Stanley-Boyd High School (2020)

  1. PLC Story
  2. PLC Practices
  3. Achievement Data
  4. Awards
  5. Resources

Our PLC journey started when our school administration attended a Wisconsin School Leadership Academy in July of 2004.  We attended a session entitled “Building a Culture that Promotes Collaboration and Improved Student Achievement” presented by Rick and Rebecca DuFour.  Unfortunately, we did not use the great knowledge we acquired at this conference for another 2 years.  In the winter of 2006, we hired our local CESA to do a study on our school to determine why we were performing so poorly in almost every academic category.  The study showed we had a number of areas to work on in order to improve our academics in our district.  One of the most obvious and difficult realizations we had to address was our lack of commitment to learning.  We created a school improvement committee for the 2006-2007 school year to study various solutions to our problems.  As we discussed the possible solutions, we revisited our notes from the Leadership Academy in 2004 and realized the best opportunity to create a learning environment focused on student achievement was to implement the concepts found in creating and maintaining a PLC culture.

As we continued our journey to increased student learning, the administrative team attended a PLC at Work Institute during the summer of 2008.  We returned from the Institute determined to implement the foundations of PLC.  The administrative team purchased “The Power of Professional Learning Communities at Work” DVD series and purchased a copy of “Learning by Doing” for every teacher on staff. The administration worked day and night to create 49 hours of professional development for our teachers to share with them “why” the PLC process was our path to improved and sustained student learning over time.  Since the 2008-2009 school year, every teacher on our staff with 1+ years of experience has attended an institute along with school board members and administrative staff.  Teachers and administrators have visited Adlai E. Stevenson High School on 3 separate occasions to learn more about the PLC process and the procedures used in their school to continue to be one of the best schools in the country.  We have created time in our schedule so our teams of teachers can meet on a weekly basis and we have added time in our schedule to provide multiple opportunities for interventions and enrichment.  We have implemented an academic bus to take students home after school so they are able to do test retakes and get additional help from the teachers assigning the work. We have created a privilege system to celebrate the positive choices students make related to learning. 

During the Winter of 2015, we underwent a PLC at work audit by Solution Tree to determine areas of success and areas of concern.  Using the data from this report we were able to make small changes in our programming to help improve our PLC culture.  In the spring of 2016, a group of teachers and administrators visited 2 schools (Denver and Solon, IA) on the map to learn how they were continuing to achieve at high levels using the PLC process.  For the 2016-17 school year, we hired a full-time success coordinator to work with all our 6-12 students to keep them on track with work completion, grades, and future plans. Finally, we have created a culminating SMART goal for all students who graduate from Stanley-Boyd:

All students graduate with one of the following career paths:

  1. 4-year college

  2. 2-year college, tech, community, apprenticeship, etc.

  3. Military Service

  4. Entering employment w/ a career plan

At Stanley-Boyd High School we are committed to the PLC process and are continuously working to improve student learning by using PLC time to focus on results and provide high-quality professional development supported by materials and staff from Solution Tree. To start off the 2016-2017 school year, we dedicated two full days of in-service time to revisit our PLC process and the importance thereof. Most recently, we used PD time to train team facilitators in an effort to refine and reinforce the collaborative team process. Our teams now use protocols to guide conversations about teacher created lessons and resources as well as data, student work and student learning. We strive to provide our facilitators with the knowledge, resources, and tools needed to build social capital and to empower their teams as they work to ensure all of our students are learning. Stanley-Boyd High School staff and administration understand PLC is not a program or a canned system but a culture you create and sustain by collaborating with one another, creating and adjusting a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and having a clear picture of continuous learning for staff and students.

 

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Our teachers have worked to identify power standards and all activities and assessments are linked to those standards. Formative work is not graded but instead is used to identify students in need of intervention and to guide next instructional steps. Assessments are divided by learning targets. We understand that every student is different and that our students learn in different ways and at different rates. As a result, all students are given the opportunity to make corrections, to demonstrate new learning, and to retake individual learning targets on assessments. Students who fail to demonstrate proficiency in any standard(s) are required to complete timely retakes. 

Teachers use feedback and classroom assessments to track academic progress and identify students in need of support on specific learning target skills/knowledge. To accommodate reteaching and allow for additional support, we have two 30-minute intervention times in our daily schedule. Due to our focus on learning targets, our carefully designed assessments, and our commitment to timely feedback, our students know where they are at in the learning process as well as where they need help. Students who are meeting all expectations have the freedom to choose the location they attend for intervention/enrichment, while students not meeting expectations are often assigned to specific locations. Struggling students use intervention time to work directly with course teachers. Teachers may hard request students to ensure that timely interventions occur.

