Pleasant Grove High School (2024)

School Information

School District: Pleasant Grove Independent School District
School Address: 5406 McKnight Rd , Texarkana, TX 75503, US
School Phone: 903-832-8005
Principal: Kristen Giles
Contact E-Mail: kgiles@pgisd.net

Demographics

Number of Students: 750
Percent Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch: 31.78%
Percent of Limited English Proficient: 3.46%
Percent of Special Education: 9.18%

Racial/Ethnic Percentages:

White: 69.55%
Black: 15.82%
Hispanic: 5.85%
Asian: 3.19%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: 0%
American Indian or Alaska Native: 0.27%
Multiracial: 5.32%
Other: 0%

Background
Pleasant Grove Independent School District began its PLC journey around 2015. At this time the district was functioning as a PLC "Lite” and it was no different at Pleasant Grove High School. Teachers had weekly "PLC meetings" in the core areas of language arts, math, science, and social studies. These thirty minute meetings had no clear agenda so teachers usually shared general lesson plans and talked about current events happening at the school. They basically morphed into general departmental meetings. Because teams did not know what an actual collaborative team meeting was or even looked like, the meetings were often viewed as a waste of time and just "checking a box". Unfortunately, this version of “PLC Lite” continued for about four years.

In the spring of 2019, the district hired a new superintendent, Mr. Chad Pirtle. He began his tenure with a district-wide analysis of the policies, practices, and procedures. This analysis helped him understand the district's current reality and enabled him to identify the need for training and support for the district to effectively engage in the PLC process. His main goal during his first year was for district leadership to just learn with him and not "sink the ship". He wanted to build shared knowledge among leadership and develop a clear understanding before we started sharing our learning and working with our teacher leaders. His plan to grow his leaders was our true starting point to becoming an actual professional learning community. In the fall of 2019, district and campus leadership attended their first PLC Institute. The priority at this time was to train leadership on the process which continued throughout that year at the district’s monthly Leaders of Learning meetings. These meetings were composed of the superintendent, director of learning services, and campus principals. At this time, the learning services team at central services was one person, Julie McClurg. Mr. Pirtle and Mrs. McClurg felt that in order to support district principals and campuses, the Learning Services Department needed to expand. During the spring of 2020, the district created new positions of campus learning coordinators (CLCs) for each campus to help lead the PLC process at the campus level. CLCs attended weekly meetings within the Learning Services Department to ensure their learning continued and then brought that learning back to campus leadership. During year one, the job of the campus learning coordinators was to build capacity about the PLC process within the campus leadership team. This strategy was aligned with Mr. Pirtle’s vision for leadership to have a clear understanding of the PLC process and a common mission of ensuring high levels of learning for all students.

That summer, the district planned to take another group to a PLC Institute. The campus leadership team was going to be joined by the current campus guiding coalitions. At that point, the guiding coalition members were appointed by the campus principal and by default were department leaders. However, due to COVID, the institute was canceled. This work was too important to stop learning and moving forward, so the district did the next best thing and pulled this group together in the high school cafeteria, six feet apart and masked, for our first large-group PLC day of learning with Solution Tree Associate, Dennis King. We learned in spite of COVID restrictions and continued to develop our knowledge and skills about the PLC process through those challenging times.

High School
Pleasant Grove High School’s commitment to the PLC process became evident after that day of learning with Dennis King. Because the campuses had support at the district and campus level, math and English teams were brought in over the summer to work on priority standards. High School campus learning coordinator (CLC) Magan Wisdom met with the math and English teacher teams to build shared knowledge and work collaboratively to identify each course's priority standards. They printed off a list of the standards, collaboratively dissected and identified which standards were readiness and which were supporting, looked at how often they were tested on the state test, and then highlighted a list of standards. After identifying priority standards, Mrs. Wisdom facilitated teachers in unwrapping the standards into learning targets. This work, although long and tedious, gave direction on where teams needed to focus their efforts. It was not fully understood how this would ultimately work, but the work gave the teams a starting point. .

