In the waning days of the wide-ranging school closure process in the San Antonio Independent School District, Superintendent Jaime Aquino and other district leaders framed the dramatic move as necessary to remedy historically low academic achievement, which he said has been exacerbated by resources stretched too thin over 100 school campuses.
Now the board is looking to turn that observation into action, after receiving an update on two of four five-year goals that are currently off-track, according to a presentation Monday.
New positions created to target reading intervention are being created and positions lost due to budget cuts like librarians could be returning to campuses if projected enrollment is realized at the new, consolidated campuses, according to officials.
But the most dramatic change to address the low scores is a district-wide alignment of curriculum for both math and reading, which currently vary from campus to campus.
Timothy Shanahan, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, helped the Fort Worth Independent School District with such an alignment several years ago, with early signs of progress this year.
“If everyone has their own curriculum, it is very difficult to affect school improvement,” he told the San Antonio Report, drawing on his experience as a director of reading for Chicago Public Schools, where each school could have its own curriculum.
“That makes it impossible to identify and address any systematic problems. No matter what you try to do, it will end up being undermined by those teachers who claim they are already doing what the initiative might require.”
District off-track for 5-year goals
An analysis of beginning-of-the-year data shows that the district is not on track to achieve either its goal of 50% of students reading on grade level by 2027 or its goal of 50% of Black students achieving on grade level or higher in math by 2027. The district’s other two goals, which were not discussed Monday, include increasing college readiness for students with disabilities and improving the social emotional readiness of all students.
The lofty goals are higher than some other districts, which focus on simply increasing the number of students passing rather than those meeting grade level, something Aquino said is intentional.
“SAISD and the board have committed to holding ourselves to a much higher level of standard,” he said. “We’re talking about grade level … because that is what our kids deserve.”
Despite progress, only 24% of students were on grade level in reading at the beginning of this year, up from 21% last year. The interim goal to be on track was 29%.
“The data does show that while there was some growth … it was not aggressive enough to keep us on track to meet the challenging five-year goal,” Deputy Superintendent Patti Salzmann said during the presentation.
In response, the district plans to start providing “day-by-day lessons for explicit and systematic instruction” and align literacy instruction to a teaching philosophy known as the science of teaching reading, which emphasizes phonics and understanding the way early readers understand text.
The state has also mandated the approach.
But the real change will come from aligning all campuses under the district’s control under the same reading curriculum and approach. Outside partners operate one-third of the district through 1882 partnerships and will maintain control over curriculum on those campuses.
Analysis guides next steps in curriculum selection
The district administration has already begun studying various student groups in preparation for selecting a curriculum, analyzing the English and Language Arts and Reading (ELAR) scores from 21 schools that use a state-adopted curriculum called Amplify, as well as 37 schools that use a district-made curriculum or other third-party choices.
Despite being endorsed by the state and showing dramatic signs of progress in other districts, preliminary data presented Monday shows that schools using SAISD or third-party curricula outperform those using Amplify.
For example, 53% of third-grade students at schools using Amplify scored as approaching grade level. In comparison, 59% of those at other schools scored as approaching grade level. Only 8% of students scored as masters at Amplify schools, while 9% at non-Amplify schools scored as masters.
Trustee Leticia Ozuna called into question the statistical significance of the data presented by the district, given how close the percentages are.
“Some of the margins are so tight,” she said. “It just immediately brought to my mind … whether or not we had confidence in the differentials not falling inside of the margin of error.”
Aquino noted in response that the analysis was not scientific since there was not an actual control and variable group, but pointed to the more dramatic gaps in data comparing small groups of students from pilot groups, which Salzmann identified as campuses where the curricula were implemented with a “high level of fidelity.”
Instead of a few points of difference, there was a 17% gap between the 67% of students who were approaching grade level at non-Amplify campuses and 50% scoring the same at Amplify campuses.
Only 318 students in the non-Amplify group were tested, however, and 349 at Amplify campuses.
According to Aquino, the pilot is ongoing, and more work will be done to engage with stakeholders and analyze data before any decisions are made.
“We need to continue exploring,” Aquino said. “However, … [there is] this tremendous need, that we have to have a centralized curriculum, whichever it is, but we want to continue investigating this year.”
Kristine Frech, the vice president of corporate communications for Amplify, said there is a difference between a campus and a school district adopting a curriculum, which could account for the success at other districts and the numbers presented Monday.
“When you’re thinking of a curriculum that some schools are choosing to utilize, and maybe are not having as consistent of an experience, as we would like to see or as other districts across Texas have seen in comparison to a curriculum that is driven by the district itself, … those are two really different experiences,” she said.
Frech predicted that “continued utilization of Amplify could accelerate student outcomes to the outcomes that we see in other districts that utilize Amplify.”
Spanish materials considered in SAISD
Another concern highlighted by Aquino on Monday is the need for high-quality Spanish language materials that also reflect the culture and traditions of students in the district.
“There are some high-quality instructional materials that the state has adopted and even will pay [for] if we …adopt,” he said. “The issue with us is, though we’ve liked them, they don’t have a counterpart in Spanish.”
“And for us, we’re not going to treat our dual language [students] as second-class citizens,” he added.
Frech told the San Antonio Report that Amplify does offer various Spanish language products that are built from the ground up and match with similar products offered in English, none of which SAISD is using.
However, the quality and focus of Spanish materials have long been a concern for advocates in Texas.
Chloe Sikes, the deputy director of policy for the Intercultural Development Resource Association, said that is a common problem for schools seeking authentic dual language materials.
“That’s not … a centerpiece of some of the standardized curriculum vendors,” she said. “There has been concern about how the emphasis on [how] the science of teaching reading really can coincide with bilingual education and different types of teaching literacy that might compromise and ultimately put an over emphasis on English acquisition and literacy, instead of bilingual literacy.”
The issue also will be one that could impact schools as the State Board of Education meets next week to hammer out rubrics and recommend materials.
Overhaul planned for math curriculum
A similar overhaul is planned for the math curriculum, with a particular focus on how to help Black students, who have a history of lower than average scores in the district.
Trustee Alicia Sebastian pressed district officials for specific actions after they presented numbers that showed that the district missed its beginning of year target of 19% of Black students reading on third-grade level by seven points.
In response, the district plans on adopting a centralized math curriculum, while also engaging a Mathematics Advisory Council to identify barriers for Black students and organizing a Black Educator Advisory Council to “investigate and drive policy that improves the experience and academic outcomes of Black students.”
“We need to start acting … with the balance of being thoughtful, but at the same time that sense of urgency that we have in this conversation,” Aquino said. “We’re losing Black students in our school.”
