Bayyari Elementary (2023)

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

***PROMISING PRACTICES SCHOOL***

In the summer of 2019, Bayyari Elementary sent a committee to the Solution Tree RTI at Work training to review our RTI process. At the time, we were overwhelmed due to the number of students needing Tier 3 support. At the PD, led by Eric Twadell, we specifically asked, “What do you do when you have more than half of your students in Tier 3?”  During the two-day session, Mr. Twadell explained to us that our data was upside-down. He told us about an opportunity with Solution Tree and Arkansas Department of Education for a grant that could help us better understand all of our tiers of instruction, why we had so many students in Tier 3, and what to do about it.

We returned to school and began to implement the knowledge we had gained from the RTI at Work training. We immediately started researching the grant and preparing to apply in the Spring of 2020.  We understood we were PLC “light” and needed to focus on Tier 1 instruction, but bringing that back to our school seemed like a huge undertaking considering our school culture and climate as well. We knew we needed training and support in order to make the changes we knew were necessary.

After submitting our application in Spring of 2020, we were accepted as a member of Cohort 4. The Solution Tree coaching team assigned to work with us have been phenomenal. We couldn’t have asked for better partners to support us in our journey to do the right PLC/RTI work. We used Learning by Doing to guide us every step of the way. Teachers took ownership of the work by identifying literacy essential standards and their learning targets, creating common formative and summative assessments, using data protocol tools to analyze data, plan interventions and collaborating on teaching strategies.They organized this work through a shared ELA timeline with links to their work. To give teachers adequate time for this work, we increased team collaboration time from 40 minutes to 80 minutes a week. We refined our Guiding Coalition to allow for shared decision making and leadership. Each year as we have moved through this process, our teacher ownership and teacher efficacy have increased.

As we focused on improving instruction, we put a benefit of the grant to good use! In addition to dedicated coaches, Solution Tree also gives Cohort schools access to their online Global PD.  All teachers and staff in our building have an account. We applied for the grant just as COVID shut down schools and our nation. Having Global PD allowed our teachers to access quality Professional Development while they were isolated because of Covid exposures. All staff now use Global PD and Avanti to build their knowledge.

During our first year, as a staff, our paradigm shifted in many ways. As part of the process, we were charged with writing a new mission statement, as well as defining our vision. We had many difficult but purposeful conversations about our ‘Why’. We also learned to develop consensus as a tool for decision making.

In year two, our PLC collaborative work focused on the learning in Taking Action. We began the process of refining our RTI work in all academic tiers. At the start of the year, we developed a behavior RTI checklist that turned into our matrix with essential standards, school wide expectations, and lessons. As our knowledge grew, we were able to finalize our vision statement and collective commitments at the beginning of year two. During year one, our focus had been on implementing our reading essential standards. During year two, we added essential standards in mathematics and other literacy components. With essential standards identified and learning targets set, we started focusing on each individual skill of each learning target and drilling it down kid by kid. We wanted our interventions to be laser focused.  We implemented an RTI committee to monitor and evaluate all tiers of instructions. A subcommittee grew from it called the B.E.A.R.S. Committee. It is made up of instructional coaches, school psychologist, counselor, school interventionist, special education teacher, speech pathologist, and administration to really help teachers drill down into strategies and supports to implement and ensure student success. This committee uses the RTI Problem Solving Process.The team meets every three weeks to meet with teachers on new referrals and progress monitor previously discussed students.

Year 3 - Our hard work was beginning to show results! Bayyari was recognized by the Office of Educational Policy at University of Arkansas as a School Beating the Odds. We were recognized for high overall growth statewide and high math growth for the Northwest Region. Bayyari was also named as a School on the Move Towards Excellence by the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. We contribute this success to a strong implementation of the PLC process. Ms. Mullican was given the high honor of becoming a PLC Practitioner for the Arkansas State Department. This allows her to collaborate with other schools as she shares our PLC experiences while continuing her lifelong pursuit of education as she learns from and with others. Our fifth-grade teachers also joined the state’s collaborative PLC fifth grade team to share and learn with others across the state. At Bayyari our PLC work has continued.  As we enter our third and final year as part of the PLC grant program, our focus has been on assessment. We are also reevaluating our previous work to make sure that we understand what is tight and loose. This is done by ensuring we have systems in place to sustain the work.

