Since our school’s inception, a steadfast commitment to excellence in instruction, collaboration, and intervention has established a strong culture of high expectations and student achievement.  PLCs have been the cornerstone of Reagan's continued success and what grounds our work.  In August of 2007, Ronald W. Reagan Elementary, a fully inclusive, public school, opened its doors for the first time and warmly welcomed 220 eager new students. Currently, Reagan serves an ethnically diverse population of 515 students, of whom 81% are Hispanic, 62% are Socioeconomically Disadvantaged (SED), and 11% are English Learners (ELs).

Reagan’s academic success is directly attributed to its schoolwide, full implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Response to Intervention (RtI), and Effective Instruction. PLCs were crucial to our school’s smooth transition from distance learning back to in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Reagan has been able to maintain consistent academic achievement pre and post COVID-19 pandemic. California's School Dashboard showed Reagan’s Academic Performance as medium, exceeding the state's performance level by 33.9-points from Standard in Mathematics and 10.3-points from Standard in English Language Arts. A particular point of pride is that our Hispanic students group outperformed the state by 65-points from Standard in Mathematics 33-points from Standard in English Language Arts (2022).

The exceptional academic results and the innovative approaches centered around PLCs and RtI at Reagan have attracted attention from districts across California seeking to improve their own student achievement. Representatives from these districts have come to observe the instructional and collaborative expertise of Reagan’s team of educators. Sharing Reagan’s core beliefs that all students can and will achieve at high levels when provided the appropriate levels of support and enrichment.  Reagan’s vision of high achievement for all students and unwavering commitment to effective PLCs and RtI will ensure academic and personal success for current and future generations of Reagan students to come.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Reagan has several layers of systems to monitor student learning.  Starting within each classroom, each teacher has clear essential learning targets posted and embeds specific, intentional checking for understanding.  The data from these formative assessments are used by the teacher and grade level to adjust instruction.  

Grade level teams meet formally every Wednesday (from 1:30 – 4:00 PM) and informally (at least 90 minutes/week).  Formal meetings consist of the analysis of formative assessment data and progress toward SMART goals as well as identifying placement/progress of students in RtI. Informally, teams will share best practices, create scoring rubrics, and analyze student work to inform and adjust instruction.  The loose/tight structure allows teams to determine their agenda and focus for each formal meeting, while communicating progress back to site leadership in the form of minutes, SMART goal forms, reflections, monthly grade level check-ins (new), and monthly guiding coalition meetings (new). 

The grade level check-ins are a new practice that we implemented the past two years.  The purpose of these meeting are to designate time for site leadership to meet with each grade level team to address all four critical PLC questions.  We have implemented this practice so that site leaders are able to provide real-time feedback and support to each grade level, as well as monitor student learning on a timely basis. 

Teachers use critical PLC questions 3 & 4 to provide students who do not master a set skill deployment within the grade level team to receive sub skill instruction or re-teaching (depending on the intensity of student needs) or enrichment and extension for students who have already demonstrated mastery.

Additionally, teams are given three planning days per year (one per trimester).  These days are used for teams to continue to deepen their work in the PLC process.  During planning days, teams will calibrate student work, score writing samples as a grade level, create common rubrics and common assessments, and modify pacing calendars.

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

RtI is our answer to the critical PLC questions 3 & 4, how will we respond when learning did not take place and how we will extend and enrich the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency. Reagan has two deployment models that respond to students' learning needs.  The first is through flexible grouping across each grade level to address essential content standards.  PLCs analyze essential standard data from common assessments and place students into benchmark, strategic, and intensive flexible groups.  Benchmark students will extend their mastery of the standard through enrichment projects.  Strategic students typically understand the concept, but need additional practice to internalize the understanding necessary to take it to application.  The third is our intensive response, which is reserved for students who were unsuccessful in small group instruction.  The classroom teacher brings in extra resources through support staff to conduct small group or one on one instruction. The small percentage of students in the third tier are typically on an Individualized Education Plan, have poor attendance, or are new students who have prerequisite skill deficits. 

The second focuses on literacy skills in which both below grade level and benchmark students’ needs are met.  The goal and anticipated outcome of the literacy pyramid is to ensure all students have access to grade level standards and higher levels of learning.  It takes the coordination of the entire Reagan staff to have a fluid deployment system that addresses the literacy needs of all students.  Students are initially screened and placed into benchmark, strategic, and intensive at the beginning of the year.  The individualized nature of the RtI pyramid ensures that students receive assistance specific to their literacy need. Placement in an intervention is not a life sentence, but an opportunity to develop specific literacy skills in order to close their gaps and eventually move beyond grade level Proficiency.  To evaluate progress throughout the literacy intervention, students receive beginning, middle, and end of year assessments (DIBELS - oral reading fluency); intensive students are assessed once a week, strategic students are assessed bi-monthly, and benchmark students are assessed once a trimester.  

The targeted outcomes of both responses are to ensure all students have the skills to master grade level standards through individualized support. Reagan is dedicated to a focus on learning rather than on teaching, thus making it vital to meet the needs of all students.  Reagan’s RtI pyramids are effective in meeting the desired outcome as evidenced by the low number of special education referrals.

