The Feb. 1 meeting of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Board of Education honed in on support systems for lagging students, gathering feedback from school site principals on the best practices moving forward.
During the meeting, SMMUSD Director of Assessment, Research and Evaluation Dr. Stacy Williamson updated the board on Q2 Lead Metrics, part of the district’s cycle of inquiry based on Local Control and Accountability (LCAP) goals. The report focused on fall diagnostic and interim assessments, including STAR Reading and Math evaluations, as well as other factors like fall semester secondary grades, English Learner reclassification, attendance and discipline.
In STAR assessments, areas of successes included 68% of grades 2-12 students at or above a Level 4 benchmark in the Reading assessment, as well as 57% of TK-1st grade students at or above benchmarks in the STAR Early Literacy test. For Math assessments, 31% of grades 2-12 students were at or above Level 4 benchmark, and 77% and 71% of 1st and 2nd grade students, respectively, exceeded or met standards on the respective grade assessments.
The presentation noted that the student subgroup with the highest percentage of needing “urgent intervention” was Socioeconomic Disadvantaged students, with 384 of the subgroup defined as needing intervention in English Language Arts (ELA), and 230 in Math. Other subgroups with cause for concern were Students with Disabilities (307 in ELA, 218 in Math), Latinx students (296 in ELA, 133 in Math) and African American/Black students (85 for ELA, 43 for Math).
“This data is helpful to our school sites because it allows them an opportunity to identify which students are in the most need of supports, and the data allows them to identify some target areas to focus on with the students,” Williamson said of the STAR assessments.
Turning to grades given within the school curriculum for middle and high school students, similar subgroups were defined under areas of growth. At SMMUSD middle school sites, 446 of 12,213 grades given were either D’s or F’s (4% of grades given), and 255 of 2,028 middle school students enrolled were given these grades (13% of students). A total of 168 failing grades were given to socioeconomically disadvantaged students, while 120 were given to Latinx/Hispanic students. The courses responsible for the most D’s and F’s were 8th grade social studies, 7th grade math core and 8th grade math core.
For high school students, 994 of 18,265 grades given during the fall semester were D’s or F’s (5% of grades), and out of the total high school enrollment of 3,006, 519 students were given at least one D or F (17% of students). Socioeconomically disadvantaged and Latinx/Hispanic students again were the highest subgroups with failing grades, and the courses most responsible for failing grades were Algebra II P, Algebra P and Geometry P.
The presentation and following discussion focused on “promising practices” for districtwide support on lagging students, as well as middle and high school supports in place for students with failing grades. Williamson noted that several of the “promising practices” include maintaining integration on social justice standards in curriculum guides, the implementation of restorative justice and social-emotional learning, as well as working on parent outreach with student wraparound services.
Supports currently in place for middle schools include principal and assistant principal meetings with key teachers regarding disproportionate grading, subject intervention during advisory periods as well as lunch and after school homework support. Based on feedback from school sites, next steps for middle schoolers focus on school wide social-emotional and mental wellness, along with the continual assessment made by students with interventions added as needed.
At the high school level, supports include after school tutoring, teachers meeting with students “on a regular basis” to assist with work production and quality, and targeted support during school flex time. New endeavors for high school students focus on peer tutoring, beginning soon in after school library sessions.
“We have to figure out which ones of those [practices] really help these failing students or kids in the subgroups that are getting the lower scores … if those are the kids we’re really focused on, we have to have a strategy and we have to be taking apart what’s working and what isn’t … it’s hard to do, it isn’t magic,” SMMUSD Board member Laurie Lieberman said during support system discussion.
Discussion also hinged on attendance data, including chronic absenteeism for subgroups like African American/Black students. Williamson said that at a recent training, assessment and evaluation staff began looking at how to better connect students and build relationships, wanting to identify why some students are missing an inordinate amount of school time. The process looks to include equity surveys and one-on-one conversations with chronically absent students.
“They’re really excited about the work because they want to talk to the students and hear from them [on] what is your barrier and how can we address that relationship and repair anything if it needs to be repaired,” Williamson added. Board member Maria Leon-Vasquez agreed with the sentiment of talking to individual students, including lending her support to elementary student intervention in terms of grades and attendance.