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A nine-member team of educational superintendents and coordinators delivered a walk-through of data from the South East Cornerstone Public School Division during their March 25th board meeting.
Director of Education Keith Keating said this process is called a 'Wall Walk', and it enables the board to explore the data from across the school division, to see how the students, schools, and the system are achieving on a number of different metrics. It also helps identify places that be celebrated and where support may be needed to ensure success for students. The semi-regular Wall Walk has become a vital event within the school division, as the coordinators and superintendents go over the details of the progress being made by making use of a wall covered with colourful graphs and charts used for tracking student progress at all levels.
"We looked at credit attainment at the high school level, math and reading levels at the elementary level, early learning caseloads, First Nation, Métis, Inuit, data around those metrics, treaty outcomes, students identified as at risk, as identified by a screener we utilized, and we looked at school-level attendance."
Keating said they use the Response to Intervention model across the system, which focuses at the data at the school level to help provide interventions for students who might be struggling.
"At a school level, that may mean providing extra supports to individual students, small groups, or whole classrooms. At a system level, it lets us identify where supports may be useful at a school level," he explained. "After we provide those supports, we can then take a look at the next screen and see if the things that we're doing are successful for students, or if we need to try something else."
From much of this data, Keating said, they have seen, "some really great growth".
"Whether that's reading rates or graduation rates. We know those are very strong and higher than the provincial average in almost all areas. I attribute that to a good system of screens and supports that allows teachers and schools to do the amazing work of supporting students across our system. It really comes down to that work of administrators and student support teams and schools working together with teachers at local school level to make sure that students meet their full potential."
One issue the data has shown this year, however, is lower attendance.
"We did see some growth last year. It seems to have stagnated a little this year. Part of that can be attributed to many of the bus cancellation days we have due to inclement weather. But we still think there's some work we need to do to improve attendance across the division on top of that attendance," he noted
While attendance last year was affected 168 times by weather-related incidents causing bus route cancellations, this school year there were 894 weather-related incidents.
That portion of the Wall Walk was given by Tracey Kiliwnik, coordinator of learning supports, and Devon Dempsey, superintendent of schools for the western region, who addressed mental health and well-being.
According to the notes from the meeting, Kiliwnik addressed the social-emotional issues, how they are being addressed, and why the key to successful intervention is done through early identification of a pending problem.
Kiliwnik, who shared how counsellors deal with mental health and emotional issues, said about five to eight percent of the student body ends up 'in the red zone.'
Dempsey pointed out the continued need for a robust attendance system to support those who assist the students, adding it's about helping, not judging the circumstances around the more frequent absentees.
As for reading levels, Cathy Hiltz, the division superintendent of schools in the southern sector of the vast Cornerstone region, shared graphic examples of how the Grades 1 to 3 students are showing excellent growth patterns in terms of literary comprehension and vocabulary.
Keating said schools have their own data walls, which are aligned with the division-level data wall.
"That speaks to achievement at a classroom and a student level. So teachers use that data at an individual classroom level to tailor instruction to any gaps they may see there."
"Schools also use that data to provide supports to classrooms, groups of students, or individuals as kind of determined by those student support teams," he explained. "From a division perspective, we will look for interventions or course corrections that might help support teachers in schools to ensure that success for all students."
The meeting minutes note that at various stages of the presentations, the team members answered queries from board members regarding specific areas of individual interest as well as broader questions on the data collection system.