Centralia Superintendent Mark Davalos talks to the board about his goals while school board member Jami Lund and Colleen Miller with the Washington State School Directors Association listen in this January 2017 Chronicle file photo.
For this school year, Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos has set three goals that aim to boost student performance and the overall effectiveness of administrators in the district when it comes to leadership.
The goals, adopted by the Centralia School Board last month, outline some benchmarks Davalos hopes to work toward in the 2017-18 school year. All three address a longer-term goal.
The superintendent’s goals are adopted on an annual basis. They include two student growth goals and one professional growth goal.
“Our goals are really tied into the organization and how we become strong and better as an organization,” Davalos said of his goals in general. “We try to pick things and explain with the board how this will help the interactions with principals, administrators and indirectly teachers and learners.”
Goal No. 1
As part of an ongoing goal, Davalos hopes to bring achievement levels for K-12 students to 80 percent in key performance indicators that span 16 targeted areas. This is the midpoint, or third year, of working toward that objective.
“This was a gutsy goal when I started here,” Davalos said. “We had too many of our state results under 50 percent, so I put out a challenge when I first came here.”
There has been improvement in some of those targeted areas, but many of them still need additional work, Davalos said.
The key performance indicators, or milestones, are broken into three sections. The first focuses on whether K-3 students are ready to learn and equitably prepared. The second category focuses on fourth through eighth grades and whether they maintain progress and eliminate achievement gaps, while the third category focuses on the high school level to ensure students work toward graduation and are prepared for college and career choices.
“This goal will analyze the five-year growth plan to determine where we are and what additional growth targets must be met,” state the goals. “The goal will also examine the subgroup gaps and plan for additional supports to increase the sub group closer to overall district achievement numbers.”
According to Davalos, the milestones provide a monitoring mechanism for the district’s achievement success and growth.
To increase those achievement levels, the district recently went through an update to its materials that align what is taught to the way smarter balance tests operate. The intention is to ensure the district utilizes the right kind of examples and practices to familiarize students with the kinds of questions on the test, which in turn will increase their understanding of the material.
“Our materials now are pretty much aligned to common core and the test cycle,” Davalos said. “We’re now working at how to talk about the math in the new way it’s being assessed and taught. We’re putting our professional development there as well to improve our efficiency and skills.”
The same process will take place for next generation science standards.
“This really guides our future,” Davalos said of the goal. “We really can’t settle. We do believe our kids are capable and we have to keep pushing through until we see higher and higher results. Goal number one is really about moving our achievement forward and being consistent on that year after year after year.”
Goal No. 2
The second student growth goal focuses on the acceleration of student’s math comprehension to increase enrollment in algebra when students enter the eighth grade. That will later allow those students to take higher levels of math in high school, which Davalos said is an important subject that opens more opportunities for students as they work through the educational system.
“We want to find ways to accelerate into higher levels of math and get into pre-college type of math in high school,” he said, adding that it could also allow college levels of math for students.
The district recently received funds to support the implementation of its FIRST Robotics program at Centralia High School.
By building on the student’s math skills, that ties into the new program, as well as other STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — areas the school is taking on.
The goal states the number of students that enroll in eighth grade algebra will increase by 5 percent for the 2018-19 year, by 10 percent for the 2019-20 year and by another 10 percent for 2021.
The goal, which is in its developmental year, will take a lot of coordination with principals and teachers at lower grade levels to ensure students are ready for the higher level math classes.
“We’ll have meetings to begin discussing how we are going to basically promote this,” Davalos said. “Maybe we’ll decide to start with fifth grade and look at how we can compact and select students to accelerate them.”
Goal No. 3
The third goal for the 2017-18 school year focuses on professional development for the K-12 administrative team. The district has entered into an open-ended contract with the University of Washington Center for Education Leadership. The contract for phase one cost under $20,000, according to Davalos.
Phase one takes various surveys like those that focus on the Center for Educational Effectiveness, health and wellness and community surveys.
It also takes into account the leadership style to see how the district operates and supports improvement and growth both in skill levels and resources.
According to the document that outlines the goals, the administrators that participate in the CEL growth opportunity aim to report over a 75 percent satisfactory evaluation of the program goals for the team and individual growth in the first year, followed by an 80 percent satisfactory evaluation in year two.
“This growth opportunity will help us through research, learning walks, and personal goals and improvement,” the goal states. “We are not getting trained… we are learning how to be better, recognize and promote effective instruction and build a stronger collaborative system.”
Staff from UW will interview teachers and focus groups to see where improvements and growth can be made.
“We’re really trying to task ourselves to find out what we are doing well and what we are not doing well to make improvements,” Davalos said. “… The most important thing is what goes on in the classroom and how we support that with instructional leaders is really vital.”
