At a glance
- The school board recognized teachers who completed the Direct Instruction and Exemplary Leadership courses. Those who completed Direct Instruction are Louisa Salinas, Ronna Lubker, Adriana Corona-Duran, Sandra Villasenor, Sarah Bosch, Gemma Rodriguez, Mirna Ramos, Ondina Cisneros, Mindy Green, Angelica Ponce and Amy Trinta. Those who completed Exemplary Instructional Leadership courses are Kay Vang, Sarah Smith, Sheila Cornwell, Teresa Murillo, Richard Jones and Donna Clarke.
Local schools have come closer to closing the achievement gap on state test scores and improving classroom learning as a result of district intervention programs, administrators said at the Nov. 19 Patterson Unified School District board meeting.
The achievement gap is the difference in academic performance — grades and test scores — between students grouped by gender, socioeconomic status or ethnicity.
Cathy Schulz-Brown, the teacher who oversees the district’s intervention program, said it is easier to identify children who need help early in their school career.
“Let’s start in kindergarten to identify these kids,” Schulz-Brown said. “You can make huge inroads with young children if you don’t let the gap grow.”
Learning to read better carries through to other subjects, such as social studies and science, and helps sharpen learning skills, she said.
After students take the annual California Standardized Tests in the spring, teachers look at student scores. Students fall into “advanced,” “proficient,” “basic,” “below basic” and “far below basic” levels on the test. Teachers use that information to help tailor education to each student’s needs.
Schulz-Brown said teachers have checked student progress more frequently over the past year and are providing services to students at a much earlier age to prevent the gap from growing.
“We want to accelerate their learning so they can close the achievement gap,” Schulz-Brown said.
“That’s my goal.”
Over the course of the year, children who are performing at grade level typically move forward a year in academic growth, while those in intervention programs may progress further to catch up.
Each school has an intervention database that uses students’ identification, name, grade and test records
to match instruction to each student’s needs.
“We match up the student with what needs to be done and the program for the right level of intervention,” Schulz-Brown said. “Next, we want to continue and even collaborate with after-school programs.”
Moving up the ladder
Most students in the district — between 75 percent and 85 percent of the kids — are on the “universal level” in a regular classroom, in which teachers instruct the entire class and sometimes break the class into small groups for everyday learning.
Between 10 and 15 percent of local students are in “targeted group” interventions, for students who require specific help to understand and work with the subject matter.
Students at the “intense level” of instruction — 5 percent to 10 percent of the students — are provided with more focused one-on-one help.
“We want to look at the performance of every child in every grade and come up with a solution,” Schulz-Brown said. “It’s not that we change what we’re doing so much as that we give them more help in reading, language and math. It’s more intense.”
At Del Puerto and at Patterson high schools, students get one-on-one help working toward passing the California High School Exit Examination, a test students must pass to graduate.
At the middle school level, some intervention programs focus on reading, writing and spelling.
The Hampton High Point program is designed for students who are two or more years behind their grade level in reading. When they’ve finished with the program, the High Point students move into regular language arts classes.
Schulz-Brown said the district will do what is needed to move students up to grade level.
Touting the gains
At the school board meeting, principals told about successes at each district school.
“Of the 79 kids in the program, 61 made some academic progress,” said Cathy Silva, principal of Northmead Elementary School.
Silva told the board that 24 students moved up one level on the CST test, 16 students moved up two levels and of those 16, four moved from “below basic” to “proficient.”
Jill Thompson, teacher on special assignment for intervention at Northmead, uses the SRA Corrective Reading and SRA Mastery programs. These programs help students a year or more behind their chronological age in reading to develop basic language skills so they can move to the more complex tasks of reading and comprehension.
Thompson said the teachers are pleased with the progress the students are making.
“I’m in contact with classroom teachers on a regular basis,” she said. “They’re quick to let me know that the students have shown marked improvement in their classroom work, also.”
To reach Maddy Houk at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail her at
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