• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Newark Charter School provides autonomy at the school level in exchange for clear accountability, which results in outstanding student performance and a well-managed organization. All staff members have one-year contracts that must be renewed annually. The school uses its autonomy to take advantage of innovative practices such as financial spending flexibility, peer evaluations and alternative curriculum models.

Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.

As a school established by parents, there is a high degree of parent involvement and parent satisfaction each year. Newark Charter School is a recipient of the Delaware Department of Education Parent Partnership Award. Parent surveys consistently show that parents are virtually 100% satisfied with the school. Parents have authentic participation in school-wide decision making. They hold the majority of seats on the Board of Directors. The School Council, consisting of parent-elected parent representatives from each grade level, serves as a "sounding board" to management on issues. It conducts and monitors two formal parent satisfaction surveys annually. The Friends of NCS is an active and essential parent organization, providing volunteers, fund raising support, and programs to enrich the school. A total of 500 different parent volunteers served the school the past year.

What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?

The guiding vision and philosophy for Newark Charter School is that all children can learn when they are challenged, supported, respected, and motivated. A strong academic program that invites family involvement in children's education is one that is bound for success. In order to achieve this vision, NCS provides autonomy at the school level in exchange for clear accountability, which results in outstanding student performance and a well-managed organization. All staff members have one-year contracts that must be renewed annually. The school uses its autonomy to take advantage of innovative practices such as financial spending flexibility, peer evaluations and alternative curriculum models. A school that provides a focused learning community where staff, parents and students share common values and expectations should be replicated.

Explain how Title I funds are used to support your improvement efforts.

Newark Charter School utilizes Title I funding to pay for a portion of a Reading Specialist position for the school. The State of Delaware used to fund this position for all DE public schools, but the funding has since been eliminated from the budget. This year we have implemented the use of MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) testing to more accurately identify our students that truly need services from our Reading Specialist. Being able to fund the position of this Reading Specialist is instrumental in providing these students Response to Intervention services. Without these services, it would be difficult to track the progress of these students and determine if special education services are needed.

Newark Charter School also set aside funding to support the needs of their Homeless population as mandated by the McKinney Vento Act. Although these funds have been set aside, NCS has not had to utilize them for this purpose as the school was able to meet the needs of identified homeless families without utilizing Title I funds.

Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.

1. As the Common Core State Standards have been implemented at Newark Charter School over the course of a few years, teachers have been provided with Professional Development, as per the Dean of Instruction and meeting in PLC's with grade level team members and content departments to dissect the standards and determine how to align them with our curriculum and deliver instruction in a way that is developmentally appropriate for each grade level. We had to first determine the meaning of each standard and what that standard looks like in the classroom. Many resources and professional literature has been used to ensure that all aspects of each standard are clearly understood and implemented correctly.

2. A combination of the Common Core State Standards and a new state test acted as catalysts for Newark Charter Teachers to implement a variety or questions covering all levels of the Depth of Knowledge into their instruction and assessments. Each teacher received a copy of the Depth of Knowledge wheel to consistently refer to when determining the questions that will be asked with each lesson. In addition, when compiling their Yearlong Plan, "questioning" has since become a section on the plan in which teachers are expected to include a few questions for levels 1-4 for each lesson of their units.

In connection with questioning, as a school, we also concluded that it was not the content on the state test that was confusing for the students, but they expressed much difficulty with the verbs being used in each question. So, along with our tweaking of questioning, teachers also spent a great deal of time instructing the students on the action associated with each critical verb in understanding what they are being asked to do.

3. The content of Mathematics has also been an area in which we have devoted a large amount of professional development. As a school, we felt that the facet of math that needed the most attention was building students' number sense and the application of skills when problem solving. Without a strong foundation in number sense, it is pretty much guaranteed that students will struggle in all eight of the mathematical practices.

We first began by taking a hard look at our schedule. The schedule in Newark Charter School's Intermediate Building was revamped allowing students with 84 minutes of math every other day and 42 minutes on the off days. Next, grades K-6 were trained in Number Talks, "which is a short, ongoing daily routine that provides students with meaningful ongoing practice with computation. A Number Talk is a powerful tool for helping students develop computational fluency because the expectation is that they will use number relationships and the structures of numbers to add, subtract, multiply and divide while problem solving." Lastly, grades 4-8 adopted a math series that is aligned to Common Core to promote consistency from grade level to grade level and help to close the gaps that we were noticing as well.

Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.

Data collected throughout the school year is comprised of many components, such as classroom formative and summative assessments, observations, walk-throughs, state testing data, norm-referenced data, parent satisfaction surveys, etc. This data is used to pinpoint areas of growth, strengths, and weaknesses across a grade level, content area, and the school overrall. Once areas of weakness are identified, teams of teachers and/or departments, as well as the Instructional leaders and building level principals determine the necessary path to take and materials needed in order to bring about improvement. Teachers consistently refer back to their Yearlong Plans to make necessary changes in regards to questioning, assessments, or scope and sequence of learning.

Conversations regarding data occur on a daily basis. Teachers utilize the Common Core Standards, standardized test data, norm-referenced data and classroom assessments to decide if their students are on the right track. Since the Common Core Standards have been released, NCS teachers have spent a great deal of time fine-tuning the questioning that takes place in their classrooms as well as their assessments. Through analyzing our data, we came to realize that it was not that the students had difficulty with the content, but the verbs used in the questions were ones in which posed a struggle for the students to correctly answer the questions. NCS had made this area a primary focus in every classroom in which has resulted in stronger overall student achievement.

The information previously mentioned is vital to not only inform daily instruction but to insure that gaps do not occur from grade level to grade level and the depth of instruction that students encounter each day aides them to become learners that can analyze and synthesize academic information and be college and career ready.

• Category 2

  Selected in 2015

• Grades: k - 12
  School Setting: suburban
  Town Population: 32,000
  Student Enrollment: 2,140
  Student Demographics:
  

  Black/African American: 11.1%
  White/Caucasian: 64.9%
  Hispanic: 5%
  Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
  Asian: 13%
  Native American: 0.3%
  Other: 5.7%
  

  Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:25
  % Reduced Lunch: 13.8%
  % ELL Learners: 3.4%
  Founded: 2000
• PRINCIPAL:
  Gregory Meece
• CONTACT:
  2001 Patriot Way
  Newark, DE 19711