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10/10/2017 12:00 AMNorth Haven’s District Improvement Plan is a roadmap for the public schools to guide all work in improvement efforts during a school year, and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Cronin said this year’s plan has been finalized and will soon be distributed throughout the district.
There are five areas that are focused on in the plan: teaching and learning, leadership, the lowest performing 25 percent of students (and how to help bring their achievement up), district and school culture, and communication.
“For each of those areas, there’s a general goal and then some action steps that we’re going to take to achieve those goals,” said Cronin.
Cronin said there is an overarching, long-term goal in the district to have 100 percent of students perform at or above goal on assessments; Cronin said he’s focused on getting that number to 85 percent right now.
This year’s stated goal is to have a minimum of 70 percent of students to perform at goal or higher on SAT and SBAC assessments. Cronin said that percentage will increase incrementally each year to get to the long-term goal.
While the percentage is important, what’s more important to Cronin is what the district is doing in schools and classrooms to help students get to that level. As an example, intervention teachers were introduced at the middle school and high school last year, and this year there will be a new reading intervention program that will be used at elementary levels.
Cronin said the intervention teachers were introduced as a way to help the lowest performing 25 percent of students. He said North Haven is fortunate to have resources to help students be successful across all levels, and the intervention teachers were the newest addition to that effort.
“We have not only looked at the intervention piece or the remedial piece, but we’ve also tried to look at our higher-achieving students,” said Cronin, adding that he and the schools look for ways to get those students to the next level.
Continuing work on writing skills with Columbia University’s Teachers College is another part of this year’s plan. Cronin said that North Haven’s elementary schools are referred to by Columbia as an “affiliate school,” meaning that throughout the year representatives from Teachers College reading and writing program come to the district to provide professional development in schools with the school’s children.
“The professional development is done on-site, kind of embedded into work,” Cronin said. “We had found that to be a really good experience.”
According to the plan for this year, the district looks to extend the program to the middle school.
Each school will also do a plan of its own, and Cronin said those will be completed by Sunday, Oct. 15.
“Each teacher then develops their own goals…related to what the school needs, so they’re all kind of connected,” Cronin said.
The District Improvement Plan will be posted on the district website www.north-haven.k12.ct.us, and physical copies will be available outside of Cronin’s office in the North Haven Town Hall Annex, 5 Linsley Street.