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Middle school principal outlines improvement plan focused on students with disabilities
Summary
Colleton County Middle School Principal Gordon Miller told the board the school is 'average' on its report card and outlined targeted interventions for students with disabilities, citing current subgroup outcomes and ambitious percentage goals for ELA and math.
Principal Gordon Miller presented Colleton County Middle School's continuous-improvement plan to the board, highlighting targeted supports for students with disabilities.
Miller told the board the middle school earned an "average" rating on its most recent report card but said the administration does not consider that the final goal. He told the board, "Currently, 2.94 percent of our students with disabilities are performing at the meets or exceeds level in academic achievement," and said the school aims to raise that rate to 12.94 percent through focused interventions and monitoring.
Miller outlined the strategies: ongoing professional development for teachers in high-leverage instructional practices; weekly classroom observations with feedback; strengthened inclusion through co-teaching; data-driven PLCs; targeted ELA labs using I-Ready comprehension tools and text-dependent writing; tutoring, Saturday school and an after-school gap program; and intensive math interventions such as a math interventionist, math labs and use of the Zearn program. He said ELA current performance for students with disabilities is "5.4 percent" meeting or exceeding expectations and set an ELA goal roughly in the mid-teens; for math he said "our data shows right now 0 percent of students with disabilities are meeting or exceeding expectations" and the school aims to increase that to 10 percent.
Miller also cited the district's use of a state report-card simulator: after plugging winter diagnostic data into the simulator, the school projects 38 points if current trends hold, up from last year's projection and above the prior year's actual score. Miller said the school will run assessments again and continue monitoring, with six weeks of instruction before SC Ready testing remaining when he presented the plan.
Why it matters: The plan centers the needs of students with disabilities — a subgroup the principal said is performing below state averages — and ties proposed interventions to measurable goals and near-term assessments. Board members praised peer observations and teacher collaboration as cornerstone strategies.
Next steps: The principal and district leadership will continue to monitor data, run the upcoming assessments and report progress to the board; no formal vote was required for the presentation.
