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Willow School plan aims to boost math growth, attendance and transition readiness
Summary
The district approved Willow School’s three-year improvement plan Aug. 11, setting an 8-point math growth goal for students with disabilities, a 5-point ELA target, and an attendance reduction effort after the school reported 28% chronic absenteeism last year.
The Homeless School District 153 Board approved Willow School’s three-year improvement plan at its Aug. 11 meeting. Willow’s plan sets distinct targets for students with disabilities, including an 8 percentage-point increase in math growth and a 5-point increase in ELA growth, and establishes actions to lower chronic absenteeism from 28% toward 20%.
"Willow is just a little different because we have the littles," Willow principal Ryan Jones said, explaining that Willow’s K–2 population feeds Churchill for later assessments and contributed to the district’s targeted designation. Jones told the board that proficiency rates for 2023–24 were 26.29% in both ELA and math and that students with disabilities showed much lower proficiency: "4.26 percent in ELA, 12.77 percent in math," she said.
The plan emphasizes tier 1 universal instruction, targeted interventions, small-group instruction coaching, revised master schedules to protect core instruction, and co-taught classrooms in grades 1 and 2. Willow will switch from STAR to NWEA MAP testing as its primary growth measure and use Forefront for benchmark tracking. The school also created an attendance team and plans weekly monitoring, increased family outreach, incentives for classrooms with high attendance, and more personal phone outreach to identify barriers to regular attendance.
Jones noted upcoming state changes to proficiency cut scores, saying the Illinois State Board was revising cut scores and that the state planned to announce new thresholds soon. She cautioned that while cut-score changes could affect how proficiency rates appear, local data still requires improvement.
Willow’s plan includes logistics changes such as creating consistent "wind blocks" for interventions so students do not miss core instruction and increasing co-teaching where appropriate. The board approved the Willow School improvement plan and requested continuing updates; school leaders said they will monitor interventions and report progress each trimester.
