ACCOUNTABILITY GOALS OUTCOMES

July 28th, 2009

Dear Parents, Guardians, Students and Staff,

Thank you for all of the support you have provided the school during the 2008-2009 school year. Students, staff and families have enjoyed all the end of year family events which were supported by PTO funds raised through T-shirt sales and the art show. The PTO also provided many educational opportunities for parents this year. Throughout the year our focus has been on establishing a real group identity for the PTO with a focus on the best ways for PTO to support our school.

Students are preparing for the new year by visiting their assigned 2009-2010 classrooms. Teachers/therapists are focused on completing fourth quarter progress reports and preparing student materials for the 2009-2010 school year. Administrators are working diligently as we finalize classroom and staff assignments, hire needed staff, complete building repairs and organize student materials for the new school year. In August, we will welcome new staff on the 17th and returning staff on the 24th. Please join us for an Open House to greet your child’s teacher and staff on August 26th from 1-3PM. The first day of school is August 27th.

This week you will receive many communications including: your child’s progress report and end of year cover letter, the June-July newsletter, outcomes of the parent satisfaction and childcare surveys, and accountability goals. Since the information contained in each has a different message and purpose, we ask that you take time over the next month to read the updates. For example, the newsletter will update you on your child’s activities for June and July, and the progress report will detail your child’s progress on IEP goals.

This communication focuses on summarizing the results of the school’s accountability goals established with the Public Charter School Board. Since first becoming a Charter for DC students in 2006, St. Coletta has reported on the progress of the accountability goals in academic and non-academic areas. Some of the non-academic goals this year were established to obtain baseline data from which to define future goals and objectives. The results reported here are also compiled in a more extensive annual report format that is due to the PCSB by September 1st. Before its submission, our annual report will be approved and signed by the President of the St. Coletta Charter Board. The Public Charter School Board will then publish a summary of their impressions gathered from a number of sources including, the annual report, actual test scores on the DC-CAS Alternate Assessments, and the results of their two day program review of St. Coletta. This can be accessed online at www.dcpubliccharter.com, click on publications/school performance reports.

Please take a few minutes to read the summarized results of the accountability goals and, if you have questions, please feel free to call me. We thank our students for work, our staff for their focus on student progress and documentation of school progress, and our parents for supporting the growth of their children and the school.
With Much Appreciation,

Janice Corazza, Principal
Sharon Raimo, CEO St. Coletta of Greater Washington, Inc.
Anne C. Gay, President, St. Coletta Special Education Public Charter School

 

ACCOUNTABILITY GOAL OUTCOMES
2008-2009
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES

  • Objectives 1 and 2: DC Students at St. Coletta will demonstrate adequate yearly progress and increase reading and mathematics scores on the DC-CAS Alternate Assessment

    OUTCOMES ACCOMPLISHED: ST. COLETTA DC STUDENTS ACHIEVED AYP IN READING AND MATHEMATICS, above the target goal of the District and above the goal designated by St. Coletta.

    READING/LANGUAGE ARTS 81.82% of our students scheduled for testing reached proficiency on the alternate assessments. The goal was for between 80-90% of our students to reach proficiency.

    MATHEMATICS 80.68% of our students scheduled for testing reached proficiency on the alternate assessments. The goal was for 80-90% of our students to reach proficiency.

    *When individual student reports are received for language arts and mathematics, they will be sent home.

    SCIENCE

    Although students were tested (ages 5th, 8th and 10th grade) in science on the alternate assessments and the science portions scored, no scores have been released. According to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s (OSSE) Office of Assessment and Accountability, the science test results for the 2007-2008 school year and the 2008-2009 school year will be bundled together and distributed to the school in mid-August.
    NON-DC Students: Students who are not DC students and are at certain grade levels receive alternate assessments at St. Coletta through their Virginia and Maryland jurisdictions. These, once received will be sent home to parents. Since these represent small numbers of scores, scores cannot be bundled for overall school assessment purposes.

  • Objective 3: Student progress on IEPs/all students.

    OUTCOME ACCOMPLISHED: Although each student’s progress is monitored by their teacher, we also wanted to evaluate overall school progress on IEP goals this year. Our baseline data for student IEP objectives (July 2008) were that 63% of student objectives were at expanding levels or higher. This year 68% of our student objectives were at expanding levels or hire. We are now working with a statistician to evaluate whether we can identify expected levels of school progress on IEP goals based on the baseline data for two years.

NON-ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES

  • Objective 1: Increase teacher skill level with development and implementation of the school’s functional life skills curriculum.