 

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

We have created a privilege card system for our students which provides students who are meeting our expectations - (1) C’s or better in all classes, (2) minimal discipline referrals, and (3) appropriate attendance - privileges and incentives on a regular basis. Struggling students who are actively working to improve are often given the opportunity to retain privileges as a result of their proactive commitment to improved learning. 

Students are monitored on a regular basis using formative and summative assessments in the classroom along with our ACT Aspire assessment system. We do grade checks for all students once every 3 weeks to determine if they meet the academic expectations of our privilege system, but our monitoring of struggling and intentional non-learners is much more frequent and interventions are immediate.  

Stanley-Boyd has a trimester schedule with five 65 minute class periods, a 60-minute lunch period (30 minutes for students to eat and 30 minutes for student seminar), and a 30 minute resource period at the end of the day where all teachers are available to assist students. This time is used for general support, reteaching and in preparation for retakes. Students meeting the expectations have the freedom to choose various enrichment or enjoyable activities to participate in during student Seminar and are able to choose their teacher for the resource period at the end of the day. Struggling students can sometimes select where they need to be for interventions during Seminar and Resource, but teachers can also require students to attend based on need. 

Academically at-risk students are identified via a weekly grade report as well as through teacher recommendation. Once students are identified as in need of more extensive support, the principal checks in with teachers to determine what supports are needed, a schedule is created to help meet specific needs for the week, an individual student meeting is held to discuss academic concerns as well as progress and the plan for the week, and student progress and performance is monitored. The principal coordinates and collaborates with teachers, students and guardians to improve student achievement and ensure that students are learning the skills and knowledge identified as essential. Student assistant team meetings and before/after school time are also worked into each individual plan and schedule as needed. Once students demonstrate adequate progress and maintain academic successes in the classroom, they are released from the schedule. 

 

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

Our high school is organized into content area teams because we are essentially a singleton school district.  We have collaboration meetings every Wednesday morning from 7:20 - 8:10 in our high school library.  We meet in our library to allow our teachers to meet with various teams to share ideas and compare data.  Our middle school teams are also meeting in the library at this time so we are able to have vertical meetings centered around content areas to make sure we are striving for the same goals and have a solid scope and sequence. Our teachers share data about recent exit slips (and other formative assessments), state assessments, local ACT Aspire interim assessments, and teacher-created summative assessments.  Our staff recently worked on the development of unit plans for every class our teachers are teaching.  The unit plans include resources, instruction, assessments, and SMART goals.  We will use these unit plans, along with the above-mentioned data points, to continually monitor student learning.  

Most recently, we used PD time to train team facilitators in an effort to refine and reinforce the collaborative team process. Our teams now use protocols to guide conversations about teacher created lessons and resources as well as data, student work and student learning. We strive to provide our facilitators with the knowledge, resources, and tools needed to build social capital and to empower their teams as they work to ensure all of our students are learning. Our goal is to create strong teams capable of having the difficult conversations needed to ensure that we are digging into data and developing effective learning plans based on best practice.   

 

Achievement Data Files

Additional Achievement Data

View evidence of effectiveness, AP participation, and ACT scores under the Resources tab.

ACT                      State                              Stanley-Boyd

2014-15                  20                                      19.4

2015-16                  20.1                                   20.5

2016-17                  20                                      21.1

2017-18                 19.8                                    19.6

2018-19                 19.6                                    18.6

All students in each district must take the ACT as 11th graders.

Academic banquet attendees (3.7 GPA or higher)

2014-15     83

2015-16     98

2016-17     87

2017-18     87

2018-19     74

Failed classes per year:

2014-15     26

2015-16     9

2016-17     5

2017-18     4

2018-19     3

State Report Card (Student Achievement)   State:                   Stanley-Boyd:

2013 - 14                                                         69.1                          71.3

2015-16                                                           63.6                          66.1

2016-17                                                           60.2                          67.4

2017-18                                                           57.3                          67.4 

2018-19                                                           59.8                          65.1

State Report Card (Closing Gaps)                      State:               Stanley-Boyd:

2013-14                                                             60.7                        72.5

2015-16                                                             67.5                         78.7

2016-17                                                             60.9                         75.9

2017-18                                                             67.7                         93.3

2018-19                                                             67.3                         80.5       

 

Recognized by the US News and World Reports Best High Schools for the following school years:

2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19

Exceeded expectations on the Wisconsin School Report Card every year they have published the school report cards:

2011-12, 2013-14, 2015-16, and 2016-17 (School report cards were not awarded for the 2012-13 and 2014-15 school year)

Significantly Exceeded Expectations on the Wisconsin School Report Card for the 2017-2018 school year.

Stanley-Boyd Area Schools was the 2013 winner of the Excellence Award at the district level by Solution Tree

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