"Excellence for All": Significant progress made toward improving students' academic success
Seattle Public Schools' central goal is to provide an excellent education for every student so that each student graduates ready for college, careers and life. Excellence for All is our five year strategic plan that guides our work to achieve this goal. The strategies in Excellence for All are focused on academic excellence, accountability for performance, efficient use of resources and engagement with our community to ensure every school is an excellent school.
In our first year of plan implementation, we have strengthened instruction and improved operations in a number of important ways:
• Improving how we deliver services to our English Language Learners and students needing special education through integrated comprehensive services
• Increasing college-readiness by offering 30% more Advanced Placement (AP) courses this year as well as administrating the PSAT district-wide to 9th, 10th and 11th grade students
• Establishing an assessment system with Measure of Academic Progress (MAP), which was piloted in nine schools during the 2008-2009 school year with strong engagement involving our key stakeholders including teachers, principals and central office staff
• Creating a culture of accountability through Central Office Key Performance Indicators (KPI), which helps align District work to our strategic goals while being transparent about how we are measuring our progress toward those goals
Major initiatives at Seattle Public Schools (SPS) for the 2009-2010 academic year include:
• High quality teaching is the most important factor in student learning. We are committed to providing our teachers and our schools the best tools and systems possible to help students succeed
• Implementing a Performance Management System. Performance Management is about defining excellence, tracking our progress, and making informed decisions to better support all schools and all students
* One key component of this work is using new tools to collect and share data about how we're performing as a district and as schools
* SPS will use this data to support schools in more targeted ways and giving each school what it needs in order to be successful
• Creating a New Student Assignment Plan that is equitable, understandable and predictable while supporting the goal of making every school an excellent school.
* The next step is the development of attendance area boundaries. Boundary maps will be shared with the community and then voted on by the Board this fall.
* Once the boundary maps are approved by the Board, the next step is to develop a transition plan to begin implementation of the Student Assignment Plan.
* The phased implementation will begin in 2010-2011.
• Increasing College-Readiness through such key initiatives as offering an option high school with a Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) focus, continued expansion of our AP offerings, implementation of our new high school mathematics curriculum and development of a consistent, comprehensive approach to science and language arts through curriculum alignment.
We invite you to learn more about our programs by viewing presentations given to the School Board each quarter on our progress. There are also many opportunities for the community to be engaged. Please click here for more information on becoming involved in Seattle Public Schools.
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