Land Trust and Teacher and Student Success Act (TSSA)
Preliminary Summary of Spending and Outcomes
Union Middle School, School Year 2019-20
Teacher and Student Success Plan (TSSP)
Academic Goal: 75% of students will maintain proficiency on Union’s common assessments in all subject areas through May, 2020. (Scoring 70% or above on a common assessment will be considered proficient.)
School Climate Goal: 85% of students will report feeling connected to school on targeted school climate survey questions.
Money was allocated in the following areas:
- Personnel – Academic Aides, 3 Sections of Study Skills, time in summer to prepare for new math curriculum and other content, Part-time Social Worker, Part-time Art Teacher, substitutes to facilitate departmental data-review and planning days, Building Leadership Team meeting in the summer, and stipend for staff to read book “Trauma Informed Practices”
- Technology – We purchased additional Chromebooks, iPads, and an iPad cart to facilitate instruction and assessment.
Indicators of Progress: Union Middle had a large fire during the school year that disrupted the learning for 7 weeks. (We pivoted to a half day schedule with a loss in instructional time.) In addition, due to the arrival of Covid-19, schools went to online learning from March 16 through May 29, 2020. With these two significant disruptions, we did not gather data on all the formative assessments and we didn’t administer the School Connectedness Survey.
Despite the barriers to learning, we were able to measure the reading progress of two cohorts of students (students at Union Middle for both 2019-20 and 2020-21). Reading comprehension, measured in the Reading Inventory, is a great predictor of academic success. Both cohorts maintained reading proficiency and even made progress. Our proficiency in reading increased by 5% for 7th graders and 3% for 8th graders when comparing the growth between the winter reading inventory last year and the Fall inventory this year.
We could not compare data for our Math Inventory (MI) between years, however, we did see evidence of some losses in this area. Our math readiness (foundational math knowledge) was lower at the start of this school year (2020-21) than it was last year (2019-20).
