• Category 2

    Selected in 2013

  • Grades: pre k - 4
    School Setting: rural
    Town Population: 1,514
    Student Enrollment: 560
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 2%
    White/Caucasian: 94%
    Hispanic: 2%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:24
    % Reduced Lunch: 58%
    % ELL Learners: 0%
    Founded: 1968
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Karl Hartman
  • CONTACT:
    402 Fenton Street
    Kingsley, MI 49649
    231-263-5261 ext. 2217
    kahartman@kingsley.k12.mi.us
Kingsley Area Elementary School
Kingsley, MI
Our community recognizes that we are very good at finding students who are not demonstrating adequate growth and matching those students with high quality and intensive interventions.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
We maintain a 99% parent participation rate for parents teacher conferences which we organize and hold twice each school year. This high attendance rate is the result of continuous communication to parents with newsletter, phone message, e-mail alerts, building newsletters, and district newsletters, but the high attendance rate is also the result of persistent teachers who provide parents with every possible opportunity to attend a conference even it means meeting early, late, on a weekend, or at home. Teacher take immense pride in meeting with all their parents and we work as team to meet with parents who struggle to attend a conference by meeting them at their level and at a time that works for them. School communication with parents is intense and we are looking to the future to use "push out" communication to keep parents informed such as Twitter or Facebook. Parent communication is rated by parents as being very effective.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Our community recognizes that we are very good at finding students who are not demonstrating adequate growth and matching those students with high quality and intensive interventions. As a result, overall student performance has been increasing since 1995 when the school first began looking at adequate yearly progress. The most successful activity thus has been the straightforward development of a system of reviewing student data and providing interventions.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
We keep our efforts aligned to a very simple philosophy: We focus only on the things that we can change. Schools are strapped for funds, laying off staff, losing students, and competing against each other as well as charter schools, and now on-line learning schools. We can't change these things. We also can't change many of the things that are challenging for students at home. What we can do is constantly ask ourselves if the issue at hand can be changed, if not we have to let it go, if it can be changed, then we dig in and figure out how to proceed. We also do cling to the notion that "if it isn't broke...don't fix it". We realize that some things change because of extraneous factors such as politics or bias, but there are many things that we know, from the data, that are working and they don't need to be changed. We always have room to adjust and fine tune, but change for the sake of change...does not bring about improvements in student achievement.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
Our first goal is to maintain our school ranking that has identified Kingsley Elementary as a Michigan Reward School and a school that is beating the odds. Kingsley Elementary is ranked at the 91st percentile on the Michigan "Top to Bottom" Ranking and a very noteworthy accomplishment. Our second goal is to fully and effectively implement the Robert Marzano Teacher Growth model, which is now one of the approved teacher evaluation measures in the state of Michigan. This model focuses on the most critical teaching elements and outlines a framework for training staff in the model, utilizing lead teachers, provides focused feedback to teachers, and is based on years of educational research.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
We have diligently trained for and implemented a Professional Learning Community (PLC) Model (Richard DuFour) where our teams collaborate and work together in a purposeful and intensive manner. Learning teams constantly drill down into student performance data (assessments such as MEAP, AIMSweb, Rigby Benchmarking) to identify students who are struggling, determine where the deficiencies are and implement intense interventions to help those students who are not meeting the benchmarks. Teaching teams also commit to a set of norms on how they will meet, review curriculum and assessments, and agree on a common calendar that provides instruction that is impressively consistent in every classroom at that grade level. The PLC model has allowed us to carry out a fine tuned RtI (Responding to Intervention) model that is the critical framework for targeting and assisting struggling learners.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
We have achieved significant student gains by developing and implementing a detailed and comprehensive RtI (Responding to Intervention) plan. The plan outlines how students will be identified using a multi-tiered approach which identifies a menu of interventions and the amount of time students will receive the interventions. This approach requires our staff to constantly focus on student achievement data ranging from a daily math fact test to the statewide MEAP assessments. Teachers always know the specific reading level of every student, and assessments are applied to track student growth and then our students are always informed of their performance level (such as reading), what level they should be at (benchmark) and what will take place to get them to the benchmark target.
Explain how Title I funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
Title I funds are used in a targeted assistance model, where students who qualify for assistance are provided with interventions. Most Title I funds are used specifically for employing highly qualified teaching staff and highly qualified paraprofessionals, however some Title I funds are used for parent training activities and teacher and staff training. The targeted assistance model provides assistance only to students who qualify based on student achievement data rather than a school wide approach where Title I funds might be used to support improvement for all students.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
We certainly utilize traditional professional opportunities such as local and statewide workshops and conferences and we assign our content experts to seek out training in their area of expertise (reading, writing, math, science, etc) and lead improvement strategies right here on our own in our own school. Some systemic training has been very effective such as administering common assessments, using student data, Professional Learning Communities, and multi-year training teams hosted by our intermediate school district.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Student achievement data is the backbone of our teacher PLC teams, our RtI plan, our general and Title I interventions, and our Title I Targeted Assistance Plan. Multiple student assessments are used by PLC teams on scheduled and routine basis to specifically identify students who are not progressing toward grade level benchmarks, determination of specific deficiencies, and implementing a plan to provide intense interventions to those students. Statewide student achievement data (MEAP) is used to develop the annual school improvement plan and identify strategies that need to be implemented to improve areas identified to need improvement (math, writing, reading, etc). We have gone as far as creating our own data management systems to keep track of student achievement, monitor growth, and inform teachers and parents.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
The culture that exists for our elementary team is clear and specific as stated in our mission statement: "We are a team...learning for life! Together Everyone Accomplishes More". We carry out our duties as a team and leave our ego's off the table. We have taken many years to training our staff in collaborative teaming and have set up a framework of meaningful shared leadership. All staff are included in leadership positions and we have learned that everyone has a set of talents that complements our elementary team. Elementary staff are highly dedicated and it is common to find teachers working at school early in the morning, late into the evening, during scheduled breaks, and over the summer. I could ask my staff to be at a training on Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m. and they would be there! Our team has learned to thrive on improving student performance and we measure student growth with continuous formative assessments and summative assessments that are very effective.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2013

  • Grades: pre k - 4
    School Setting: rural
    Town Population: 1,514
    Student Enrollment: 560
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 2%
    White/Caucasian: 94%
    Hispanic: 2%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:24
    % Reduced Lunch: 58%
    % ELL Learners: 0%
    Founded: 1968
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Karl Hartman
  • CONTACT:
    402 Fenton Street
    Kingsley, MI 49649
    231-263-5261 ext. 2217
    kahartman@kingsley.k12.mi.us