Skip To Main Content

Search Panel

Schools Menu

School Improvement Plan

What is a School Improvement Plan?

A School Improvement Plan (SIP) is a strategic blueprint that schools use to enhance student learning and improve educational practices. It outlines specific goals for improvement, actions to achieve those goals, and methods for measuring progress.

Key Points of a SIP:

  • Goals: Clear objectives the school aims to achieve to enhance student outcomes.
  • Actions: Steps and strategies the school will implement to reach its goals, based on research and effective practices.
  • Monitoring: Regular review of progress with adjustments made to ensure the school stays on track toward its improvement objectives.
     

The purpose of a SIP is to provide a clear roadmap for schools to improve educational outcomes for all students, particularly focusing on eliminating disparities and ensuring equitable opportunities for every student.

Every school in Washington State is required to have a School Improvement Plan.
 

Monitoring and Adjusting:

A SIP is not set in stone. It's reviewed regularly, with progress monitored against the set goals and activities adjusted as needed to stay on track toward improvement.

Visit the Issaquah School District SIP website to learn more about SIPs.

District - School Improvement Plans

 

Front of Grand Ridge Elementary

Achievement Goals

By May/June 2023:

  1. 80% of Grand Ridge students, Grades 1-5, will maintain or increase by at least 0.1 on the detail report in the domain of numbers and operations on the i-Ready  Math assessment. Growth will be measured from Fall 2022 to Spring 2023.
     
  2. 75% of the striving math group (Level 1 & Level 2) will increase by at least 0.2 on the detail report in the domain of numbers and operations on the i-Ready Math Assessment. Growth will be measured from Fall 2022 to Spring 2023.

Guiding Questions

Reflecting on previous action plans

Backed by Data

Schools use multiple data sources to inform their planning. Progress toward school improvement in overall achievement and disproportionality is monitored using state and district measures using a common School Improvement Data Dashboard.

Data Workbook for Elementary School

School-Based Action Plan

Action Implementation Impact: Evidence/Monitoring
Professional Book Study: From Reading to Math by Maggie Siena

We are focusing on this book to make the connection for staff that high leverage practices transition across subject matter. Strong instructional practice in reading should be the same as strong instructional practice in math. (for example, decoding, fluency and vocabulary)
  • Using building-based professional development meetings, we are discussing key learnings and implementation strategies across vertical teams.

  • We are committed to a 2-year cycle.

  • Tier 1 Academic Team members facilitate discussions in vertical teams

  • Document thinking in small group/vertical teams and then sharing with all staff

  • Through classroom observations, we expect to see strategies being implemented

  • Accessing resources (Math TOSA, observing other staff members, cross-building staff partnerships) to support student-driven instruction

  • Staff-generated anchor charts available through Math Padlet

Establish ongoing partnership with ISD Math TOSA, Rowena Duane, to provide timely and impactful professional development for staff in regards to evidence-based instructional practices.
  • Rowena presented to all-staff

  • Rowena developed common assessment for use, K-5, in Numbers & Operation

  • Rowena met with small groups of staff and grade level teams to support in math

  • Math Mod Studies

  • Staff use strategies and tools provided by Rowena in their classrooms

  • Hearing students use academic vocabulary

  • Pre/Post Assessment growth

  • Math Mod Studies provide deeper understanding of math continuum, K-5

Partnering with Sunset Elementary to build a professional learning community (collective learning) across schools to broaden and deepen thinking focused on data-driven instructional practices.
  • Calibration across schools

  • Collaboration across schools

  • Schools serve different student populations so different perspectives

  • Staff can connect classes across schools through technology, for example Seesaw blogs

Student interaction/responses on Seesaw blog, Flipgrid

Establishing a common Student Growth Goal (SGG) framework building-wide to support ongoing cross-grade level student-focused conversations.

Common SGGs provide an opportunity for all staff to use common language when discussing student progress in numbers & operations.

  • Calibration

  • Common goals = common planning

  • Encourages staff collaboration

  • Natural opportunity for collegial support

  • Staff observe colleagues’ implementation of common student growth goals

  • Students using common language during goal-setting and reflection

Use of common assessment tool in numbers and operations for all students, grades K-5.
  • Deeper understanding of numbers & operations, K-5

  • Using other grade levels’ common assessments to support and enrich student understanding

  • Results of common assessment inform differentiation for small groups

  • Goal-setting with students based on common assessment

  • Parents and students have a deeper understanding of what numbers & operations is, based on common assessment

  • As a result, what is being done in the classroom can be practiced at home, in a targeted way

Family Math Night
  • School-to-community connection

  • The goal is to send families with something that they can practice at home.