The campus guiding coalition met monthly that year and began collaborative work on developing the campus mission, vision, and collective commitments that aligned with the district mission, vision, and collective commitments. That fall, with limited opportunities due to COVID, the district facilitated the RTI at Work Portable Event Package. The campus principal, campus learning coordinator and one member of the guiding coalition attended this training and developed a better understanding of the systems needed in order to meet the district and campus mission of ensuring high levels of learning for all students. The campus RTI weaknesses were glaring on that page, and the guiding coalition began to understand the amount of work that still needed to be done.

One large area of need was the high school master schedule. Through the evaluation of the campus RTI practices, a first order change of tweaking the bell schedule was not going to be sufficient. Second order change or a significant overhaul of the master schedule was needed to improve student learning. An evaluation of class’ assessment results took place to determine what was working and what was not. At that time, the campus was on a modified block schedule where the first and last periods met daily for 50 minutes, while the other classes met for an hour and a half every other day. The high school Campus Learning Coordinator (CLC) pulled course data from classes with the same teachers and course, yet one class met daily and the other class met every other day. The data showed the classes that met daily performed higher on their common unit assessments compared to classes that met every other day. Administration took the data to the guiding coalition and then to the staff to review and voted to change to an eight period day with a thirty minute intervention period. This was a year of reflection, growth, and significant change.

The 2021-2022 school year brought with it many changes. Along with changing the bell schedule, the campus had a change in leadership when Mrs. Kristen Giles was named the new principal of Pleasant Grove High School. Mrs. Giles began the year by leading the guiding coalition in reviewing the campus mission, vision, and collective commitments. During this meeting, the campus learning coordinator presented the campus data portrait from the previous year. On the 2022 accountability ratings, the high school campus had received an “A” rating from the Texas Education Agency. However, the team knew there were still areas of growth needed across the campus. As a team, the guiding coalition celebrated and set goals for the upcoming year. Along with the new bell schedule, an additional extra staff member was added to each of the four core departments which allowed our collaborative teams the time to meet daily to complete the Work of Teams. Magan Wisdom, campus learning coordinator, met daily with these teams to support them in the work and offer job-embedded training, as needed. Mrs. Wisdom used the campus SIG (Strategy Implementation Guide) to direct the campus learning. The SIG was developed the previous year by campus administration at a Leaders of Learning district training. Some of the core collaborative teams were refining priority standards while other teams needed support with data. The campus learning coordinator along with the administrative team worked to meet the needs of each individual team and provide support when needed. The goal of each collaborative team was to have one common formative assessment and one common end of unit assessment along with intentional interventions on their priority standards for each unit of study. Additionally, the decision was made by the administrative team with the support of the special education department to review the schedules of students with IEPs. Historically, students with IEPs were placed in resource classes and were not receiving grade level tier 1 instruction. This practice wasn’t best for students, so the decision was made to place these students in grade-level co-taught classes with the addition of a tier 3 class, as needed. During this year, our non-core teams were not meeting regularly but had time on regularly scheduled professional development days to learn more about the PLC process. More learning and planning needed to happen by all stakeholders before the campus teams were able to move forward in these areas. Along with this change, administration evaluated all staff and adjustments were made in regards to personnel to meet the needs of the campus culture and students. Change was also needed within the membership of our guiding coalition and interested staff members were asked to apply to be part of the team. Administration considered each staff member’s abilities and willingness to support the PLC process when selecting teachers to serve on the guiding coalition. Every change the leadership team made that year was through the lens of what was best for kids. These teams analyzed our current programs, our teacher effectiveness and growth, policies, practices, and data. We stopped saying, "We've always done it this way." and started asking, "What is best for kids?"

