Announcements / School Voices: Thought Partnership Works at the McKay K-8 School
School Voices: Thought Partnership Works at the McKay K-8 School
The McKay K-8 School joined EdVestors' Zeroing in on Math Intervention Cohort in June 2015 with a focus on math interventions for their most struggling students in grades 6-8. Students worked with a Math Interventionist on Do the Math Now!, an intervention curriculum designed to rebuild numerical foundations and prepare struggling middle school students for algebra. For the 2016-17 school year, the McKay School will continue their work with Do the Math Now! and will expand to offer TenMarks as part of their intervention model.
The following was written by Jordan Weymer, Principal of the McKay K-8 School:
The data has shown that we can help struggling students catch up. We can and have to; there is no alternative. What we’ve seen so far, since beginning our work with Zeroing in on Math, is consistent growth in 7th and 8th grade math. Our 8th graders on our last formative assessment outscored our network on Achievement Network assessments. Forty-seven percent are projected to be proficient – and that’s coming from a few years ago when proficiency levels were in the teens.
The work we’ve done with EdVestors through Zeroing in on Math is crucial. EdVestors brings tactical support, knowledge and expertise to our team. To have a strategic thought partner who is coming into our building and sharing ideas is important. It is tangible and affecting the way we are teaching mathematics at our school. Karen Levin and Janet Anderson from EdVestors coming and being thought partners has changed the way we approach teaching mathematics at our school. We don’t get the opportunity as school leaders to visit the seven or eight top-performing schools, but EdVestors can do that and then sit down with us and say: “here are some ideas, here is how schools are catching up their students.”
We are in Year 1 and we are seeing dramatic effects already. In the past we’ve seen a negative trend downward throughout the year in ANet scores. This year we have seen the opposite across 7th and 8th grade, where we’ve done a lot of strategic intervention work through EdVestors’ program.