    OUTCOME ACCOMPLISHED:

    Teachers completed pre and post tests during each curriculum training, averaging 90.4% accuracy on post-tests. When combined with observation of teachers through videotaping, they achieved an overall accuracy level on the criterion established for the observations, combined with the post tests of 83.5%. Baseline is established from which to develop additional curriculum trainings to develop teacher skill level in implementation of the school’s functional curriculum.

  • Objective 2:
    a. 75-85% of new paraprofessional staff will be trained in and achieve a competency level of 85% on the first five critical skill areas and,

    b. 80-90% of all paraprofessional staff will achieve an 85% competency level on second five critical skill areas.

    OUTCOMES ACCOMPLISHED:
    2a. 81% of staff hired during the 2008-2009 school year achieved an average of 85% competency level on first five critical skills (Specific verbal Praise, Prompt Types, Prompt Hierarchy, Active Engagement, and Environmental Design).
    2b. 85.4 % of staff achieved at least an 85% competency level on the second set of critical skills training (Designing Work Systems, Presenting Tasks Based on IEP Goals, Supporting a Group Activity and Collecting Data).

  • Objective 3: School will increase the number of vocational opportunities for students to engage in career-based training by adding 5 new career- based training sites for students to attend.

    OUTCOME ACCOMPLISHED:
    The school added 9 new career-based training sites (in-house and community).

  • Objective 4: Increase parent and family participation in school-wide activities (establish baseline).

    In previous years we counted the number of attendees at our school wide events such as Winter Holiday Performances, Back –to-School Night, Open House, End-of Year Family Gatherings, Art Show, etc.). This year we were interested in evaluating what % of our families were represented at an event, whether one or multiple family members were in attendance.

    OUTCOME ACCOMPLISHED/BASELINE ESTABLISHED:
    Of twenty school-wide events, 126 families were represented, demonstrating that 54% of DC families attended at least one of the events.

  • Objective 5: Increase parent attendance at mid-year conferences (baseline established for goal this year with PCSB).

    OUTCOME ACCOMPLISHED:
    159 of 225 conferences were held mid-year representing 66% parent attendance.

  • Objective 6: Increase family representation at scheduled Saturday and Monday parent trainings by 2%.

    OUTCOME ACCOMPLISHED:
    27.1% of families attended Saturday and Monday afternoon trainings as compared to 24.4 % the previous year-an increase of 2.7%.

    In addition to those items approved by the PCSB we also tracked:

  • Objective 7: Establish baseline on the current parent satisfaction survey

    Twenty one items were assessed on the survey and have included suggestions for additions to the survey for the past two years from parents. Items regarding communication, vocational programming, theme-based teaching and therapeutic services were some of those addressed. There were 72 returns with due date ending in July.

    There were 1225 responses indicating that parents/guardians agreed (396) or strongly agreed (829) with the items assessed; 22 responses indicating that they disagreed (21) or strongly disagreed (1), 60 responses indicated non-applicability and 102 responses indicated neutrality. Of the neutral or non-applicable items, most were related to the items addressing vocational opportunities which may indicate that for students, under16, none of these would apply. Responses on items that indicated disagreement were generally equally spread over all items, from 1 to 3 persons who disagreed and no one area standing out significantly from the rest.

    Comments were also requested. There were 22 comments consisting of thanks and appreciation and 9 suggestions, each representing one individual’s response. Suggestions will be reviewed in the fall to determine if any modifications are needed.

Unique Accomplishments St. Coletta School SY 2008-2009

  • One of three DC schools nominated by OSSE for the 2009 No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon Schools Award;

  • St. Coletta conducted 11 Saturday and Monday afternoon parent trainings bringing educational strategies for students with disabilities to parents for carryover into the home.

  • St. Coletta chosen as a rotation site for Children’s Hospital Psychiatry Interns to learn about educational programming for students with disabilities.

  • Completion of accessible playground for students;

  • Two students placed, 1st runner up and third, in the DC School Garden Week Photo Contest .

  • St. Coletta Paraprofessional recognized by Sarah Ferguson , Duchess of York, Today Show segment.

  • PTO raised funds to support teacher appreciation week and end of school year family gatherings.

  • “From Junk to Funk” Fashion Show -all clothing created by students from recycled materials as a part of the “Going GreenTheme” for our High School Students;

  • Eleven students selected for HSC Foundation ‘Life Enrichment Awards Program’ (LEAP) grant to purchase equipment to assist transition aged students.

  • Special Olympics awarded St. Coletta “Special Friend Award” for support of the unified basketball program.

  • 100 St. Coletta students chosen to participate in the National Football League (NFL) Clinic with NFL players.

  • Community Career-Based Training Sites increased to 24 career-based training sites.

  • St. Coletta also continued to host a number of outside groups including Kids Enjoy Exercise Now (KEEN), Special Olympics Unified Basketball and Horton’s Kids-tutoring for DC middle school students.