On Oct. 12, the Tomball ISD board reviewed a districtwide improvement plan, presented by TISD Chief Academic Officer Michael Webb, which aims to address academic development.
The context
From the previous school year, the district sought to improve its campuses in 12 main categories. Out of those 12, Webb said the district made great strides in:
However, TISD did not meet expectations in the remaining 8 categories, which are:
Extended constructed response grades 3-6
Extended constructed response grades 7-10
Reading (emergent bilingual)
Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS)
SAT
Grade 7 math
State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) scores
Social studies
Webb said that the district improvement plan is overseen by Mark White, TISD assistant superintendent of Accountability and head of the district improvement committee. The committee begins its work in late August and evaluates the district on a variety of factors such as attendance, STAAR scores, discipline and accountability.
The district improvement plan as a whole is just one part of the TISD Exceeding Excellence 2030 strategic plan, which, as previously reported, is a framework to manage student growth and district success.
The breakdown
Webb said that moving into the new school year, TISD will focus its efforts on 4 categories for improvement at the elementary and secondary levels.
For elementary literacy, TISD wants to decrease the percentage of first- to third-grade students needing intervention on the STAAR Reading assessment from 6.7% this year to 6.2%. The district also wants to increase the number of first- to third-grade students scoring a 5 or above on the STAAR Extended Constructed Response (ECR) by 5%.
TISD also hopes to improve literacy rates for its secondary and emergent bilingual students. The district will work toward increasing the percentage of emergent bilingual students in the “meets expectations” category for the Reading STAAR exam by 3%.
In advanced academics and math, the district recently earned a raw math score of 63% on the STAAR A-F exam. Webb said that a goal for the district is to improve this score to 66%. To help achieve this, TISD will begin Saturday SAT tutoring in the spring, along with using high-quality materials newly approved by the state board of education.
TISD is working with campus administrators to improve the district's science and social studies STAAR A-F scores. This past year, TISD earned scores of 72% and 65% in science and social studies; the district is hoping to improve those to 75% and 70%, respectively, this year.
TISD is also focusing on improving student behavior, attendance and safety with new security measures and standards.
In case you missed it
Webb said that the TISD improvement committee has met and gathered feedback from the district's teachers and administrators. Some of the feedback suggested increasing professional learning for special education and general education teachers who teach students with disabilities. The board said there were also requests to allow for more customization of the school climate and culture survey for both teachers and parents.
Lastly, the district's teachers requested that the board continue to protect teacher work days. Webb said that they have been very popular among administrators, who would like them to remain on the school's official calendar.
