Last year’s SIP plan focused exclusively on the graduation rate for the whole school goal, and on lowering the disproportionality ratio of F/NC grades for our Hispanic/Latinx subgroup. This year’s team decided that these goals no longer reflected the priorities/needs of the school and therefore chose to discontinue them and target other areas of focus.

Last year’s school-wide goal was to achieve a graduation rate of 94% or better. The prior year, our graduation rate was 96.6%. This past year (the 2021-22 school year) our graduation rate for all students was 98.7%. There were a number of reasons for this increase (which will be discussed in the next section), but it was the feeling of the group that it did not make sense to focus our energy in an area where we were already extremely successful. Some of the actions taken last year in support of the previous goal included using professional development time to explore providing multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate learning, offering credit retrieval opportunities, and academic interventions to support student learning in the classroom. If we take an honest look at which of these strategies were successful, it is certainly possible that giving students more opportunities to demonstrate their learning may have helped more students to succeed, but it is very hard to quantify to what degree those efforts impacted the graduation rate. Our number of seniors who earned additional credit via credit recovery was 16 total. Each of these students did ultimately end up graduating on time. In that regard, the credit recovery did help to achieve the overall goal. Academic interventions are something that take place every year, and occur at countless levels, from individual classroom interventions, meetings with the graduation specialist, counseling interventions and guidance teams, as well as attendance, behavioral, and academic interventions at the administrative level. Overall, the team felt that it was unclear what the impact of these interventions were, if any. Rather, we attributed the rise in the graduation percentage to the addition of multiple graduation pathways for students as well as access to additional credit waivers that came out as a result of the pandemic.

This year, we will and have continued to offer professional development time to improve our practices around learning recovery and allowing multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning. It is our belief that effective instruction is one of the most important avenues to impact student success and therefore it will remain a point of emphasis. This August, all teachers of like courses were asked to outline their grading practices including their policies around late work and identifying how students could recover from a failed attempt or assessment. Additionally, we have spent time looking at the three lenses of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) and at specific strategies to help teachers adapt to the needs of a wider range of learners. While we continue to provide credit recovery opportunities, this year we have embedded it within our Guided Studies classes in order to build time for students to work with their instructors during the school day. We have already seen an increase in the amount of progress students are making as a result of this change. We continue to provide the multitude of academic interventions outlined in the previous paragraph; however, this year we have also considered how to implement Tier 2 strategies/interventions for groups of students as well as how to utilize homeroom and flex time to provide these interventions. For example, our Tier 2 Team has attempted assigning Algebra 1 students failing in math to attend flex time with their math teachers for a pre-determined period of weeks, or until they improve to a passing grade.

Last year’s gap closing goal was to reduce the disproportionality ratio for students receiving F/NC grades for students in the Hispanic/Latinx subgroup from 2.8 to 1.0 or lower. While this remains an area of concern, the team felt that an even greater area of disparity was that of our Special Education students and their performance on the ELA and Math SBA. Knowing that Hispanic/Latinx students are disproportionally represented within our Special Education system, we felt that this new goal, while shifting the focus to a different subgroup, continued to support the prior goal of decreasing disproportionality. Furthermore, we did not feel that the actions taken last year to achieve this goal were successful.

In evaluating those efforts, last year we partnered with the Relevant Engagement Group led by Rashad Norris and Professor Michael Tuncap. While this partnership provided a positive space for our students of color to connect, and was positively received by these students, we did not see an improvement academically as a result of the program. Given the high expense of the program and having not seen a tangible improvement on academic performance or attendance as result, it was discontinued. Last year, for the first time, we had a Tier 2 team meet weekly to identify and pair students with additional supports (mostly these were frequent counselor check-ins or after-school tutoring was assigned). We have continued to convene a Tier 2 team; however, the approach of the team has changed to look to identify interventions at the group level, as opposed to individual interventions as was the case last year. Other than the counselor check-ins which we plan to continue informally, we did not feel that there were many Tier 2 supports available, and most students declined to access tutoring when offered. We are continuing forward with our Patriot P.A.T. student recognition system. We have had very positive feedback from students and families about this, but it is hard to measure the impact it has had on helping students to pass their classes. Still, we feel it is an important cultural component of the school and ties into our PBSES work which we believe as a system, supports student success.

The Washington School Improvement Framework (WSIF) is provided by the state as part of the OSPI School Report Card to inform and guide school improvement goals and action plans. School SIP teams use additional data sources to inform their planning. Progress toward school improvement in overall achievement and disproportionality is monitored using state and district measures using a common School Improvement Data Dashboard, aligned to the WSIF.

Issaquah School District school improvement data dashboard for high schools.

