By Camila Bello
Oct 27, 2023
The scheduled bi-monthly evening meeting of the Okemos Board of Education took place Oct. 23 at the Administration Center. All board members were in attendance as Assistant Superintendent Stacy Bailey commenced the evening agenda by delivering the first assessment data for the school district for the current academic year.
Since 2019, Bailey has served as the assistant superintendent for instruction at Okemos Public Schools. Prior to this role, she accumulated nearly seven years of experience working at Tecumseh Public Schools.
“We wanted to focus on what areas within that framework that has the highest percentage of having impact on students. Not surprisingly the number one thing that has impact on student achievement and success is knowing and valuing our students” Bailey said.
Subsequently, Bailey proceeded to present the achievement state assessment data and explained various line charts showing the level of performance of M-STEP, P-SAT, and SAT grades.
Okemos Public Schools Data Review: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17yatZHUR7CWCSutjFjw9OH402VxwdJI4/view
The growth benchmark assessment data was also introduced, revealing that based on the 50th percentile, the performance of students in literacy, math, and social-emotional health has noticeably improved, indicating an increase in the expected growth goals.
“We have been trying different models at the high school when we are thinking about our students in maths. So last summer for Algebra One, we have traditionally done credit recovery using online system and this year we had math teachers who worked with the coach and said, “I wonder if we do it differently. So we identified students that had failed algebra in their freshman year and we offered in-person lessons where they could pre-assess out as soon they demonstrated mastery.”
She then added “we had one student who came and they knew the information but for a variety of reasons they didn’t earn their credit during the year. We had eight other students who came every single day and they did it for four weeks. They passed, they got their credit and we are now tracking them. And I am happy to say that well it is a small number of eight, those students are all passing their class right now. And that’s the cycle we are trying to break.”
The cycle Bailey refers to is the one “where students are going to credit recovery, but not really learning; then going to math again, and not being successful; and then going back to credit recovery.”
Superintendent John Hood wanted to add in regards to the initiatives on social-emotional health that “we’ve added social workers and counselors. We’ve added SSAs at the elementary level for all those student support advocates and funding for more clubs.”
Hood is the superintendent of Okemos Public Schools and has been working there for more than 20 years.
“When we have students that have some indicators that are external, we can easily identify them and get them needed support. So when we are seeing outward behaviors, that is easier to identify.” Bailey said in support of the social-emotional health initiatives.
Due to the success in student proficiency, Bailey said. “We are gonna see how can we take that model and replicate it moving forward for that acceleration.”