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District outlines reading screening changes and interventions; NextPath used to track Personal Reading Plans
Summary
District staff described new elementary screening under Act 20 (AIMSweb Plus), the Personal Reading Plan process and use of NextPath to track interventions; middle‑school workshop courses showed mixed gains with attendance a limiting factor.
District staff told the curriculum subcommittee the elementary schools implemented new mandated screeners under state reading legislation (Act 20), used AIMSweb Plus for benchmarking, and created Personal Reading Plans (PRPs) for students below benchmark. Staff also described NextPath as a district tool to aggregate assessment data and track the effectiveness of interventions.
Elementary screening and PRPs: staff said Act 20 required adoption of a specific early literacy screener; Waunakee used AIMSweb Plus for 4K through third grade. The screener includes measures such as initial sounds and letter‑word sound fluency in early grades and oral reading fluency (ORF) in grades 1–3. Staff reported the district set a benchmark (described in the meeting as near the 20th–25th percentile) that triggers a PRP. When students fall below the threshold, teams administer diagnostic assessments, convene universal data meetings and design a PRP with identified interventions and weekly progress monitoring via AIMSweb Plus.
Tools and findings: staff said the district used NextPath this year to automatically pull scores from AIMSweb and help populate PRP documents. That system allows filtering by school, intervention and staff member to identify which interventions are correlated with stronger progress. Staff noted that many students who fell below benchmark were accurate in decoding but did not meet fluency or speed criteria, which led the district to prioritize fluency within tier‑1 instruction and targeted interventions.
Middle and high school interventions: Tim (district staff member) said the middle‑school model places students into scheduled workshop courses; sections were small (about 15 students per grade/content area) and staff plan to expand capacity for 2025–26. Middle school I‑Ready local assessment results showed that, for example, seventh‑grade reading workshop students met their I‑Ready growth targets at a rate of 69% (above the national midpoint); a smaller share increased state (Forward) proficiency, and some students’ Forward performance declined. Staff explained that I‑Ready and the Forward exam are related but not identical; local assessments were broadly predictive but did not exactly mirror state outcomes.
Attendance and reach: staff said chronic absenteeism is prevalent in the intervention population—about 40% of middle‑school workshop students were chronically absent (in school less than 90% of days)—which reduces the effectiveness of targeted supports. To reach more students next year, staff plan to adjust scheduling and benchmark criteria so sections can serve larger groups where appropriate.
Why it matters: staff presented these changes as part of a baseline year after adopting AIMSweb Plus and NextPath. The district plans to use those tools to analyze which interventions produce the largest gains and to track exits and entries from PRPs year‑to‑year to show longitudinal impact.
Decisions and follow‑ups: no policy changes were adopted at the subcommittee level. Staff said they will continue to analyze intervention effectiveness across schools using NextPath filters and to report follow‑up findings to the district leadership and board.
Ending: The subcommittee heard the intervention update and asked staff to report back with comparative, longitudinal views (exits, entries and year‑to‑year cohorts) and intervention‑level effectiveness.
