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Stanwood‑Camano elementary leaders report gains after targeted literacy and math interventions
Summary
Principals at Stanwood Elementary and Utselad Elementary told the board their schools saw mid‑year gains after adopting grade‑level academic vocabulary lists, expanded literacy blocks and structured math intervention groups; administrators said progress monitoring and MTSS collaboration drove improvements but flagged decoding at upper elementary grades and unfinished end‑of‑year data.
Principals presenting May 20 to the Stanwood‑Camano School District board said ongoing literacy and math interventions have produced measurable mid‑year improvement but leave unfinished work going into summer.
Stacy Linger, principal at Stanwood Elementary, said the school set explicit English language arts and math goals for the year. For literacy, the school created grade‑level academic‑vocabulary lists, increased core literacy time to 90–120 minutes daily and added a 30‑minute daily literacy intervention block. Linger said staff used M‑Class and Maze assessments to track beginning‑of‑year and middle‑of‑year progress and that special‑education and MTSS staff collaborated closely on reading supports.
"We created a list of academic vocabulary words for every grade level," Linger said, describing the program teachers used in class and during small‑group pullouts. She reported notable gains in oral reading fluency at lower grades and steady comprehension growth on the Maze assessment, but cautioned that some fourth‑ and fifth‑grade students still show decoding gaps that require explicit morphology and syllable‑break instruction.
On math, Linger said the school used Delta Math for targeted intervention and reorganized instruction so teachers and interventionists could run small groups (she described up to 12 adults teaching fourth‑grade intervention rotations). "We can get group sizes down to two or three in some groups," she said, arguing that the smaller groups made a measurable difference.
Dr. Michael Hannah, who presented Utselad Elementary’s report, framed his school’s work as aligned to the district strategic plan: the goal is grade‑level reading and stronger math performance assessments. Hannah described progress monitoring using DIBBLES and M‑Class and said the school reduced the number of students requiring progress monitoring from the beginning to the middle of the year. He also said the school pivoted in February to designing units backward from end‑of‑unit performance assessments aligned to state prompts to better prepare students for higher‑order tasks.
Hannah reported a roughly 40% decrease in weekly behavior referrals documented in Skyward (excluding bus referrals) and said anecdotal teacher reports corroborated improved climate under Responsive Classroom practices. He said teacher teams were working on standards alignment and that end‑of‑year data would provide a fuller picture.
Board members pressed both principals on measurement and next steps. A trustee noted a dip in mid‑year oral reading fluency for some upper grades; Linger said single‑passage fluency measures can vary with students’ background knowledge and reiterated the need for explicit decoding instruction. On attendance, Linger described a classroom incentive program that raises daily rates and reported an average daily attendance near 93.6%.
Next steps presented to the board included continued MTSS coordination, reassessing intervention group placements every eight sessions, and focusing on morphology and word‑analysis skills for older elementary students. Both principals said final end‑of‑year assessments, available later in the spring, would be used to refine goals for 2025–26.
