2014-15
Annual School Performance Report Sunny Hills Elementary School
Sunny Hills Elementary School 3200 Issaquah-Pine Lake Road SE, Sammamish, WA 98075 (425) 837-7400 http://connect.issaquah. wednet.edu/elementary/ sunny/default.aspx
Welcome
Sunny Hills is blessed to have involved, supportive families, a hard working staff and students who take pride in their work mark! Together, we partner in a variety of ways from improving student learning, to creating a Culture of Kindness and actively promoting habits of sustainability.
Principal Leslie Lederman
Mission Sunny Hills is a community of life-long learners who are committed to academic and social growth and who celebrate each student’s unique strengths.
Demographics Grades: K-5
Teacher Experience Enrollment: 612 95.8%
63.2%
Teachers with Master’s/Ph.D
Teacher’s with National Board Certification
9.3
6 Average Years Teaching Experience
OSPI Data 59%
In March 2014, the U.S. Department of Education declined to renew the state of Washington’s conditional Elementary and Secondary Education Act Flexibility Waiver for schools receiving Title I, Part A funds. This decision affects all schools in Washington State, which are now subject to the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Washington is the only state that has lost its waiver and must revert to NCLB standards and timelines of assessment. For schools and districts to be considered succeeding under NCLB, schools must meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards. For schools to meet AYP, 100 percent of all students, regardless of special needs or English language mastery, must meet proficiency standards. Sunny Hills met AYP this year. For complete information about the Issaquah School District’s assessment data, highly qualified teachers, annual yearly progress, and state NAEP (of Educational Progress) results, please visit the state’s online district report card.
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District Report For budget details and more go to www.issaquah.wednet.edu/district/ CommunityReport/ The Issaquah School District believes in seeking continual feedback from a broad and diverse range of constituents regarding their experiences with the District and their neighborhood school. See the Community Polling Study site at www. issaquah.wednet.edu/district/polling.aspx for more information and survey results.
Highlights Student leadership continues to be a focus for us. We have successfully launched our first Student Council. This group of student leaders has led us through morning announcements, videos posted on our website and all school assemblies such as our Veterans Day assembly. Our Student Council has chosen a focus for us each month, such as “responsibility” and given students concrete examples to follow. Enriching learning through the arts is a powerful addition to our students’ learning that has been sponsored by our PTA. Several times throughout the year, students participate in Art Walks. This is a time when docents introduce all students in the school, one class at a time, to works of art and the influence the artist has had on the world. Additionally, the PTA sponsors grade level specific art experiences. This year we held a school wide Art Fair. Between our strong cadre of parent volunteers and our partnership with V.O.I.C.E. and our PTA, students are supported in their learning. Families volunteer daily; working in classrooms in the areas of reading, writing and math. V.O.I.C.E. mentors meet weekly with students who need extra support either socially or academically. Through a PTA funded program, we are able to provide Educational Assistants for most classrooms to support reading and ELL.
Environmental Conciousness Our Green Team has continued its influential work and led us to the achievement of a Level 3 King County Green School! We began our work by setting a school wide goal to increase our sustainability habits. This goal was created by the students. To hear the thoughts from every classroom, we took the time to visit each room, brainstorm ideas and then use that data to look for trends in student interests. Student leaders on Green Team helped us achieve the school goal by creating all school announcements, skits in the lunchroom and special activities to help us operate in an Earth friendly way. This year, Green Team led us in our first Earth Week celebration which included participation in the District wide Waste Free Wednesday competition.
Culture of Kindness Last year, we began our work around creating a Culture of Kindness. This work continued this year and was supported by our Student Council’s efforts. We extended the kindness we practiced from at school to beyond school through community outreach efforts such as a book drive to support local Issaquah residents and a letter writing campaign during the holidays to support our troops.
Community and School Partnership We are proud of our partnership with our PTA and with ISF. As a team, we have worked together to bring many valuable programs and supports to Sunny Hills. Both our families and staff have reached the coveted 100% mark for PTA memberships. Our partnership with ISF is also something to brag about! We have over 25% of our families contributing to ISF; a statistic that puts us as the leader in the district. Our school is well represented on both the ISF board with several board members and with even more parents serving as ISF committee members.
PTA has brought us: • Community building events that unify our families even though our students leaving Sunny Hills after 5th grade attend two different middle/high schools. • Support our green efforts and our Culture of Kindness • Partnered with us to create a safe campus • Raised funds to allow for a successful implementation of our new curriculum
ISF has brought us: • Build teacher capacity--funding provided by ISF supports teachers pursuing their National Boards and has provided staff with professional development for our new writing curriculum by bringing in national presenter, Matt Glover. • Our school is represented on ISF board with several board members, with even more parents serving as ISF committee members. • Support student learning through the VOICE mentor program.
Assessment
Grade Level Total ELA
Two tests given to elementary school students—The Smarter Balanced Assessment and the Measurement of Student Progress (MSP)—help indicate how well Issaquah students are learning.
74.0
72.7
79.2
78.7
83.8
82.8
Smarter Balanced Assessment The Smarter Balanced Assessment is a system of valid, reliable, and fair next-generation assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts/literacy (ELA/literacy) and mathematics for grades 3-8 and 11. The system—which includes both summative assessments for accountability purposes and optional interim assessments for instructional use—will use computer adaptive testing technologies to provide meaningful feedback and actionable data that teachers and other educators can use to help students succeed. Smarter Balanced assessments will go beyond multiple-choice questions to include extended response and technology enhanced items, as well as performance tasks that allow students to demonstrate critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Performance tasks challenge students to apply their knowledge and skills to respond to complex real-world problems. They can best be described as collections of questions and activities that are coherently connected to a single theme or scenario. These activities are meant to measure capacities such as depth
of understanding, writing and research skills, and complex analysis, which cannot be adequately assessed with traditional assessment questions. The performance tasks will be taken on a computer (but will not be computer adaptive) and will take one to two class periods to complete. Smarter Balanced capitalizes on the precision and efficiency of computer adaptive testing (CAT). This approach represents a significant improvement over traditional paper-andpencil assessments used in many states today, providing more accurate scores for all students across the full range of the achievement continuum.
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Grade Level Total Math 77.5
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81.9
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79.6
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78.0
77.1
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MSP The MSP is an exam developed by and mandated by the state; it replaced the state’s original annual exam, the WASL, in spring 2010. Washington’s education reform efforts began in 1993 and involve annual state-specific tests for students in grades 3-8 in reading, writing, math, and science (MSP) and then again in grade 10 (High School Proficiency Exams in reading and writing and End of Course assessments in math and biology). MSP goes beyond multiple choice tests. The tests are much shorter than the WASL and include multiple-choice and short-answer questions. Four-point essay questions have been eliminated on science tests. This change allows students to show they are able to solve the problems, while not being scored on their writing ability on the science tests. Besides being a state test rather than a national assessment, MSP results are reported differently. Each student either “Meets Standard,” “Exceeds Standard,” or “Does Not Meet Standard” in each subject—reading, math, writing, science— and subjects tested vary among grade levels. MSP scores do not compare students to other students; instead they show the learning level of each student as compared to the state’s expectations for a well-taught student at that grade level. MSP results help parents know how well
each student is meeting learning targets, and the results help schools plan instruction and curriculum focused on these learning targets. Numbers represent percentage meeting or exceeding standard.
Grade 5 MSP-Science 86.0
84.7
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