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William Tennent High School presents ATSI plan and local assessment gains
Summary
Administrators presented a targeted school improvement plan focused on lesson planning, common assessments and data use; district officials also reviewed local reading and math assessment gains and K–8 progress over the past year.
Administrators from William Tennent High School presented the school’s Additional Targeted School Improvement (ATSI) plan and a year-end summary of local assessment results to the Centennial School District board on June 24. The plan centers on three priorities: aligned lesson plans, common assessments and improved data use, officials said.
“Focusing these things around our ATSI plan will get us the results we need moving forward,” said the school-level administrator who introduced the presentation and turned it to the instructional lead. Teachers, students, parents and community members served on the ATSI committee, administrators said.
The high-school presentation emphasized work to standardize assessment rigor across course sections and to give teachers usable, timely data. Administrators said they have piloted common assessments in some departments and are building teachers’ data literacy so instructional choices — for example, small-group interventions — respond to students’ needs. The team also described efforts to align classroom assessments more closely to Pennsylvania learning standards.
District staff provided local assessment results the board described as a sustained trend of growth since pandemic-era declines. Highlights the administration cited included a 29.4% improvement in combined reading and math PSSA-related measures compared with initial pandemic-era baselines — a change administrators equated to roughly 500 students moving from “basic or below” to “proficient or advanced.” For K–8 reading, the district reported that across-the-board DIBELS results showed students ending the year at or above end-of-year benchmarks, and the district moved about 27% of K–8 students from intervention tiers into grade-level performance. In K–8 math, administrators reported a 39% shift of students into grade-level tiers, representing roughly 1,400 students.
Administrators also reviewed 9–11 grade IXL data used at the high school. They said growth was strong in ninth- and tenth-grade math and reading but that the district has observed a recurring decrease in engagement or measurable growth in 11th grade — a pattern administrators attributed to post-Keystone scheduling choices and electives that make year-end comparisons less reliable for some students.
“Common assessments allowed teachers, who are the content experts, to develop comparable measures and then make informed decisions from the data,” said the staff member who led the curriculum review. The district’s office of teaching and learning said the district will adjust tools such as IXL to focus assessment resources where they yield the most valid data.
Board members applauded the presentation and the steady gains administrators described, but members also asked that the district continue to monitor equity of outcomes across subgroups and keep the board informed as the ATSI plan translates into classroom-level changes.
The ATSI plan as presented has no immediate cost to the district beyond existing instructional staff time and curriculum work, administrators said.