Our literacy RtI block is protected and built into the master schedule (see sample artifacts).  Each PLC determines when they deploy for content standards as each team builds that into their grade level’s schedule. 

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

Our teams have continued to grow and deepen their capacity around student learning over the years.   Our work using Timothy Kanold’s 10 High Leverage Team Actions (HLTAs) and Sarah Schuhl’s support working with our district teams helped expand our teams’ to look deeper as they continue to organize their work around the DuFour’s 4 Critical Questions for Collaborative Teams in a PLC:

1. What do we expect students to know and be able to do?
2. How will we know when students have learned it?
3. How will we respond if students don’t know it?
4. How will we respond if students do know it?

The 10 HLTAs show HOW to answer these 4 questions to improve student learning as a team while organizing the 10 HLTAs before, during, and after the unit.  While all 10 are effective for us, specifically, our work around HLTA’s 3 & 9 (develop comment assessment instruments and ensuring evidence-based goal setting) were essential for our teachers to maximize student achievement.

3.  Develop common assessment instruments (Before the unit)

• Backwards map instruction by looking at the end goal
• Implement quality indicators for common assessments rubric
• Choose tasks that provide students with multiple ways of demonstrating learning of a concept
• Evaulating quality of assessment items by comparing to exemplars 

9.  Ensure evidence-based student goal setting and action for the next unit of study (After the unit)

• Provide fair, accurate, specific, timely feedback 
• Students engage in determining level of understanding (student self-assessment)
• Address errors on assessment and results are used to set goals/form plans
• Student set goals and reflect on goals

Achievement Data Files

• model-plc--block-3-intensive-rti-pm-graphs-22-23.xlsx
• model-plc--plc-check-in-5th-grade-sample-22-23.pdf
• model-plc--3-rti-problem-solving-meetings-22-23.xlsx
• re-caaspp-scores-over-the-years--1.xlsx
• reagan-multi-year-iready-data.docx
• reagan-model-plc-application-data.xlsx

Additional Achievement Data

Our commitment to collaboration and intervention is the cornerstone of Reagan Elementary's academic success.  We ground our work in the four critical PLC questions and use data to ensure that all students are making progress towards grade level proficiency.  We conduct formal check-ins with each grade level team centered around the four critical questions of a PLC: What do we want students to know and be able to do? How will we know if they learned it? How will we respond when some students do not learn? How will we respond when they already know it? (artifact: Model PLC – PLC Check-In 5^th Grade Sample)

In addition to our grade level SMARTgoal check-ins we believe that student data should be multi-faceted and tell the story of each student beyond teacher created common formative assessments. Reagan monitor student reading three times a year with DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) created by University of Oregon.  The benchmark results are used to determine appropriate reading Response to Intervention (RtI) placement.  Students that are placement in “intensive”/tier 3 are monitored four eight weeks as shown with our DIBELS weekly progress monitoring data (artifact: Model PLC Block 2 - Intensive RtI PM graphs).  At the conclusion of our eight-week data collection we hold grade level problem solving meetings with all stakeholders to determine next steps for all students (notes on intensive students are captured in our problem-solving meeting notes). These in-depth data analyses have helped us be intentional in our instructional approach.  This is reflected in our growth of percentage of "core" (on grade level) readers on DIBEL's oral reading fluency from the 2019-2020 to the 2022-2023 school year (artifact: Model PLC Application Data). 

Over the past two years we have seen a strong correlation between i-Ready diagnostic 3 results and how students perform on the CAASPP (correlation coefficient ranging 0.85-0.91).  Our students take the i-Ready diagnostic assessment three times a year – beginning, middle, and end of the year.  We use the i-Ready diagnostic data to inform and adjust instruction throughout the year.  Our multi-year i-Ready data also shows that we are accelerating learning and closing the achievement gap. Lastly, we included our CAASPP scores over the years.  All of Reagan's subgroups have consistently performed above the state data in both English Language-Arts and mathematics since 2017 as shown in our percentage of standard/met exceeded as well as distance from standard. 

Awards and Recognitions:

• Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS), Platinum Level Award, 2021, 2023
• California Distinguished School, 2010, 2020
• Bonner Award for Virtues and Character Education, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2020
• Solution Tree Model PLC School, 2019
• Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS), Gold Level Award, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
• California Gold Ribbon Award, 2016
• Title 1 Academic Achievement Award, 2011, 2016
• California Honor Roll, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
• Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS), Silver Level Award, 2013
• California Distinguished School, 2010

 

Honors:

• One of only two schools selected in Fresno County as an MTSS Knowledge Development Site for the California Scale-Up MTSS Statewide (SUMS) Initiative
• Michael Yudin, Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Education visited and called Reagan, “The best example of both academic and behavior RtI in place that I’ve ever seen.” 2013
• Invited by Rick and Becky DuFour to present at the DuFour conference to articulate Reagan’s RtI system and featured in the All Things PLC website, 2013
• Featured in Michael Fullan’s PD 360 for being a model in Response to Intervention, 2011
• Only school selected in the state for a visit by a delegation of state legislators looking at our RtI model as an exemplar practice in school reform, 2011

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Files

• assessment-checklist.pdf