Photograph: Park Vista Principal Ulysses Joubert explains how his teachers worked to improve scores last year.
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
It takes extensive planning, an enormous amount of paper work and getting the whole school to provide complementary assistance, but state test scores are telling the story about academic improvement at Park Vista Elementary.
School officials presented a blueprint of their success story to a St. Landry Parish School Board Academic Committee meeting last week, describing how action plans designated for the kindergarten-through-fourth grade students, helped elevate scores in two grade levels.
Third grade math proficiency scores improved by 15 points for their graders, while in fourth grade, there were significant improvements in language arts (11 points) and math (seven points) during 2021-22 testing.
The only decline in scores came in third grade, where language arts performance declined from 47 percent to 46 percent in proficiency.
Information provided by Park Vista officials to the Committee, indicated that homeroom teachers were required to construct action plans for each third and fourth grade student. Completing the plans involved providing growth targets and writing performance benchmarks for students in addition to tracking state test results.
The action plan documents included several pages of detailed information were required, with strategies planned for each student as well as individual growth targets.
Principal Ulysses Joubert said the improvements can also be traced to providing faculty members with common planning periods, where information among teachers is shared and discussions about individual students and how to motivate those who might considered “bubble students,” whose improvement depended upon individual instruction and motivation.
“You need to communicate with one another in order to find out which ones need to be stimulated in order to move them forward providing they receive a little bit of help,” Joubert said.
School official Rachel Melancon admitted the action plans are time consuming.
“Teachers are making an individual plan and then explaining how they are going to reach those goals for a student. We are a lot better now then where we were. However we are not where we want to be,” Melancon added.
School official Carla Lewis said school physical education teachers have provided assistance by allowing their students to removed from activities.
Joubert said District instructional specialists provide feedback about student progress. Interventionists hired by the District have also served in a resource capacity, said Joubert.
