Lackey High spotlights school improvement plan after 1% algebra proficiency; attendance and AVID strategies prioritized

Lackey High School principals and instructional leaders told the Charles County Board of Education on Feb. 11 that mathematics proficiency was a major concern last year and that the school has launched a multi-cycle school improvement plan focused on attendance, standards-aligned lessons and engaging instruction.

Principal Cheryl Davis told the board that "Only 1 percent of our algebra 1 students, at the end of last year, were considered proficient." She said the school found a high number of documented incidents of class-cutting and tardiness: about 1,500 class-cutting referrals and 425 referrals for tardiness (the latter representing more than 1,200 tardy incidents because referrals are issued after three occurrences). The school's attendance rate for the prior year was about 88.4 percent, meaning roughly 12 percent of students were not attending regularly, Davis said.

After a data review last summer, Lackey set three goals for its first improvement cycle: increase on-time class attendance, increase standards-aligned rigorous instruction, and increase engaging instruction across classrooms so students prefer class to other unstructured options. The school implemented revised lesson-planning expectations, AVID 101 training for staff, targeted common-planning time for Algebra I and English II, and classroom walkthroughs to gather evidence of practice.

Davis reported early signs of progress: class-cutting referrals were down 36% compared with the same period the previous year and disruptions were down 2%. Walkthroughs found that about 45% of classrooms had posted objectives (up from 0% earlier), about 45% of objectives and activities were standards-aligned, and about 40% of classrooms had students engaged in writing activities. The school also reported that external guided visits observed students using evidence to support claims in roughly half of visited classrooms and AVID strategies were noted in about 52% of visits.

Based on a study phase after the initial six-week change practice cycle, Lackey decided to "adapt" rather than abandon or fully adopt its first change practice: continue and deepen PD on lesson planning, increase supports for teachers who are in conditional or alternative-entry pathways, expand peer classroom visits and strengthen common planning for Algebra I and English II.

Assistant superintendent and chief of schools staff and executive director Richard Conley framed the work as iterative: schools identify a menu of possible change practices, focus on one per cycle, implement for six weeks, study the data, and then adopt, adapt or abandon the change practice for the next cycle.

Why it matters: Lackey's presentation gave the board a detailed example of the district's school-improvement cycle in practice and demonstrated how local schools use short-cycle professional learning, data digs and peer-supported instruction to address low proficiency and attendance problems.