  • Create a positive growth math mindset for students and families

  • Families can observe their students interacting with other students at the same grade level to provide context

  • Opportunity for social interaction, student-to-student and family-to-family

  • After-hours event to allow most families to attend

  • Support parent engagement in math

  • Ready-made games for home
  • Ready-made resources for home
  • Parents will more fully understand who their students are, as mathematicians
  • Parent feedback survey to inform future family/community events
  • Family attendance at event
Math Padlet
  • Easy-to-access resource for staff, focusing on evidence-based mathematical practices

  • Padlet created as one-stop shopping

  • Padlet linked to weekly staff bulletin

  • Time given in staff meetings to explore padlet

  • Opportunities given for staff to contribute math-based resources to padlet

  • Strategies highlighted in padlet may be observed in classrooms

Learning Walks – Critical Friends Groups (focus on math)
  • 4 modules with opportunity for small group collegial learning

  • Implementation Full cycle=planning, implementation and reflection

  • Opportunities to try new tech

  • Encourages staff to step out of their comfort zone when it comes to tech

  • Student choice for assessment

  • Multi-modality in demonstrating of a concept

  • Student self-selection based on self-awareness and strengths-based continuum

Grizzly Dens
  • Vertical connections, K-5, for students and staff

  • Fostering of student-to-staff relationships across all grades and all job titles

  • Made time in building schedule to support

  • Work in Dens is directly connected to monthly schoolwide Character Traits

  • Student leadership

  • Reinforces character traits

  • Relationship over time; student-to-student and student-to-staff

  • Reinforce common schoolwide expectations

Student of Focus (SoF) Roundtable
  • One Wednesday morning dedicated to initial SoF Roundtable, comprised of multi-disciplinary staff who discuss and develop strategies for how to best support students.

  • List of Greatest Needs developed at each grade level.

  • All classroom-based teachers attend, even if a student in their classroom is not being discussed

  • ALL staff are responsible for ALL students

  • Data taken on SoF indicate increased achievement based on strategies developed by Roundtable

  • Action Plans developed for SoF. Classroom Teachers get a copy and Roundtable staff get a copy. Review data at the end of a 6-week cycle.

Counselor & Admin-Led SEL Follow-up Lessons
  • CR TFI indicated a need for Precision Problem Statement based on SWIS data

  • At Tier 1 PBSES meeting, team discusses problem statement and discusses strategies.

  • One example: For our youngest learners, it was determined that they needed additional support in the area of physical space/bubble. Counselor and Admin will be teaching these students in a small group setting.

  • CR TFI indicated a need for Precision Problem Statement based on SWIS data

  • At Tier 1 PBSES meeting, team discusses problem statement and discusses strategies.

  • One example: For our youngest learners, it was determined that they needed additional support in the area of physical space/bubble. Counselor and Admin will be teaching these students in a small group setting.

  • Decrease in SWIS referrals from our Kinder and 1st grade recesses

  • Lesson plans developed through data-driven process

SWIS
  • Gives a way to track student behavior trends in a simple way

  • Fosters communication across all aspects of a students’ day (classroom, lunchroom, specialists, recess, arrival, dismissal, etc.)

  • Track students throughout day

  • Calibration of staff expectations across building

  • Patterns inform common school-wide expectations
  • Student drill-downs inform Tier 2 work
  • Data drives resource allocation
Community Events (Sock it to me! And Apple Cup Food Drive) & Monthly Spirit Days
  • Family and Community Engagement

  • Communication through School Bulletins, teacher newsletters, PTSA website, school reader board and student-created posters

  • Community-based philanthropic project

Fifth Grade Leaders on-time attendance increases due to community engagement before/after school
Fifth Grade Leaders
  • Partner with Kinder students

  • Make weekly school-wide announcements

  • Personalization of monthly character traits (“I have seen evidence of Friendship Skills when….”)

