals more meetings and more

[00:40:48] conversations in CLT which equals less instructional planning time which in I I think I heard you say some people it actually takes their instructional time away so that they're in compliance with their contract, right? And so that to me also means that the tier one instruction is suffering because that planning time for a new literacy program or new math program that's going to be coming is also going away.

[00:41:14] And I love the celebrations and I know that these teachers are killing it and I know that your teams are doing everything you can. And I've been to Frederick Douglass many times and seen the shared efficacy of the staff. They're all in. And I'm glad that they have thankful and grateful hearts.

[00:41:31] I really am. But something's got to give here. Like, I'm struggling because everything I see is that the higher-needs schools have less time to meet the needs. And that just can't exist. Like, I don't know if we need to get creative with stipends for extra time or I don't even know.

[00:41:51] I know we're doing an audit. we just talked about on Jefferson contracts I mean the amount of work that this is taking and I know we've streamlined and we're working with the vendor and so many gains have been made and I know it's new and I know all those things and I appreciate the positivity towards making it better but I still hear honestly that this is breaking the backs of our educators I hear it from them I hear it from you all in the subtext and you're being so lovely and so professional and I'm so grateful for that

[00:42:22] So my question to you is, I mean, I heard you say that Alexia training would be helpful, but what, if you could wave a magic wand, and obviously we would want all kids to just be in tier one, but that's not our reality, what supports do you need? What would help?

[00:42:38] Is it bodies? Is it staff? Is it better programs? Is it, what is it? I mean, I know we can't make all things happen, but are there things that you could name that could help alleviate some of this for our Title I schools that have such high needs?

[00:42:54] Teachers. I think that we have found that using our Title I funding for interventionists, but specifically if we could identify interventionists that are certified licensed teachers.

[00:43:12] I came from a school division in Maryland where reading recovery was a highly successful program. And I think that working more in a small group, one-to-one setting with some of our students would be helpful. In terms of Lexia, as Jen mentioned, you know, our students, they are able to access the digital component to Lexia.

[00:43:35] the students oftentimes get frustrated because they get stuck on a particular level because they can't move past the skills that they have deficits in. I know that if I had the magic wand then I would maybe code Lexia to then send a message to the teacher to say hey Melissa Logan is stuck on those suffixes and perhaps this might be a lesson to support her. So I think that it's there are so many resources and there is such little time that it does go beyond the contractual scope and so I

[00:44:13] just wish that we could better utilize or learn how to utilize the resources that we have because there it does seem like there is a lot of stuff available to Lexia but our teachers it's like It's overwhelming.

[00:44:31] Did you just suggest reading recovery? Yes. So you know that that's whole language. Okay. And that's not what we're going to be doing in the state of Virginia. So you're talking specifically reading recovery, or are you talking about items of reading recovery where it would be teacher with a student?

[00:44:57] Right, a teacher with a student. And sometimes our kids, we find that they need one-to-one. Our reading specialists do a phenomenal job, but I also think that more specific specialized training and literacy interventions would be helpful for schools to have employed on their staff.

[00:45:19] Thank you again from my side as well. I appreciate the entire presentation, but specifically the discussion around challenges and limitations, and love the question from Mishirnoff around the magic wand.

[00:45:39] What's going to move the needle? And appreciate all the feedback you've given so far. I'm still processing. But for me, you know, I keep thinking about the continuous improvement loop and going back to Tier 1.

[00:45:56] I heard some comments around how do we give more time back so that we can, whether that's in Tier 1 core instruction. But what, you know, how much of the conversation that we're talking about now, which is all about the interventions, goes back to Tier 1 core instruction?

[00:46:14] And how does that relate to Title I school communities? That's kind of my area of curiosity right now. I can respond to that because that is, it starts there. And if our core is not strong, then the numbers that you see are drastically larger.

[00:46:34] In our, and I know I speak for you guys too, it's important that we set up collaborative processes and systems within our schools. So for instance, our grade level teams all collaboratively plan, truly collaboratively plan, starting with the standards of learning. They take a look at the exact standard that every child has to know, read through the understanding of the standards, all of the different connections that the state has in the guides right now.

