Naperville School District 203 officials are in the process of reviewing school improvement plans across all 23 buildings for the 2023-24 school year, with action from the board of education slated on the collective set of documents at the upcoming Oct. 2 meeting.
School improvement plans are an annual exercise in District 203, though administrators more recently have changed the format of planning documentation to reflect more specific metrics.
“Over the past couple of years, the administration has collaborated with the building leaders to revise this process to make it more meaningful and relevant and to bring the plans for the current year earlier,” Superintendent Dan Bridges said of the review process.
The goal, Bridges said, is to have school-specific plans that reflect the unique culture within each building, while dually striking a balance with the unified goals, mission and vision within District 203.
“While these are 23 different plans for 23 different sites, they are a collaborative effort among the school improvement teams,” Bridges said.
What is in the plans
Each school has a specific metric in two buckets: academic and social-emotional learning or sense of belonging. Goals are further broken down into academic targets, literacy/language benchmarks, math benchmarks and other areas.
While core academics are still at the heart of the school improvement plans, Bridges said social-emotional learning has also become a core focus of each school’s plan in recent years.
“Beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, our district leadership team worked diligently to rethink and redesign the school improvement process to more clearly align to the whole child, create alignment across the district, plan and respond using a timeline that better mirrors the school year and to ensure that all efforts are approached through a lens of equity,” Bridges said.
MAP vs. IAR
District 203’s board of education had its first glimpse into the school improvement plans at its Sept. 18 meeting. At the meeting, several board members questioned the mixture of quantifiable benchmarks using two different systems.
One is the computer-based Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, tests that readily provide student achievement data in reading, language and math. Other metrics were against the backdrop of the standardized Illinois Assessment of Readiness, or IAR, that is tied into the statewide Illinois Report Card.
Jayne Willard, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, explained the differentiation between the two metrics on the school improvement plans at the most recent board meeting.
“Because our state accountability is IAR, we have strategically said, ‘That needs to be your goal,’” Willard said. “But our benchmarks, because the data is so timely, can be used with the MAP. If we’re growing, and we’re showing achievement through our MAP, then we should see our intended outcomes on the IAR.”
What the board had to say
At first blush, the board was overwhelmingly supportive of the draft school improvement plans for the year ahead at the Sept. 18 meeting.
“Over the years, these plans have improved,” board member Donna Wandke said. “They were a little more all over the place (in the past), and it’s great we’ve focused on the academics, the testing and the data that we have.”
To administrators and building principals, Wandke said, “Kudos to all of you for all the hard work to get to this point.”
Bridges said he and other administrators anticipate reporting back to the board late in the school year on the progress of the fresh set of school improvement plans.
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