KSD Secondary School Report

By
Tom Staly
– November 18, 2010Posted in: Articles

Kennewick School District Secondary School Report to the Community

Friday, November 5, 2010 at the ESD 123 office building in Pasco from 8:30 AM to 4 PM

Attendees: 16 Kennewick citizens

KSD Administrators and district representatives: 6 district administrators, 8 building principals, 1 program staff member, 3 school board members, 1 communications director, 1 union representative, 1 Battelle representative

Purpose: To engage the community in understanding student academic performance, share how KSD is helping students reach or exceed education standards and receive community recommendations.

The program was opened by KSD Superintendent Dave Bond with additional information provided by KSD Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Ron Williamson, principals of 8 buildings, lead teacher Jill Mulhausen and administrator Dottie Stevens.

Information I took away from this presentation:

  • KSD secondary schools include 4 middle schools, 3 comprehensive high schools, 4 specialty high schools and specialized programs within each building
  • Advanced Placement (AP) classes are available to students at Kamiakin and Southridge high schools with International Baccalaureate (IB) classes offered
    to students at Kennewick HS
  • The district focus for grades 6 through 10 is preparing students to pass reading, writing, math and science standardized tests including the WASL/MSP/HSPE, MAP and end-of-course exams in math
  • The district reading and writing goal is for 85% of students to meet standard on state tests
  • The district math goal is for 90% of students to meet standard on state tests
  • Unusual variation in state MSP/HSPE scores brings into question the validity and reliability of state tests and their usefulness for decision making to
    inform instruction
  • Based on comparisons with district MAP scores the MSP/HSPE math test is more difficult at each grade level than the MSP/HSPE reading test.
    The conclusion is that KSD students are doing better at math than state test results show.
  • Poverty significantly impacts KSD students with predictable challenges in each school building
  • With the district focus on low achieving students a challenge is to advance high performing students concurrently
  • High achieving math students at the 4 middle schools are offered high school Honors Algebra classes. Honors Geometry is offered to students at Desert Hills, Highlands and Horse Heaven Hills middle schools.
  • KSD adopted a new science program in grades 6 to 12 this school year
  • “F” grades in middle school are an indicator that a student will drop out of high school. KSD is implementing building practices to reduce the numbers of “F” grades.
  • KSD students must earn 21 credits to graduate from high school. This is more credits than required by the state
  • KSD needs the help of families to meet the needs of students and is looking for ways to build parent partnerships

Kennewick School District has grown to just over 16,000 students with 3374 in the middle schools and 4894 in the high schools. Hispanic students are 30% of the middle school population and 25.6% of the high school population. Kennewick High School has the largest Hispanic population at 42% of the student body. Kamiakin has a 15% Hispanic student population.

The district graduation rate is 67.8%. Kamiakin has the highest graduation rate at 81.2% and Kennewick HS is lowest at 65.9%. Extended graduation rates are 79.2% for the district, 82.8% for Kamiakin and 74.5% for Kennewick HS.

Bond and Williamson presented many slides of data describing characteristics of the district and student test scores. The pace of presentation did not allow for study, reflection or understanding of much of the information. For the convenience of the public copies of all the data from today’s presentation are available by clicking here

KSD’s focus is on those factors the schools can control including quality of instruction, quality of curriculum, quality of assessments and use of class time. Professional development for staff is ongoing to maintain and improve quality of instruction. KSD has adopted new math and science curriculum which is expected to improve student achievement.

Most of the presentation time was dedicated to building reports by building principals. See specifics for each secondary school below.

I did not stay for the concluding statements or citizen recommendations.

Desert Hills Middle School – Principal Steve Jones
923 students          45% of students in honors program
21% of students in high school honors math classes
25% of students taking high school Spanish class
Low poverty level among students. Low mobility – 80% of students entering 6th grade are still at DHMS in the 8th grade. DHMS has the highest MAP scores in SE Washington.
Staff development reinforces collaboration, using effective instructional techniques and providing students with engaging, meaningful assignments. A building goal is to develop reading experts in every classroom who emphasize content reading skills.
The newly adopted science textbooks have proven to be difficult for half of students to read for understanding. To help students DHMS has been teaching specific reading strategies to students and is providing electronic instructional tools for support.
Purpose/Engagement/Rigor/Results/Relationships (PERRR) guides lesson planning and delivery.

Highlands Middle School – Principal Scott Parker
896 students              67% free/reduced lunch
Leads the district in “F” grades 2007 to 2009
In the second year of Standards Based Grading (SBG) which is designed to measure what students know related to learning targets. SBG provides school wide grading consistency, fair to all students and measures student performance on well defined course objectives.
Homework is practice so does not contribute to grades. Students not completing homework are assigned lunch detention. Students not meeting the standard are re-taught and retested. Teachers in their Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) plan the interventions for 3rd period four days each week. F grades have dropped 601 in 2007/08 to 281 in 2009/10.
Citizenship is an additional nonacademic grade.

Horse Heaven Hills Middle School – Principal Sue Denslow
Presentation by assistant principal Diana Burns
905 students         39% free/reduced lunch
29% ethnic minority students
HHH offers two Life Skills classes. Seventh graders meet with Life Skills students as buddies.
Standards Based Grading is used in the building.
Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD) provides research based instructional strategies.
Math interventions include Math Labs using the Holt program serving 181 students and Triumphs which is an intensive, scripted program for students failing their regular math classes. Triumphs serves 6% of the student population.
Other interventions are Why Try for 7th and 8th graders who write journal entries over 10 lessons and Directed Study, a one quarter exploratory for students to focus on planner organization. Directed Study students access the Parent Portal to monitor their progress. Tutorials are offered during lunch time for all grades.