As we move toward the end of year three, we are starting to develop a plan to sustain the work. Next year we plan to continue to utilize resources available from Solution Tree. We will contract with coaches for assistance as data indicates trends of concern. We are shifting our focus to attaining the High Reliability School designation. This work aligns precisely with the PLC process. It will help sustain the work that we have done as we continue to grow. After attending training on Marzano’s The New Art and Science of Teaching, we are implementing strategies to tighten our Tier 1 instruction. We will provide ongoing professional development on the PLC process for any new staff that is hired as they begin to collaborate with their trained team members. We will utilize  the state and district resources to collaborate with other schools. Bayyari will also increase site visits to other model PLC schools to grow our Professional Learning Network. We will keep revisiting our mission and vision statements to guide our work and put first things first.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

At the beginning of our PLC journey, Bayyari Elementary staff utilized the ENDURANCE, LEVERAGE, READINESS process recommended in Learning by Doing. Bayyari also studies our district summative and state assessment results to identify essential standards in English language arts and mathematics.  With the support of Solution Tree coaches, we unpacked the essential standards into student friendly “I can” learning targets to break down each of the skills students must know and be able to do in order to demonstrate proficiency of the standards.  On an annual and as needed basis, we vertical team (K-5) to ensure alignment of the essential standards and learning targets from one grade level to the next.  This also assists teams in providing the correct level of rigor the standards call for, and ensure there are no gaps in instruction across grade levels.

Weekly, all grade level teams collaborate and utilize a “Guarantee and Viable Curriculum Instructional Timeline” to ensure we are “tight” about what we must collaborate about when implementing our essential standards. This includes but is not limited to the following: essential standards, learning targets, instructional strategies, level of rigor (DOK), student proficiency, timeline/pacing of the essential standards, formative and summative assessments aligned to the essential standards, and the date we will collaborate to determine team action steps and analyze student work products or team assessment results.

Collaborative teams utilize an assessment ladder to organize the progression of the learning targets, starting from the bottom of the ladder (least complex target) to the top of the ladder (most complex target).  The learning targets are then grouped to demonstrate which targets are being assessed in each common formative team assessments (CFA). This helps each team monitor what we are teaching, what we are assessing, and most importantly, whether or not students are proficient on the targets based on results of each CFA. Our teams now have ladders for each essential standard in ELA, and new teachers and teams are working to revise or develop new ladders in ELA and mathematics.

In addition to CFAs, teams are continuing to revise and develop common summative assessments (CSA), in order to bring all learning targets together and determine whether or not students are proficient on each essential standard.

 

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

Bayyari has created a system of intervention and extension to provide students with additional time and support for learning during the school day. Teachers have established a Tier 1 prevention loop to give immediate support to students. The Guiding Coalition Team collaborates with the administration to create a master schedule that allows protected time for Tier 2 (WIN Time), Tier 3 (Brain Boost) intervention, and extension. Tier 3 is done daily for 30 minutes, and Tier 2 is done four days a week for 30 minutes. In our schedule, we also have a dedicated 30 minutes four days a week for English Language Development.

Teacher teams analyze common formative assessment data (CFAs) and common summative assessments (CSAs) in a timely manner to determine students who are not proficient on grade level essential standards. They use the data to target students who need intervention and extension. We drill down kid by kid and skill by skill. Teacher teams also analyze data in a timely manner to determine students who lack prerequisite skills for each essential standard. This data is used to see who needs additional time and support on previous grade level skills. During Tier 3 and Tier 2 time, Bayyari utilizes an all-hands-on-deck mentality. Bayyari students are all of our students, and additional support staff is assigned to each grade level to help with interventions and/or extensions. 

Springdale School District has provided all schools with weekly protected early release time for staff to identify students who need support, create common formative assessments, and create ladders to unpack learning targets. Teams are granted 80-minutes weekly to hold collaborative team meetings, in addition to a 40-minute daily common planning time. Bayyari periodically hires substitutes to provide teacher teams with additional days to collaborate around CFA and CSA data and plan the next steps for targeted tier 2 and 3 interventions and extensions. Teachers are afforded an additional opportunity to be compensated when collaborating with their grade-level teams after contractual hours to plan interventions and extensions.

     The school-wide RTI Team meets twice each month after school to support, monitor, and hold everyone accountable to our systems of intervention and extension. Team members are broken into smaller teams to analyze and monitor the Essential Actions that are required within each of the three tiers.  The team uses the reproducible RTI at Work Essential Actions for Tiers 1, 2, and 3 from the book, Taking Action to assist with this process. 

