Data That Drives District Success

GLPS Families,

It is definitely a fall day out there today! The gray skies, cool weather, and changing leaves let us know we are into mid-October. The school year is moving quickly; it will be November in a couple of weeks!

This time of year is important for me, as every fall, the board of education has to complete my annual performance evaluation by November 1st. This year, my evaluation will be conducted at a Special Board Meeting on Monday night. I am sharing this with you today, because a large part of my evaluation is how well we are performing as a district across multiple areas, including the achievement of school improvement goals and student growth, as well as family, staff, and student input. Since all of that data is tied directly to the health of the school district, I thought I would share a couple of highlights with you today:

1. Last year, across all buildings and departments, we set 44 school improvement goals. We also monitored 10 goals from the previous year. Of those 54 goals, we achieved 33 of them, and 15 remain in progress. Only 6 of those 54 goals were not achieved, and of those 6, most were partially completed or very close, which means that we collectively had an 89% success rate over the last year!
   
   

2. Across the district, we continued to see tremendous growth in our NWEA scores. The charts below represent achievement and growth, K-8, over the year. In reading, we were in the 63rd percentile in growth and the 69th in achievement. That means that GLPS kids grew more than 63% of all test takers nationally and achieved more than 69% in reading. In math, we did even better, as our growth and achievement were both better than 72% of national test takers.
   
   
   

3. This success carries over to our state assessments, as this chart represents all subjects and all students tested across the district, when compared with state, county, and regional districts. Our overall trend since 2021 outpaces all of them, while the slight drop from last year mirrors that of all three, but our average achievement remains significantly higher.
   
   

4. I shared student and family voice data with the board in July. I encourage you to take a look at that data here.

I am sharing many more data points with the board on Monday. You can take a look at that data here, which also contains my own improvement goals. We continue to strive to improve every day, and this data shows that our district continues to move in the right direction. 

Thank you, as always, for giving us the opportunity to work with you and your children every day. I am very proud that I have the opportunity to live and learn in Comet Country, and I am #proudtobeacomet!