Westmorland Union Elementary School District

Helping teachers meet targeted mathematics standards

Challenge

Westmorland Elementary School is a small rural K-8 school in the Imperial Valley. 60% of its students are English Language Learners, and the California Department of Education designates 100% of the students as Socioeconomically Disadvantaged. The school improved 256 API points (455 API to 711 API) between 1999 and 2007. Westmorland’s Comparative Schools Rank also jumped from a two to an eight between 1999 and 2007.

Solution

Linda Morse, Superintendent/Principal, and her staff analyzed the core math program and found instructional gaps and weaknesses. Standards Plus was selected to help fill the gaps in content and instruction.

Morse believes that consistency in instruction and a focus on standards that was provided in the Standards Plus lessons would make a difference. She says, “It was an easy implementation. It was also easy for me to monitor the program.”

In the first year, Morse built a core group of teachers that supported her school improvement efforts, which included the initial implementation of Standards Plus in grades 2-6. In grade level groups, the teachers looked at CST data and identified students’ specific gaps. Standards Plus lessons were selected to target those deficient skills. According to Morse, an added benefit of this process was: “Teachers truly became more knowledgeable about the standards.”

Standards Plus lessons were also used in an academic after school program where students received additional standards based instruction. Test Taking Strategies were emphasized with these students since many had had difficulty performing well with standardized testing.

In the second year, Standards Plus Mathematics was implemented in grades K-1, 7th, and 8th. By the third year, Standards Plus Language Arts was implemented in all grades. Believing strongly in staff development, Morse scheduled a Standards Plus Overview training on a Buy Back Day and Model Lesson training after the school year started.

Results

Morse attributes initial gains in standardized test scores to the use of Standards Plus. She says during the first year the only big change they made was incorporating Standards Plus, and “the initial increase in mathematics test scores gave [us] hope for achieving continued success.”