Rich Smith, Marcus Johnson and Karen D. Thompson
Determining what students need and working together to provide direction are the keys to this district's success.
Sergio entered the Sanger Unified School District as a kindergartner not yet fluent in English. As a 9th grader in 2010, he still had not scored high enough on measures of English language ability and academic achievement to shed the English learner label. For years, students like Sergio flew under the radar in our district, gliding from one grade to the next. But since 2004, Sanger Unified has undergone a dramatic transformation. Now district educators know exactly how all their students are doing, and they work relentlessly and collaboratively to discover what each student needs to succeed.
Thus, when we, as school leaders, sat down with Sergio's parents in spring 2011 for a chat, we knew where Sergio stood; this knowledge gave us a starting point for conversation. Sergio's parents told us that Sergio's language abilities in Spanish had faltered since a farm accident several years back. No one had ever asked Sergio or his parents why they thought his academic progress had stalled. With data that alerted us to Sergio's lack of progress and a commitment to asking questions that would help us understand his needs, we gained the necessary information to design an appropriate learning environment for him. Conversations like these have enabled our district to experience a dramatic turnaround.
From Struggling to Exemplary
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