Dr. Tonya Williams, chief academic officer and chief learning officer at Leadership Preparatory Academy in Lithonia, Georgia, knew improving the use of assessment data at her school would be a big job. Her goal? Bring teachers, students, and families together to use MAP® Growth™ data to help students learn. And to give teachers the time they needed to make it all happen.
A time-saving action plan
Dr. Williams began by collaborating with teachers to improve engagement with students and their families. They turned to the Learning Continuum, which quickly pinpointed where each student was. That made goal setting—alongside students and their families—easier and more effective.
Amanda Wittington, a seventh grade ELA teacher at the academy, even created a custom form for parent-teacher conferences. It presents MAP Growth data about kids alongside her observations and other key information from her classroom, which makes sharing everything with kids and their families at once simple.
“When I started giving my kids ownership of their growth, and when I involved families, all of a sudden, we were a team, supporting a student that was excited to see tangible results of their work,” she says.
Dr. Williams knew bringing teachers together would also help them understand their students better and in less time. It was as simple as giving all of a student’s teachers access to their assessment data. For Inshira Martin, a fifth grade math teacher, that changed everything.
“Reading comprehension has a big impact on math scores, and as I started to understand my students’ reading abilities, I was able to understand where a reading difficulty might be holding a student back in my class,” Inshira says.
Getting buy-in—and recognition
MAP Growth projections were a key part of Devin Latham’s buy-in to the school’s assessment program. She’s an eighth grade ELA teacher.
“My first year, I wasn’t aware of how to use the data,” she says. “Then we started using reports that showed both student performance and projections, and comparisons to other students. That made a big difference for helping my students prepare for the Georgia Milestones Assessment.” It also led to something she didn’t expect: motivation for her highest-performing students.
“The summary quadrant of the Achievement Status and Growth report is a big deal to students who are used to being top performers,” she explains. “It shows them that even if they’ve mastered topics that their peers may be working on, they still have the opportunity to challenge themselves and grow.”
Leadership Preparatory Academy is motivated to keep being a high achiever as well. In February 2019, they received the 2019 Innovative Charter of the Year Award at the annual Georgia Charter Schools Association Conference.
Read more about the collaborative efforts at Leadership Prep that are saving teachers time and helping kids grow. To learn more about our assessment products—MAP Growth, MAP® Accelerator™, and MAP® Reading Fluency™—visit our website or contact us.
