• Category 1

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: pre k - 6
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 174
    Student Enrollment: 362
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1%
    White/Caucasian: 5%
    Hispanic: 21.6%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.3%
    Asian: 68.5%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 3.7%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:26
    % Reduced Lunch: 67.1%
    % ELL Learners: 36.5%
    Founded: 1962
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Sandi Ishii
  • CONTACT:
    9802 Woodbury Avenue
    Garden Grove, CA 92844
    714-663-6251
    sishii@ggusd.us
A. G. Cook Elementary School
Garden Grove, CA
Students feel safe to take intellectual risks, are engaged in learning, and are inspired to achieve to their fullest potential.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
The voice of all stakeholders is critical to the Cook culture. Leadership is nurtured at all levels. Our strong PTO is the heartbeat of our school and parent leaders are integrated into the school culture. Over 60 parents are actively involved through volunteerism, raising funds, and leading special school events, such as, Trunk or Treat, Lunar New Year Festival and Brunch with Santa. Cook is adjacent to 3 other schools and this has created unsafe traffic in the past. The PTO, along with the Police Department’s guidance, formed the Cook Safety Patrol group. Each morning and afternoon a group of parents offer valet service to arriving students and add supervision to the parking lot and crosswalk. Additionally, students are involved in leading the school through Student Council, Graphic Design Group, Tech Squad, Boys and Girls Club Junior Leaders, Junior Safety Patrol and Peace Ambassadors. Leadership and involvement is valued within each stakeholder group.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Cook strongly believes that when schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, students will reach their full potential. In our mission to support the whole child, Cook School has created a strongly aligned collaborative partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of Garden Grove (BGC) which hosts up to 100 of our students on-site in after-school programming. BGC programming enhances student academics, supports homework completion and provides enrichment opportunities. This close partnership aligns with our goals and seeks to serve the students in need of additional support; academically, social-emotionally or due to difficult family circumstances. This partnership includes access to mental health services and other resources for families in need. A healthy school is a connected school and Cook exemplifies this broad-based community connection where each child is valued and supported.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
The philosophy or vision of the full Cook Staff is that Cook is a place of learning where students feel safe to take intellectual risks, are engaged in learning, and are inspired to achieve to their fullest potential by focusing on growth and perseverance.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
Cook’s primary academic goal will be school-wide growth in both Math and ELA by supporting students in their ability to deconstruct a prompt or performance task. This includes gathering evidence from multiple texts or sources. Students who are struggling in any core academic area will be offered comprehensive Tier 1 and/or Tier 2 Interventions, as diagnosed through multiple forms of assessments.

As an additional goal, Cook will offer continued support to English Learners (EL), as they journey toward English fluency. This includes creating a culture of celebration for students who reclassify to Fluent English Proficiency. This celebration includes a time to honor newly reclassified (RFEP) students with a Language Scholar Medal. Parents will be included in the school-wide assembly celebration and a special reception will be held in the Language Scholar’s honor with families invited. The goal is to celebrate diversity and the power of language in the world of our children.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
Our school-wide initiatives are intended to have a triangulated impact on teachers, students, and parents. These initiatives always include Academics and Scholarly Habits. Teachers refine instructional practice in collaboration with colleagues at grade level and through the lesson study process.
Our current school-wide focus is effectively responding to a prompt with an additional focus on the academic language necessary to deconstruct a prompt while citing more than one text. All initiatives are rolled out in K-6 school-wide assemblies focused on grade level standards. The growth we've experienced in Scholarly Habits is the result of school-wide training, including the habits of Perseverance, Preparedness, Intellectual Risk-Taking, and Using multiple perspectives. School-wide initiatives are included in the parent training series, “Coffee with the Principal”, where parents receive parent education training and are honored for regular participation with a Parent Scholar Medal.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
As a result of a staff initiative, Growth Mindset is embedded in every aspect of our school climate. It has fostered an academic environment where students love learning and accomplish their goals through hard work. As a result of the belief that all children can grow an learn, students who struggle academically or social emotionally work closely with the principal, in the “Scholar Support Group”. These K-6 students meet regularly to review their data, set goals and celebrate growth. The principal works closely with teachers to understand where students need the greatest encouragement or coaching and what additional interventions are needed to achieve growth. This intervention comprises 15% of the student body. Students are encouraged to grow from the point of their last assessment. This process has evolved into a successful pre-referral intervention to Special Education, with the underlying premise being the belief in the possibility of growth for every one of our students.
Explain how ESEA federal funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
ESEA funding is critical to the support of student academic success and social emotional well-being. ESEA funding provides broad-based support for instruction, staffing and programs. Two crucial areas ESEA has funded include intervention instruction and technological support. Through detailed analysis of data, student areas of deficit were targeted as needing various forms of intervention. ESEA funded staffing, technology and intervention programs that offered instruction in Phonics, Decoding, Math Skills, English Language Development, Comprehension, and Writing. ESEA funds were utilized to purchase additional technology necessary for instruction, intervention and assessment.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
The Cook professional learning community called Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) process of collaboration and shared leadership drives critical decisions that impact the full staff in implementing effective instruction, thus increasing student achievement by meeting the needs of all learners. ILT is comprised of one teacher per grade level, the Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA), and the principal. Professional development (PD) is provided by the TOSA in areas requested by staff or grade level, as indicated through data analysis. The PD is interwoven with the co-plan co-teach lesson study model. Each year the Cook ILT analyzes and seeks solutions to site-based needs based on a comprehensive study of our schools quantitative and qualitative data. The ILT has also worked toward the common goal of developing scholarly habits among students, creating a culture of Growth Mindset, as well as supporting the academic needs of our Cook student body.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Cook teachers begin each year by analyzing the previous year’s state assessment results and identifying key standards of focus for the year.
Teachers continually utilize data to drive instruction and set clear, individualized student goals. All formative and summative assessments, such as math and ELA benchmarks, fall and spring writing prompts, math unit tests, Dynamic Indicator of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), and language arts unit tests are utilized to assess student progress. During weekly collaboration meetings, teachers develop interventions, create re-teaching activities, and seek ways to differentiate curricula based on data analysis. At the end of each trimester, students complete Benchmark test tracking sheets and set individual goals. During conferences, teachers and parents discuss methods to support students in taking ownership of their learning in order to reach their goals.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
Cook Elementary is a small, diverse school with a big heart where students are warmly welcomed by name and are encouraged to grow to their greatest potential. Cook staff ensures that every student knows they belong and are respected. This sense of belonging allows our students to feel safe taking intellectual risks and discovering their unique strengths. The staff has focused on building diverse parent involvement and this has been a key element to our warm accepting climate. Cook students have had increased opportunities to experience academic success and build significant relationships with a caring school community. Cook staff has implemented programs and instruction that creates an environment where students understand that if they work hard and don't give up, they will succeed.
Stats
  • Category 1

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: pre k - 6
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 174
    Student Enrollment: 362
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1%
    White/Caucasian: 5%
    Hispanic: 21.6%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.3%
    Asian: 68.5%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 3.7%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:26
    % Reduced Lunch: 67.1%
    % ELL Learners: 36.5%
    Founded: 1962
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Sandi Ishii
  • CONTACT:
    9802 Woodbury Avenue
    Garden Grove, CA 92844
    714-663-6251
    sishii@ggusd.us