Describe your SIP team process for studying the SIP data dashboard and other available data and selecting SIP goals.

When we received the SIP data dashboard, the team examined the data for evidence that would indicate a clear gap group. Initially, the intent was to do a data protocol as a SIP team group to explore the data; however, this was not able to happen due to a meeting cancelation as a result of the snow event following Thanksgiving break. Instead, at our December SIP team meeting, two school-wide (draft) goals were shared with the team, one focusing on attendance, and one focusing on improving the freshmen pass rate. These were both areas of focus which we had previously discussed as a group and which we had agreed were important metrics to focus on as a school. In addition to the two school-wide goals, a gap group goal that focused on Special Education students and their performance on the SBA was also put forth. The team was given the opportunity to discuss the proposed goals, to revise, make changes, or reject or accept the proposed goals. The team was in support of the goals and approved them for submission.

Describe your observations regarding overall achievement and disproportionality that informed your SIP goal(s) and actions. Include possible root causes of disproportionality (i.e. if you were to address the causes, it would likely result in a decrease in disproportionality).

Over the past four years, our graduation rate has climbed by 10% culminating in last year’s grad rate of 98.7%. While one would expect this number to have been negatively impacted as a result of the interruption to learning caused by the pandemic, the inverse instead has occurred. There is no doubt that the efforts made by Liberty High School staff to support students over the past few years contributed in part to this increase; however, we also believe that some of this increase was due to the credit waivers instituted by the state as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the expansion of alternative graduation pathways that have become available over the past few years. These factors have all positively contributed to the number of students able to graduate on time. Given how high the graduation rate had climbed, it was our school’s belief that continuing to focus simply on the percentage of students graduating was not an authentic place to enact meaningful change. Rather, the school team felt it was more appropriate to focus on the metrics that we know have a significant impact on student success. These were improving attendance and improving the pass rate of freshmen in their core subject areas. We believe that by targeting students early in their high school career by preventing credit deficiency as well as focusing the foundational skills they will need as they progress, it will lessen the reliance on alternate pathways or credit waivers (which will be going away) in order for students to graduate.

When looking for areas of disproportionality, one area that stood out was the performance of Special Education students on the ELA and Math SBA exam; no other population performed as poorly. Even though students can graduate by meeting other graduation pathways, we believe that our goal as a school should be to have as many students as possible try to meet proficiency on the state assessment. Although we know that no standardized assessment is perfect, the SBA does at least provide a standard measure of student achievement that is consistent from year to year and which gives us a baseline in which to assess how our students are doing. In examining the root causes of this disproportionality at LHS, we believe that some of the causes have been due to a lack of inclusion in the general education setting, as well as a recent philosophy shift over the past 5 years about the exam itself. During the pandemic the SBA exam was cancelled, lessening its importance as a learning metric. With the addition of alternate graduation pathways, as well as the general climate of education undergoing a philosophical shift away from standardized assessments and the “no child left behind” legislation, the perceived importance of standardized tests like the SBA has also decreased. We also believe that a general lack of understanding/training around UDL and the specific strategies may be negatively impacting our staff’s ability to effectively teach students who require a greater amount of support (such as our Special Education students and ELL students).

To address this disproportionality, we believe that by increasing our inclusionary practices, improving our staff’s understanding of universal design, continuing to examine and refine our practices around learning recovery, and by emphasizing the importance of the SBA by intentionally teaching those skills students will be assessed on in the exam, we can improve student performance and decrease the number of students who require alternative pathways to meet their graduation requirements. We believe that this approach will not only reduce the disproportionality of this subset of students, but will raise the level of instruction for all students by focusing on teaching these foundational skills in 9th and 10th grade. This should in turn support our building goal of improving the pass rate of 9th grade students. Finally, we believe that this goal reinforces the philosophical belief that all students can achieve and underscores our commitment to high expectations for all students.

School-Wide Achievement Goal(s)

GOAL #1: Improve overall regular attendance from 82% in 21/22 school year to 85% in the 22/23 school year. Improve the overall percentage of classes attended from 88% in the 21/22 school year to 90% in the 22/23 school year.

GOAL #2: Increase the average pass rate of freshmen in core classes (Math, ELA, Social Studies, Biology) during Semester 2 from 84.3% in the 2021/22 school year to 88% by the end of the 2023/24 school year.

Disproportionality Goal(s)

GOAL #3: Improve the math proficiency rate of students with disabilities on the 2022 state assessment (SBA) from 10.3% to a >20% proficiency rate in 2024.

GOAL #4: Improve the ELA proficiency rate of students with disabilities on the 2022 state assessment (SBA) from a 24.1% proficiency rate to a >30% proficiency rate in 2024.