  • Schedule collaboratively developed by 5th grade & Kinder teachers for the Leaders

  • Take lead on Community Events (from planning to implementation)

  • Monthly Character Trait videos

  • Ability to speak with confidence in front of large groups

  • Ability to model appropriate behavior for our youngest learners based on school-wide common expectations

  • Increased on-time attendance

  • Building cross-age relationships over time

Great Kids/Monthly Character Traits, videos, etc.
  • Great Kid Lunches with Principal, monthly for grades K-5

  • Monthly character trait-focused videos featuring 5th grade leaders

  • Staff nominate students based on monthly character trait

  • Grizzly Dens

  • Monthly Great Kids lunches, focused on specific character trait

  • Fifth Grade Leaders’ personal reflection of character traits and how it applies to them

Cross-Grade Level Buddies
  • Focus on Reading

  • Older students as leaders, younger students as learners

  • Differentiation of partnerships based on data

  • Small group/partner-pair focus

 

Equity Events: Reading Without Walls
  • Annual celebration and focus on diverse book titles and authors

  • Personalized for each student (for example, students get a Bingo Sheet and they can choose how they want to grow as a diverse reader)

  • Challenges students to read beyond their comfort zone

  • Reading List provided to staff and students, in terms of suggested book titles

  • Librarian highlights diverse books through Book Talks and ongoing library shelf-top displays

Students who complete the challenge have their name displayed on a “Reading without Walls” school-wide bulletin board

Hour of Code
  • Brings tech into hands of all students, Grades K-5

  • Non-computer, as well as computer-based activities

  • Students work in teams to solve coding challenges

Students are able to independently, or with a partner, solve future coding challenges on their own

Optional additional explanation/rationale/research

While we would like to acknowledge that we have continued work to do in the area of literacy, which has been our SIP focus for the last 3-plus years, we have strategies and practices in place that align our academic practices in this area with our MTSS structure. We feel confident with the Tier 1 practices (diagnostic assessments, progress monitoring, Success Blocks) we have in place and that when we are then looking at students for potential Tier 2 support through our Tier 2 Team, we have multiple pieces of data and strategies that help inform our thinking in terms of “next steps”. We feel that with these structures and strategies in place, our literacy scores will continue to increase over time, including real progress for our students with gap-closing goals.

When looking at math, we do not have these same structures and strategies in place, hence the shift of focus to math for this SIP cycle. We currently use a whole class lesson instructional model and do not have a consistent practice of small group and additional interventions in place. We have i-Ready that helps to inform our instruction. The i-Ready Math assessment is given three times a year but unlike reading/literacy, we do not use the data in the same way and in alignment with our MTSS structure. When we look at students who struggle in math, we do not have as many data points nor do we have as many strategies and built-in structures of support.

Our district scores indicate that our students, as a cohort, have lost more ground in math than in any other academic, post-pandemic.

Results for students who took the test in spring 2022—the first main National Assessment of Educational Progress administration for these grades since the pandemic began—show the biggest drop in math performance in 4th and 8th grades since the testing program began in 1990. (Education Weekly, 10/24/22)

“The results show the profound toll on student learning during the pandemic, as the size and scope of the declines are the largest ever in mathematics,” said National Center for Education Statistics commissioner Peggy G. Carr in a press release announcing the report.

The steepest declines were found in 8th grade math, both nationally and in the Northwest. In Washington, students scored 10 points lower. (U.S. Department of Education, Nation’s Report Card)

Rationale to change our SIP focus from literacy to math would be that we currently have district-mandated practices in place for literacy (dyslexia law, SLPs, LAP, Success Blocks, newly adopted Benchmark Phonics at the Kindergarten Level, Really Great Reading and the data-driven process to qualify, Words Their Way, etc.) as well as robust interventions for Tier 2 and anticipate an increase in our SBA Literacy scores due to these adopted practices. We currently lack this depth of practice, as well as student-centered strategies for our struggling mathematicians and would advocate that with increased focus on strong instructional practice and MTSS-aligned strategies, we can work to close the gap for our most struggling students and increase math scores for all students.

SIP Team & Final Review

  • Principal: Jill Ravenscraft
  • Site Council/PTSA Review Date: January, 2023
  • Supervisor Review: Susan Mundell
  • School Board Review Date: February 15, 2023

Leadership Team:  

  • Gary Aguilar, Assistant Principal

  • Judith Fernstrom, Counselor

  • Pearl Doherty, Kindergarten Teacher

  • Lindsey de Haan, 1st Grade Teacher

  • Holly Polak, 2nd Grade Teacher

  • Patty Elmer, 3rd Grade Teacher

  • Emily Melograna, 4th Grade Teacher

  • Leah Stettler-Schug, 5th Grade Teacher

  • Laura Kamau, Building-Based Equity Lead

Checklist