In the summer of 2022, Pleasant Grove High School took 28 staff members to the PLC Institute in Little Rock, Arkansas. The institute helped to clarify what a PLC should be for many of the staff members. The participants came away with ideas and changes the team wanted to make for the 2022-2023 school year. The core teacher teams analyzed their state data and used that information to evaluate overall course structures. Teams continued to organically refine priority standards based on previous year’s data and used the data from common assessments to drive instruction. Over the course of that year, one of the leadership’s big goals was to evaluate our policy on GPA and class rank. The campus vision states that the campus will work to align policies, practices, and procedures to reflect the mission of postsecondary success for all students. One of the concerns was students taking courses because of the weight of the course and its effect on their GPA instead of what the student really wanted to learn about and how it would benefit them in the future. PGHS was not fulfilling its vision or mission. The focus was clearly not on learning. If the PGHS school culture was going to be focused on learning, students needed to be free of the rules of the "Rank Game" and be given the freedom to take courses that would fulfill its mission. Mrs. Giles led a collaborative team through a multiple month process to study what other districts were doing and what specific changes the campus needed to make to current policies and practices. The team spoke to all stakeholders and took feedback from all campus departments. After explaining the “why” behind the changes being considered, the campus staff was able to move forward with a majority consensus. The PGHS counseling team, along with administration, presented data to the school board explaining why the campus saw a need to make this policy change. The board changed its policy to allow the student's class rank to be based on courses taken from the 4 core areas only instead of all courses the students could take.

In the 2023-24 school year, the campus is seeing success in many areas. The focus is to continue to strengthen the culture and refine policies and practices with a “learning by doing” mindset. The campus is taking time to study its current practices and policies on grading. PGHS teachers are recognizing that the current grading policy directly conflicts with the campus mission and vision and teachers are gradually beginning to shift their thinking when it comes to grading. Before any changes can be made, more learning is needed around grading and the purpose of grades. This September, Mrs. Wisdom and Mrs. Bates, the new CTE director, attended a grading conference in Jonesboro, AR titled Grading from the Inside Out with Tom Schimmer. Within the career and technical education department, teachers are aligning curriculum and course offerings to provide clear pathways for students. Campus elective teams are meeting regularly and applying their knowledge of the PLC process to support student learning. Because the CTE and elective teachers do not have time scheduled in their day to meet in collaborative teams, a schedule has been developed for each of these teams to meet regularly with Mrs. Giles and Mrs. Wisdom and work through the Work of Teams within their courses. Mrs. Giles and the administrative team are already working with the counseling department to begin creating next year’s master schedule to improve the current systems and ensure postsecondary success for all students.

When reflecting back on the journey thus far, it is evident that great strides have been made to strengthen the culture and grow as a professional learning community. Pleasant Grove High School has evaluated policies, practices and procedures and made the necessary changes to fulfill its mission of ensuring postsecondary success for all students. These changes have resulted in growth for not only the students but the staff professionally. Through this process, teams have learned that a constant evaluation of the practices is crucial. Allowing the mission and vision to be the guide will help the collaborative teams continue to do what is best for kids. The staff at Pleasant Grove High School has a strong belief and desire to make meaningful change for the students served.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

During the collaborative team meetings, teachers focus their work around the PGISD Work of Teams. Teams engage in this collaborative process unit-by-unit to create a shared understanding of what students need to know and be able to do and what the team agrees to be proficient. Each core team begins the year by reviewing data from the previous year and identifying the priority standards for the course and/or unit. Once this process is complete, teachers begin to develop and refine learning progression ladders that include learning targets. Teams use the Priority Standard Summary Chart to create their ladders, determine proficiency, establish prior knowledge and vocabulary, and link all resources associated with this standard. The targets or "rungs" of the ladder are then inserted into the unit pacing calendar to ensure standards are being taught and covered in a timely manner. The calendar also ensures that CFAs are given at the same time within the unit. Discussions are had around pacing and timing of each unit based on the previous year's notes. Assessments, both formative and summative, are created by the collaborative team prior to teaching the unit. Once assessments are given, teachers are responsible for inputting student data within a forty-eight hour window. This process ensures that our data is viable. Teams come together during their CTM to analyze the data using a Data Analysis Protocol. They look at instructional practices as well as student learning. After analyzing the data, students are placed into Tier 2 groups based on need. Teachers on campus believe in taking collective responsibility for all students within the campus. This is an on-going cycle within the CTMs, and student data is tracked and analyzed on a regular basis. Not only are campus administrators present in teams' collaborative meetings, during their weekly A Team meeting, administrators monitor student progress every three weeks and track students who are not mastering the content. Administrators check in with students and create a plan of support for each individual student.