[00:46:55] Our EL teachers, reading specialists, special educators, and general educators, as well as me and my AP, we're there with them one time a week as well. They break that down, and they develop their lessons. That way we utilize high-yield strategies. That's where it has to start. This work of intervening with our students, identifying who needs interventions, making sure we're providing that and monitoring, it's the right work, and it's what we need do for our children but it does start with the core those are things that we also go back to in our CLT meetings like you mentioned we take a look at their common assessments that they've given across the level and then we go back into those standards are we measuring what we said we were going to measure did we really teach that we go back into the lesson plans and make tweaks so that's

[00:47:33] where the heavy work is I had a magic wand it would be time and I don't know how I don't have the answer for this and I don't like proposing something I don't have the answer to but if there's something we can remove from teachers plates so that they can focus in on, you know, what that really strong and right work is. I think that's the way to go. Am I hearing that a master schedule conversation needs to continue? Is that what I'm hearing? We've talked a lot in our instruction curriculum and instruction committee about the elementary master schedule and just trying to find ways to buy minutes, basically.

[00:48:08] So maybe that's a continued conversation that we could have offline. I would welcome that. - Speaking of time, just wondering, flexible staffing and some of the priorities that this board has put in that area, specific to Title I schools, rather than framing it as has it helped, where have you seen the benefits of that relative to the MTSS process?

[00:48:44] - We have currently 2.0, next year we'll have 2.5, but we use a school-based instructional facilitator, which is critical to our work because she does the coaching. Um, you know, it's not uncommon in our school to have new staff for the upcoming school year.

[00:49:00] So we have a game plan going in, what it's going to look like, how she's going to support to make sure everybody can hit the ground running. And then we have a reading specialist. We're a lot of 2.0 reading specialists. So we supplement to get that third reading specialist. So each of them is just working with two grade levels. Sure.

[00:49:18] At Frederick Douglass Elementary School, we have a school-based instructional coach as a part of differentiated staffing. But as a part of our flexible staffing, we do have a general education dean. Frederick Douglass also has nine programs at the school.

[00:49:36] And so where we see the value in having that flexible staffing position is when we are having these meetings. So we do collaborative learning team meetings once a week. We also do team lesson collaborations, meetings once a week that our admin team and instructional leadership team participate in.

[00:49:57] And so when we have bit calls and students that are in crisis, which is a very real thing, students in crisis not only behaviorally but also health-related crises, we are able to utilize that dean so that we can focus on the main thing, which is instruction.

[00:50:14] This question is more for the MTSS team. I heard a little bit of talk about misalignment and a little, like, the collaboration piece, because I know, and maybe this is also a question for you all, when you're doing your power-up time or intervention time, do you have that person who's doing the intervention fill out the plan for their group?

[00:50:43] Because I think I heard you say that then that doesn't necessarily translate to the gen ed teacher. So is that the misalignment that we're talking about? And how can we address that? During our data meetings, we identify the goals for the intervention plans.

[00:51:03] But as you mentioned, it is a large consumption of time that would take away instructional time. And so we've learned to better communicate the way that the system talks so that those service providers, whether it be the classroom teacher or the special education teacher, that they're not going behind the computer and entering the plan, that we're utilizing some of the differentiated staff or even the reading specialists to enter those plans.

[00:51:36] I would just add to the extent that the plans can be completed in the meeting, that's obviously preferred because you have people sitting around the table, but we set up the system so that anybody could create a plan as to not create barriers to it. So schools do it differently.

[00:51:52] It just depends on the level of need. As you've noticed, the need is not equitably distributed across the division. So the conversation you're hearing today, if we had other schools sitting up here presenting, that would be a different way that they go about doing it. And so we just, we know that there are required participants that must be part of the plans. For example, literacy plans and required oversight for example by reading specialists and classroom teachers and so we put the expectation out but how schools choose

[00:52:20] to create them we want it to work for them thank you all very much this was wonderful thank you for taking the time to be with us tonight also you're allowed

[00:52:40] to leave you don't have to stay thank you all so much so with that dr. Ellis move on to 4.03 program evaluation update, Department of Academics. I'll pass it back to you.

[00:53:18] Thank you. I will just do a brief introduction and then turn it over to Dr. Blakelock, our supervisor of research, to walk you through just a few slides. And we hope that the outcome of this conversation is an agreement among committee members on the program evaluation topics that you find most important for the coming school year. And we will then share that information with the board and the research team will get to work in working with those program owners. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Blakelock.

[00:53:56] Thank you, Dr. Ellis. Just to kind of walk through a few refresher concepts that we've talked about when we looked at program evaluation we ground it in a concept of a cycle of continuous improvement as a way to have programs evaluate themselves and for us to evaluate them in a way to go through that process using the plan do study act where they are implementing the program they are then studying the program as far as collecting data analyzing it and then identifying and implementing any necessary changes that they would like to see to improve the

[00:54:31] program. Moving on to the next slide, just a quick definition of the program. Ultimately, a set of planned activities using managed resources. There are specific goals and needs that the program is serving, a specific group of individuals, and there's an observable output outcome. So you're looking at a direct impact of these activities based on that are met to achieve these set goals. So moving on to the next slide, looking at the four phases of program evaluation, we look at developing the logic model, which identifies the connection

[00:55:11] between the needs, the goals, the activities, and the outcomes, and creates that through line. We then create the evaluation design, which speaks to the specific research questions we'll be looking at, and the data we'll be collecting against it, and building any data collection tools. then we collect the data and we report the findings.

