Manor Middle shows accelerated gains under Third Future Schools partnership; district reports tutoring gains amid vendor issues

Zach Craddock, representing Third Future Schools, presented a progress report on Manor Middle School under the district's 1882 partnership, reporting notable assessment gains and describing instructional practices driving improvement.

Craddock said Manor Middle recorded roughly 1.9 years of growth on certain measures and noted schoolwide percentile-point increases (presentation cited an average 8-point percentile increase). He described targeted supports for subpopulations, including bilingual interventionists and changes to instruction for special education students where gaps appeared (notably in eighth-grade science and some math fluency areas).

School leaders and trustees discussed assessment choices, how to ensure students are tested in the language most appropriate for them, and the challenge of comparing diagnostic tools (STAR, AMIRA, IXL) to state accountability scores.

District staff also updated trustees on the Papaya tutoring partnership: administrators reported more than 5,600 hours logged districtwide and case studies showing substantial growth among students who received consistent tutoring, but they also acknowledged scheduling, platform reliability, and capacity constraints that have limited consistent participation. The administration said Papaya and district staff are working daily to resolve tech and scheduling issues and that they are still scaling in waves across campuses.

Trustees asked for more detailed participation metrics and the percentage of students receiving regular tutoring; administration agreed to calculate and return with that information to the board.