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

Pleasant Grove High School has created a system of intervention to provide all students additional time and support for learning. During the 20-21 school year, PGHS was running a modified block schedule where the first and last periods met for 50 minutes daily and the other periods met for 90 minutes every other day. An in-depth study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the courses taught daily vs the courses taught every other day. The study was presented to the staff and it was decided that the campus would move to an 8 period day with 30 minute intervention time. Teachers use this 30 minute intervention time to support students who need additional support based on their unit data. Students also have the ability to enroll in sessions hosted by the teachers if they need more support. Extension sessions for students who have demonstrated mastery of the priority standards are also provided to support student growth.

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

Professional development is offered during the school year as well as during collaborative team meetings. These trainings are developed by the campus learning coordinator and learning services team, in coordination with the campus principals. These sessions support the work that is happening on the campus. Teachers are trained using the district’s Work of Teams model. It explicitly shows teachers the steps they should take during their collaborative team meetings to make sure they are supporting students and all team members are on the same page within the unit. In addition to professional development sessions happening during the school year, the district has taken multiple groups to the PLC at Work institute for the past two summers in Little Rock, AR and Oklahoma City, OK. These institutes have been transformational to the staff. Team members bring back ideas and changes they want to make to increase student achievement. One team has implemented the practice of watching each other teach. A few teachers in core departments have started co-teaching the intervention sessions with the teacher who had the highest scores on the common assessment to support the lowest performing students but also to see how the teacher specifically taught the priority standard. This has proven very effective for the students and teachers.

As a collaborative team, we create individualized plans for any student we see that is struggling with credits or attendance. The team reviews the failure list and attendance issues every three weeks and works to create individualized plans for each student to be successful.

Achievement Data Files

Additional Achievement Data

Over the past three years, Pleasant Grove High School has been focused on student learning. With the change of the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness End of Course exam this past year, administration helped to build shared knowledge around the changes and how it would impact instruction and data. Regardless of these changes, our collaborative teams became laser focused on the priority standards for each course. Teams built learning progression ladders for each priority standard to help the teacher teams better understand where students' mistakes were happening and the progression needed to teach each standard. Teams also built common assessments based on the learning targets and used the data formatively to drive instructional changes within the class period and the unit. Instruction has changed to reflect best practices by evaluating data among teachers to determine who taught it best and then allowing teachers the opportunity to learn from each other. After the unit, teachers are seeing higher scores on priority standards and are focusing on targeted interventions of those priority standards after the unit instead of our previous practice of reteaching the entire test.

Historically, it was a campus practice to have special education students in resource classes instead of in tier 1 classrooms with their peers. In the 2022-23 school year, we moved all students into the tier 1 classroom with co-teacher support. A tier 3 reading class was also added to support any student reading significantly below grade level. From the 2018-19 to the 2022-23 school year, special education students grew from 11% to 38% of students scoring “meets proficiency” on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness English II End of Course exam. Our economically disadvantaged students grew from 13% scoring “meets proficiency” in 2018-19 to 43% in 2022-23 on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness Algebra I End of Course exam. The special education population grew from 36% scoring “meets proficiency” to 60% proficiency in 22-23.

District was named a Model PLC District

"A" Rating from Texas Education Agency

Received Distinction Designations in 5 of the 7 categories-