Park Middle School – Principal Kevin Pierce
780 students              82% free/reduced lunch
Mobility is about 25%
Migrant students 30%            Bilingual students 24%
Reading is a focus at Park. Teachers work in teams with reading teachers meeting every day.
One evening every month Park hosts an event to bring in parents.
Response to Intervention (RTI) shapes responses to students in need of help. Using best practices, research driven curriculum like Corrective Reading and Corrective Math are utilized. There is a building plan of strategies. In-class interventions include working in small groups and one-on-one. Parents are contacted. Tutoring is offered during lunch and after school.

Kamiakin High School – Principal Chris Chelin
1600 students
Newsweek magazine has ranked Kamiakin among the top 1300 high schools in the nation for four years.
On-time graduation of 90% is goal as students who drop out are destined to live in poverty. Quality and intensity of high school curriculum is predictor of student success after high school.
Middle school grades are a better predictor of high school success than middle school standardized tests.
College is defined as any post-secondary training. Students who complete an apprenticeship in any trade will earn as much as a college graduate.
Kamiakin offers a wide variety of Advanced Placement (AP) classes.
Reading intervention classes serve 120 ninth grade students who are not prepared to learn because of low reading skills. Students made 3 or more years’ growth last school year in 5 out of 6 reading intervention classes. Interventions include Side by Side Reading, Digital Reading on computers, Guided Practice Instruction, Literacy Circles, Relevancy of Reading guest speakers and measuring library use.
Kamiakin uses Fast Forward to bring out of school youth back into high school. Tutoring is held after school.

Kennewick High School – Principal Dan Cummings
49% white students            44% Hispanic students
61% free/reduced lunch
Presentation described student leadership, community engagement and Navigation 101.
Student leadership activities are the spring Senior Social (for elderly community members), Relay for Life, Pink Week, fundraising for Ronny Coleman, Special Olympics, the canned food drive and Random Acts of Kindness.
Community engagement activities and events include Jueves Gigante (grades 6 to 12), Parent Portal, Migrant-Bilingual Student Advocates, Freshman Only Day, Truancy Officer, Get Connected (9th grade students and families), Open House, Bus Tour of KSD, Latino-Parent Night, 9th Grade Parent Night, Newsletter (Lion’s Link), Homecoming Parade, Sophomore/Junior Parent Night, four Migrant-Bilingual events and the Career Fair.
Navigation 101 is now in its 5th year. High school graduation and college entrance become a realistic goal when students take the required classes. Students meet with staff 12 times a year and create portfolios for an annual student-led conference. Conferences are attended by 85-90% of parents.

Southridge High School – Principal Steve Biehn
Building focus is on student behavior, rigor and PLC’s. The principals of the three comprehensive high schools have their own PLC.
Biehn asks what students should learn then directs staff to develop a common curriculum. Health teachers were first to develop a common health curriculum. Teachers of English and writing have done the same for their classes. Teachers in their PLC’s created common assessments using the same rubrics.
Math teachers are developing skill strands for curriculum and assessment along with a pacing guide. Standards based math is used to teach and re-teach lessons. Students are tested every day. After retesting, a student’s low grade is dropped to be replaced with the higher grade.
Computer based math instruction is achieved with the Holt program which has on-line support. Students do not need a textbook at home. There are on-line lesson reviews and tutorials presented by a teacher. APEX provides self-contained math instruction. ALEKS is the best diagnostic and computer instruction program KSD has found.

Delta High School – presentation by Ron Williamson
Current enrollment is 200 students.     Will eventually serve 400 students in 4 grades.
This is a partnership among Kennewick, Pasco and Richland school districts with support from WSU, CBC, Battelle and the STEM Foundation. KSD’s allocation is 39 students per grade.

Legacy High School – Principal Dottie Stevens
200 students                    class sizes of 20 or fewer in building
Legacy serves students in grades 7 to 12. Some students attend classes in building and others attend the virtual high school which is offered on-line using APEX. Legacy Reach is for 8th graders.
Students meet with teacher specialists daily or a minimum of once per week. Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) is part of the curriculum. Math is taught with Holt, APEX and ALEKS.

Phoenix High School – Lead Adviser Jill Mulhausen
63 students                 this is 4th year of this program
3 teachers (advisers)             3 paraprofessionals
This is a project based school. Students choose to enroll at Phoenix and self-select interdisciplinary, self-directed projects which evolve from a personal learning plan.
There are no classrooms. Students have workstations and hold group meetings.
Phoenix has partnerships with the Tri-City Americans, Sexual Assault Response Center (SARC), Mid-Columbia Engineering (MCE), Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery, Hanford Safety Expo and Safe Kids.
Community explorations include LIGO, the Ropes Course, CWU, WSU, Perry Tech and others.
In response to a question about Phoenix students’ performance on standardized tests, Jill stated that Phoenix students typically score higher on the HSPE than on MAP tests because they respond better to the types of questions on the state test.

Tri-Tech Skills Center – Principal Jerry Ringwood
882 students from 7 school districts                       Kennewick has 380 students enrolled
The presentation opened with a student produced video describing the school and its career and technical education programs. Tri-Tech is a project based hands-on school. Students can earn college credits and participate in pre-apprenticeship activities, the Battelle Craft Fair, Construction Career Day, Careers in Manufacturing and MAGIC (a week long program mentoring girls in construction).

Other district programs – Dottie Stevens reported on Learning Opportunity Centers which exist in all high schools, Models for Change which is funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Initiative Focus dealing with truancy and mental health, Truancy Work utilizing truancy counselors and Principal Summit. Fast Forward is for students ages 16 to 21, Passing Zone, extended day at alternative schools and CATS for students ages 14 to 16 are among numerous special programs to meet the diverse needs of Kennewick students.