Mukilteo School District presents end‑of‑year review on Goals 1 and 2; district highlights assessment gaps and targeted strategies for multilingual learners

District staff on Sept. 24 presented an end‑of‑year review tied to the Mukilteo School District strategic plan goals 1 and 2, showing mixed gains and clear achievement gaps across groups while outlining targeted instruction and professional learning to address those gaps.

The update, billed as an overview of “students learn, grow and thrive” (Goal 1) and “students achieve academic success” (Goal 2), combined Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) results, spring I‑Ready growth data and school improvement plan reflections from principals at Olivia Park, Voyager Middle and Kamiak High School.

Joanne Fabian, director of assessment and student success, said, “Overall, 48.8 percent of the students met standard” on the district’s Smarter Balanced English language arts assessment, and “the percent of students meeting standard in math was 38.4% overall.” She also reported a districtwide science result of 44.6% meeting standard in the grades the state administers the test. Fabian noted subgroup patterns: students who identify as Asian, two or more races and white generally outperformed peers, while students in English learner programs, students receiving special education services and low‑income students trailed their peers.

District leaders emphasized that diagnostic and interim measures point to growth over the school year even where SBA proficiency remains low. Fabian and other presenters showed I‑Ready reading data that moved the share of students at or above grade level from 16% in fall to 35% in spring; the district reported a similar gain in math (from about 8% to 29% at or above grade level). Those slides were presented to illustrate alignment work between grade levels and across schools.

Katie Pence, principal who led Olivia Park’s school improvement work, said about her staff’s training: “About 94% of the teachers at Olivia Park participated in the Science of Reading training.” She described school scheduling changes that ensured students did not miss core instruction and regular data cycles that reviewed progress four times a year.

Rebecca Porter, principal at Voyager Middle School, described an instructional rollout aimed at multilingual learners (MLs). District materials presented the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) framework as the professional‑learning focus for Voyager: staff will use SIOP strategies to integrate language objectives into daily content instruction and to give ML students structured opportunities to practice academic English within content lessons.

Presenters and principals repeatedly connected the instructional work to multi‑tiered systems of support (MTSS), DataWise processes for continuous improvement, and local adaptations of state rubrics for any performance‑based graduation pathways. District staff said they will continue to expand the Science of Reading training, extend SIOP and other supports to more schools, and sustain regular data review cycles so schools can adjust interventions faster.

Board members and staff said the work is intended to reduce variation between schools and to establish consistent Tier 1 instruction across classrooms. The district described the effort as a multi‑year implementation with the expectation of seeing increasingly consistent cohort growth year over year.

The presentation concluded with principals describing building‑level changes — Olivia Park’s targeted phonics instruction for K–2 and a structured intervention block for third graders, Voyager’s SIOP rollout for classrooms serving ML students, and Kamiak High School’s ninth‑grade success systems and co‑teaching partnerships for multilingual education.

District staff said next steps include continuing professional learning for teachers, scaling practices that yielded growth in pilot schools and using DataWise cycles to monitor the impact of interventions throughout the 2024–25 school year.