West Chester Area SD presents PSSA/Keystone data and plans for curriculum alignment; elementary science resource to change

President Fleming convened the Teaching, Learning and Equity committee to hear an achievement report from Dr. Brown and members of his team, who presented preliminary PSSA and Keystone results and district plans to improve student outcomes.

Dr. Brown said the district’s “focus this year really is on instructional growth and curriculum alignment,” and described four core areas of work: consistent middle-school benchmarking, more cohesive elementary curriculum, improved data collection and training, and horizontal and vertical curriculum alignment. He said the district has developed common summative assessments that “students in our core content areas will take at the end of each unit of learning” and that those will allow teachers to “measure the learning of all students and better inform their practices.”

The presenters emphasized coaching and professional learning as levers for change. Dr. Brown said the district has added instructional coaches to each middle school and added reading and math specialists; those staff will be trained to use data from IXL, Acadience, and the new common summatives to target instruction. Cara Bailey described targeted grade-level…