[00:55:30] So in thinking about how it is for this year, right now we're actually starting to set up the reports for the current school year as data are coming in so that they are ready to go. So moving on to the next slide, what we have here is the proposed schedule for 2025-26 based on some feedback that we've received previously and some discussion that has been had in terms of the five programs that we would be looking at for the next school year.

[00:56:00] We also want to have an understanding of those guiding questions if we were to go with these programs of what you would like to know about the program and what could be some uses or application of the results. Moving on to the next slide, it's going to be very similar in that starting to set up for what the 26-27 school year, The program evaluation policy has a three-year evaluation schedule concept to it, which is absolutely flexible, but having to start thinking about a couple years out, what we're going to be looking at going forward.

[00:56:38] And very similar, you know, what do you want to know? What needs to be known about the program? And what are some of the applications of the results? Those questions help guide the conversations as we enter the program evaluation because it establishes the purpose and sets the boundaries and the framework within which we would work.

[00:56:55] I'll now turn it back to Dr. Ellis to go over the last slide. Thank you, Dr. Blakelock. So as I mentioned earlier, we are hoping to have a discussion and get some consensus on topics for the 25-26 school year.

[00:57:11] And at that point, cabinet members have already actually contributed to the document that you have in BoardDocs, which is a list of programs that could potentially be evaluated that meet those criteria that Dr. Blakelock shared at the beginning.

[00:57:26] And then once we have a list for the 25-26 school year, I will communicate that with the full board and Dr. Blakelock will begin the work of conducting program assessments with the program sponsors in each department and program managers and the program evaluations will begin in July.

[00:57:46] And so with that, we're happy to answer questions about the programs listed, why we prioritize the ones that we did, and really we're just genuinely interested in if you agree with the list for the 25-26 and have any recommended changes.

[00:58:04] I will also say that I am trying to limit the research's office, research's, research office's workload to no more than five, even though they would say they could do more. Thanks.

[00:58:21] Questions or discussion? Thoughts? Thank you, Chair Streffi. I am thankful for this list. Thank you for listening and doing the work on that.

[00:58:37] It was very helpful to see all the programs. So thank you for meeting that request and having that for us. It makes things a lot more clean cut. I'm very glad to see credit recovery on the list. I have been, as a part of the grading policy revisions, we heard a lot about credit recovery as it relates to kids needing 50% floor and then not passing and just all of that conversation, credit recovery was a reoccurring theme.

[00:59:04] And I think that you're probably going to hear that in your work groups too as you move forward with the thing. So I think that this is timely. So I would love to see that stay. Just in actual live time reflection, I'm wondering if collaborative learning teams needs to be bumped up in terms of thinking about the time and the workload that those require and the different purposes that fit into collaborative learning teams.

[00:59:32] I might like to see that moved up a bit. I don't know what I would bump off of the list because I like this list. So maybe that's a 26, 27 piece, but I definitely hear that from our schools that that is something that we maybe need to evaluate and see what the real purpose is at each different level, elementary, middle, and high.

[00:59:53] Other than that, it looks good to me. So yes, yes to the dual language immersion. I think this is really in terms of being able to assess programs that are potentially being considered to expand, right?

[01:00:14] So I think that that is important. I also appreciate the comments around the collaborative learning teams. I really like the idea of fast-tracking that as well, just seeing that it's a really important topic in the conversation, in some of the most important conversations that we're having around making a difference in the division.

[01:00:34] So I'm curious about the after-school program pilot, just thinking about, obviously not in the first year, but thinking about, again, potential expansion or just being able to really understand the impact of a program might be early, but just wanted to get some thoughts around that.

[01:00:58] And, yeah, and IB as well, just to kind of, like, again, trying to get a pulse on direction from a budget perspective around some of these special programs, I think would be a good opportunity.

