February 2017 H.E.L.P. Blog 

WHAT'S NEW:

The word is out that implementation of Smarter Balanced is on hold. A related piece you may not have heard is that Iowa’s State Assessment (in it’s current form) did not meet all requirements during the peer review process. This could have an impact on distribution of Title I funds.  Click to view recent results of the peer review of Iowa's Assessment System. 

Differentiated Accountability Updates:

Intervention System training will be piloted during Spring 2017. Stanton, Treynor, IKM-Manning and Red Oak have been invited to attend a large group training in February and statewide roll out will be in the 2017-18 school year. 

A task team has been working to repackage the Universal Instruction Facilitation Guide to be more user-friendly. Hopes are that this will be completed in time for use with on-site visits.  New & improved versions (paper and electronic formats) will be released sometime this school year.

An additional task team is also working this spring to develop a plan for the expansion of early warning systems to the secondary level in the areas of Literacy, Mathematics and behavior.

The Iowa School Report Card delivers on a component of the comprehensive education reform legislation adopted by Iowa lawmakers in 2013. The legislation, House File 215, directed the Iowa DE to develop a process for evaluating the performance of each school on certain measures and to “arrive at an overall school performance grade and report card” that is posted to the Department’s website. The newly updated Iowa School Report Card includes information on student proficiency in math and reading, student academic growth, narrowing achievement gaps, college and career readiness, attendance, graduation rates, and staff retention. Based on each school’s performance over a two-year period, the report card assigns one of six ratings: Exceptional, High-Performing, Commendable, Acceptable, Needs Improvement, and Priority.

WHAT'S COOL

Red Oak Inman Primary and GHAEA Literacy staff presented at the well-attended Celebrate Iowa Success event on January 23 at the Iowa Events Center.  Red Oak shared their progress toward improving Universal Instruction utilizing the Universal Instruction Facilitation Guide and GHAEA discussed their Tier 2 training and support efforts.  Shout out to these educators sharing their expertise!

WHAT'S DUE

Stefanie Wager from the Department of Education is hosting a Social Studies Open Forum at Halverson Center on January 25 from 4:30-6:00 p.m. Participants will have an opportunity to give feedback and ask questions about the newly revised Social Studies Standards. No registration is necessary and all interested parties are invited to attend.

A #GoOpen Regional Summit will take place on March 3 at Lewis Central. #GoOpen provides an opportunity for classroom teachers, school librarians, instructional coaches, and district and state leaders to explore opportunities to expand the use of high quality, openly licensed educational resources in classrooms. For more information and to register for this FREE summit, follow this link.

Mark your calendars for C4K leadership offerings throughout the spring.  This link will take you to a document with webinar dates, topics and zoom information.