At the Moorestown Township Public Schools Board of Education meeting on Nov. 17, updates were given on strategic planning, and it was announced a Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career data timeline was put on the website along with resources for parents.
“Kat D’Ambra and Carole Butler gave us a brief update on the PARCC timeline, which is on the website for the public,” board member Sheryl Sawin of the Curriculum Committee said.
At a meeting in October, Carole Butler, director of curriculum and instruction, announced scores were lower than anticipated in New Jersey. However, she wanted to caution that is typical because it is a first-year test.
MTPS will get information on scores to the public after reviewing it by late December or January.
At last week’s meeting, it was announced that there is a calendar of updates on the MTPS website, www.mtps.com, which will be updated as time goes on. In the future, there will be parent nights to explain what the scores mean to parents as well as to the board.
Also at the BOE meeting that night, an update was given on strategic plans for MTPS, which stated the vision was to “enhance our academic, emotional and social foundations while creating a collaborative learning environment which fosters global awareness through personal opportunities and individual growth.”
There were three broad-based goals to establish a culture of innovation to facilitate authentic growth and development of engaged, dynamic and productive learners; provide resources, targeted instruction and interventions tailored to learners’ foundational needs at all grade levels; and design opportunities that promote self-awareness, confidence, personal responsibility and social mindfulness to provide the foundation for competent local and global citizenship.
Committees were made for each goal. Timelines were implemented and action plans developed by each committee. The work will produce action plans that will be helpful and used for planning and decision-making purposes for following years.
For the first goal, the committee brainstormed ideas about innovation, summarized the main ideas and came up with four areas of the action plans. The four action plans were to develop common lines K-12, establish score programs and educational values K-12, develop real world learning experiences K-12 as a priority, and fostering these processes, services, technology and ideas to empower district stakeholders. At the next meeting, they will continue to work on these action plans.
The second goal took ideas from a community wide strategic plan survey last year and took ideas and themes that resonated with the committee. From there, the committee will develop main topics that will be develop into action plans. Those main ideas were to establish an accessible K-12 robust data story for all of the students, expanding the width of the data from the upper levels and lower levels so teachers could have a data dashboard for each student and tailor to their needs; analyze and restructure as needed current early intervention support systems in place for grades K-2 establish needs assessment to determine interventions needed for students in grades three to 12; and establish a collaboration structure district wide to give teachers time to analyze this data for the purpose of guiding instruction for specific students.
The third goal focused on social and emotional learning and did research on such by using resources from top leaders in the field. From that information, they created action steps that promote a culture and climate that fosters grit, resilience and growth mindset for all; develop systematic and systemic social emotional learning standards in the curriculum, which already are in place, but may need to be adjusted; promote connectedness to school environments by engaging in meaningful opportunities; and create systems for mentoring of pupils, adult to student and student to peer.
The chairs of each goal committee will continue to come back to the board with updates as they go through the process of breaking down each of the goals.