[01:01:14] That's really helpful. Just a couple of thoughts based on that, if you don't mind. so regarding the after-school pilot program you're correct since the program hasn't started yet that's why we did not put it in the 25 26 school year I do think we can certainly have a conversation about doing an initial evaluation in the 26 27 school year or or the very next year I think I think that is a great point in terms of the budget that you're allocating toward it and if it's if it's of interest to families if it's meeting their needs and

[01:01:53] possible expansion and then regarding IB we so one thing is that we can even aside from a program evaluation continue to update the board whether it's through special programs committee or this committee on enrollment in the IB program this coming year the class of 26 will be the first diploma class the the first graduating class. So that's the first year we will have data in terms of the number of students who enrolled at the beginning and completed the courses and whether or not they

[01:02:30] actually received their IB diploma. So we'll have some good information to share. And the IB International Organization does a five-year review for every IB school. So that will happen as well so just something something to consider I have I'm wondering if restorative practices should be moved up it's something that's been what we've been doing it for probably five years at least now at least to see I mean I don't even know how you would track that or research that to

[01:03:08] see if it's successful or not do you have any ideas well in-house we are not from the research office we for a time when I was more closely involved in this work we were keeping student level data and outcomes associated with every RPS conference that we held so we had like data about recidivism and positive outcomes and so it's the process is amenable to that type of study and we've seen favorable results through it. I mean I think it would be interesting I mean I think it

[01:03:46] would be valuable now because we're seeing kind of a resurgence of bullying behavior and those kinds of issues and this is one of the ways that we help with that and so I'm thinking if it would be timely to do something like that to show look this this is a strategy that we've been working on and this is what our outcomes are and it really is this kind of thing it does work I was just The other thing I might add to that is when it started here, it kicked off as Tier 3 conferencing.

[01:04:21] But it has absolutely morphed into attendance circles, restorative language. There's a lot that could be looked at across the tiers as well. As well as the teachers, how they start interacting differently with the students and more pro-behavioral kind of positive behavior, words and things.

[01:04:44] - Could it be in conjunction with PBIS, or is that too much of a lift? I'm wondering if those two side-by-side, if we bumped PEER, I love PEER, it's amazing, but I'm wondering if PBS and restorative practices sort of side-by-side would make more sense to kind of see how a holistic school-wide approach versus those more individualized approaches side-by-side could be a nice trajectory for us.

[01:05:14] - Yes, we can certainly do that. Did I hear that you wanted to replace PEER with that as a recommendation? Yeah, that one might make more sense to keep you at your five. I'm trying to follow the rules for once. That is greatly appreciated to share it off. You're welcome. Only this once. When it comes to restorative practices as opposed to peer. Well, and just to say, like, since we're getting a new math program next year and things too, the CLT might be better the next year. I'm just trying, you know, I'm so I'm trying to kind of prioritize what's what's prevalent right now. So I, I would support moving peer down and putting up restorative practices

[01:05:51] and looking at sort of behavior as a holistic approach. Great. Cool. Well, thank you all very much. Um, we'll move on to new business. That's okay. Um, for new business, just wanted to bring up the, uh, the, the date of the next PMC meeting, uh, is on the 27th, but there are some conflicts.

[01:06:14] We have the graduation of academies of Loudoun. Um, and so we wanted to see if there were some dates that we could finalize now in the next two or three minutes to have our to reschedule the 27th would that be okay yes I appreciate that because I plan to be at the Academies of Loudoun graduation and would like to I am also going to miss our June PMC meeting due to a vacation so I do not want to miss two in a row that would be great yeah and I'm sure staff and team would like

[01:06:46] to be at the academies of Loudoun as well I have a lot of availability that week but that would be the only other time would be the 13th because we have a school board meeting on the 20th is that too tight of a turn for you dr. Ellis the 13th either that I mean we'd have to move the date yeah we will we may not we'll have to consider the time that we give the schools to prepare

[01:07:26] presentations so we can make it work are you guys available any other nights like Monday Wednesday or Thursday that week of the 26th 28th 29th if we did a different day of the week well the 26th would be Memorial Day oh that's a no yep Wednesdays are harder possibly the 29th and then we have the 30th is the LEA yeah maybe the 29th possibly yeah the 29th would work better for us but we can make

[01:08:05] the 13th work if that is the will of the committee. 29th works on my side as well. Same time frame, 6 p.m.? You could go earlier, probably. Yeah, because unless it would be the principals when they could get here. The room is available at 5. Let's do that. 5 p.m.? Okay. Do we have a date?

[01:08:26] 5 p.m. on Thursday the 29th. May 29th, 5 p.m. So let's lock it in. 8.M.C. Great. Is there any other new business? Oh, the next one should be fine. We'll just assume that Ms. Chernoff can't make it. You'll soldier on without me. We will limp along. It'll be a shorter meeting.

[01:08:53] All right. Any other new business? Last call. All right. I'd like to adjourn this April 29th meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee. Thank you all very much. Good night.

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