Report on District Performance Plan Goals 1 and 2

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School has been underway for three weeks now--learning is underway, athletic events are occurring, and preparations for dances, performances, parent-teacher conferences, and other important events are proceeding.

 

In addition to last year’s challenges persisting through Covid, WPCSD schools continue to align their work towards our vision of changing the world by creating “a world class learning environment where all participants work interdependently to achieve our mission of promoting, supporting, and ensuring high levels of learning.”  We always emphasize that this vision is aspirational and our daily work is what helps us move closer to achieving that ideal of world class learning.  

 

Today, I am pleased to report information collected by the Nevada School Performance Framework (NSPF).  The NSPF provides a set of measures and data that are one piece of the many ways that we work to improve learning conditions in our schools for our students.  The NSPF (in part) measures reading and math proficiency, student growth over time based on standardized tests, college and career readiness benchmarks, graduation rates, etc.  This letter will include very brief summaries of those NSPF indicators.  Full data sets are available in our district performance plan.

 

We are pleased to report that proficiency levels in ELA for grades 3-5 increased by 5.6 percentage points and proficiency levels in Math for grades 3-5 increased by 6.1 percentage points.  Proficiency levels in ELA for grades 6-8 increased by 2.4 percentage points and proficiency levels in Math for grades 6-8 increased by 2 percentage points.  Proficiency levels in Science for grade 8 increased by more than 10 percentage points.

 

White Pine Middle School continues to do excellent work with the growth portion of student learning.  The growth category measures student learning over time and asks the question “Is this particular student moving enough in the right direction to either maintain proficiency or become proficient by the end of 8th grade?”  WPMS students and faculty (both in 2021 and this year) answered this question with definitive vigor as significant numbers of students moved toward that goal of immediate proficiency or the path toward it.  Please click here for a Supe’s Stories with Ms. Jensen that goes into much greater detail.

 

At the high school level, post-secondary participation increased from 72.7% to 78.6%.  (This measures the percentage of students who participated in a Career and Technical Education program and/or took a dual college credit course).  Post-secondary completion rose from 40.4% to 44.9% (this measures the percentage of students who completed the capstone course of a Career and Technical Education sequence and/or who earned an A or B in a dual college credit course).  35% of graduating students earned an advanced diploma (additional math credit, additional science credit, and 3.25 grade point average).  The graduation rate districtwide was 86.9%.

 

There are indicators around school culture and climate that we also measure from year to year.  Those data are not collected until December and will be reported at that time.  

 

These are modest gains.  However, there should be no modesty in celebrating the positive movement.  As mentioned previously, last year was an incredibly difficult school year across the country and certainly locally.  Our students and educators deserve commendation for pushing through and focusing on making progress toward our world class vision.