Mill Valley presentation: districtwide literacy screeners show gains and staff plan end-of-year DIBELS check

Mill Valley district presenters reported on Wednesday that CAASPP results for third through eighth graders and K–5 DIBELS early-literacy screeners show measurable gains, with more students falling into the 'standard exceeded' category and fewer in lower bands.

Kate, the presenter, told the board the CAASPP figures (sourced from the state's Dataquest) show a districtwide rise in students classified as 'standard exceeded' between 2021–22 and 2024–25, while the three lower performance bands decreased. "More students ended up in the standard exceeded overall," she said. Kate also walked trustees through subgroup results, saying economically disadvantaged students (about 100 third–eighth graders) and Hispanic or Latino students (about 30 students) saw notable increases in the top performance band.

The presentation included K–5 DIBELS screening data, which Kate described as an early-literacy screener that tracks discrete skills such as letter naming, phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency and — in upper grades — a reading-comprehension component known as the maze. "Generally speaking, we consider red and yellow to indicate a risk of difficulty becoming a proficient reader," Kate said, explaining how beginning-of-year and middle-of-year measures highlight progress and inform targeted interventions. The district plans to administer an end-of-year DIBELS screener in May and June to complete the year-long monitoring cycle.

Dr. Kaufman, who joined the discussion, emphasized curriculum alignment and the role of a guaranteed and viable curriculum in sustaining gains. "What you're seeing here is that... we're showing progress on normed tools that are indicative of our ability to prevent future reading loss," Dr. Kaufman said, noting the work to align the CKLA curriculum with structured literacy and the district's tiered intervention systems.

Presenters credited teachers and instructional coaches for operationalizing assessments into classroom practice. "Our teachers are doing amazing jobs," Kate said, pointing to targeted learning labs, collaboration between general and special education staff, and progress-monitoring that informs SMART goals and individual student plans. Kate and Dr. Kaufman said staff create class profiles from DIBELS data and set growth goals to guide small-group instruction and interventions.

Several board members urged the district to publicize the improvements. One committee member said the gains "should be widely known because that is not available out there," arguing that the positive data can counter negative narratives about the district. Kate and Dr. Kaufman acknowledged the importance of communicating results and said they would continue working with teachers to develop stories and materials that explain how data drives instruction.

Data sources and context were noted in the presentation: the CAASPP results came from the state's Dataquest system and the DIBELS results were summarized from the district's MCAS/DIBELS records; Jessica Hammond at Glean prepared the slide set for the district. Presenters cautioned that the CAASPP comparison reflects system-level, year-to-year snapshots rather than cohort-tracking of individual students, but they said the district has "reached pre-pandemic achievement levels, and we've gone beyond that this year too."

Next steps identified in the presentation include administering the May–June end-of-year DIBELS screener, continuing progress monitoring, and gathering teacher narratives to show how assessments are used in daily instruction. The board then moved on to business and financial items on the agenda.