Allentown board approves comprehensive, targeted school improvement plans and new instructional priorities

Miss Smith, senior district leader for continuous improvement, presented school-level continuous improvement plans aligned to the district strategic plan and asked the board to approve comprehensive and targeted plans for multiple schools.

The board approved comprehensive school-improvement plans for William Allen High School, Bridgeview Academy, Harrison Morton, Rob Middle School, South Mountain Middle School and Trexler Middle School (CSI designation). Dieruff High School was designated ATSI (additional targeted support and improvement) and several schools received TSI (targeted support and improvement) designations for specific student groups: Moser (students with disabilities), Muhlenberg (English learners), Roosevelt (two or more races), Dieruff (Black student group) and Hayes (English learners). The board voted to move the plans forward and the motion carried.

Smith described the district’s instructional vision — a coherent system to improve student outcomes by focusing on the instructor-content-student core — and nine high-quality instructional strategies the district will emphasize, including clear learning goals, standards-aligned lesson design, high-impact questioning, gradual release of responsibility, formative assessment and culturally responsive teaching. "Our instructional vision is to create a coherent system that improves student outcomes at scale by focusing on the instructional core," Smith said.

School leaders described practices used in the past year: data-wise instructional rounds, school-quality reviews, and professional learning aligned to the instructional vision. The presentation included sample school goals (attendance, literacy, math, social-emotional learning and graduation) and district targets tied to June 2028 outcomes.

Ending: The board asked for continued updates on school-quality reviews, data dashboards and tutoring expansion as the district implements the plans.