    We also developed a B.E.A.R.S Committee (Behavior- Emotional- Academic- Response- System) that meets monthly, and whose primary responsibility is to identify and address the needs of tier 3 students.   Our B.E.A.R.S committee uses the RTI Problem Solving Process tool to ensure we are targeted and focused on the needs of the students.  The team also developed and implemented a schoolwide tier 3 referral form to review assessment data and teacher recommendation before determining if a student is in need of tier 3 support.  Once a student is identified for tier 3 remediation, the team is responsible for developing a learning plan for each student, analyzing formative assessment results, and using a progress monitoring tool roughly every three weeks throughout the school year.  This ensures we are routinely monitoring the progress of tier 3 students and whether or not they are developing proficiency on previous year’s skills.

 

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

At the beginning of each school year, the guiding coalition analyzes district and state assessment results to create school wide SMART goals in ELA and mathematics, along with a long-term stretch goal in ELA. Collaborative teams then analyze assessment results to create annual SMART goals aligned to the schoolwide goals.  Each team sets short-term goals throughout the school year aligned to our essential standard summative assessments. This helps teams to adjust their pacing and plan targeted tier 2 intervention, depending on the degree of achievement on each short-term goal.

Collaborative teams meet on a weekly basis every Wednesday for an 80-minute block of time.  Teams are expected to set an agenda that focuses on their team process, and topics must be in line with the schoolwide actions within our PLC Action Plan.  The format of the agenda and team process is consistently aligned to the four critical questions of the collaborative team process:

1. What do we expect all students to know and be able to do?

2. How will we know when students have learned it?

3. How will we respond when students don’t learn?

4. How will we respond when students already know it?

Specific examples of what teams focus their efforts on to improve student learning includes: Essential standards and learning targets we are teaching in an upcoming unit, planning tier 1 instruction and student engagement, developing CFAs and CSAs, and planning for intervention and extension.  At times, we meet as vertical teams to align our standards, learning targets and share instructional strategies. 

 

Achievement Data Files

Additional Achievement Data

Note about ACT Aspire grades 2-5 data:  In addition to the subgroups, we inputted at the top of the spreadsheet, the percent of students schoolwide (grades 3-5) that scored "meets or exceeds."  We color coded the percentages in red (decrease) or green (increase) to note the improvement schoolwide and within each subgroup in each subject area from year to year.

Note about the K-2 NWEA (MAP) data:  In visiting with the Springdale School District Testing Coordinator, there are no statewide results available for NWEA data, therefore, this is left blank and indicated on our spreadsheet.  We also verified and are unable to find this data on the state website.

We also uploaded a graph to show a visual of the percentage of students "meeting or exceeding" proficiency in grades 3-5 on the 2021 and 2022 ACT Aspire.

For the 2019-2020 school year we shared a document for Winter MAP data since our school was not in session in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic.

File:  Bayyari ACT Aspire Summary Report compare 2018 - current -2020

We have also added our Fall 2019-2020 ACT Aspire Interim Data for assessments in Math and Reading that were completed.  In comparing Act Aspire 2021 to the fall 2019/2020 school year student achievement increased in all areas except in one grade level (5th).  Longitudinal data shows growth in math and reading from 3rd to 4th graders and 4th to 5th graders in reading.  During the 2020-2021 school year, our district and school had a blending learning model, where kids came to school either M.W,F or T/Th or 5 days a week.  All students still completed the assessments regardless of their learning model.  We've managed to achieve this much growth in the midst of a pandemic with blending learning.  In the 2021-2022 school year we showed significant growth despite the fact we were still doing quarentines for close contacts and pivoted to test to stay.  At one time we had 190 students out in the month of January and over half of third graders out in Decemeber, in addition to staff being out either positive or quarentined.  

 

 

Year 3

In fall of 2022, Bayyari was recognized by the Office of Educational Policy at University of Arkansas as a School Beating the Odds.We were recognized for high overall growth statewide and high math growth for the Northwest Region.

Bayyari was also named as a School on the Move Towards Excellence by the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. We contribute this success to a strong implementation of the PLC process.

Ms. Mullican was given the high honor of becoming a PLC Practitioner for the Arkansas State Department Of Education PLC Division of Special Projects. 

In July of 2023, Bayyari received Highly Effective Schools Accreditation. 

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