The Curriculum & Instruction Science Department would like to thank the following teachers for a job well done:

1. Dr. C. Madu: White Station HS

2. Amie Williams: Ridgeway HS

3. Wayne Oellig: Craigmont HS

4. Marsharee Swift: Manassas HS

5. Cardeana Burton: Sheffield HS

6. Herbert Levy: Central HS

We reached a total of 230 students through our communications.

Each quarter, these teachers prepped for student activities, gave valuable feedback, and showed up on each scheduled Saturday to share their wealth of knowledge and challenged our students who showed up from across our wonderful district.

Students took part in:

· Pre/post assessments

· Hands-on activities that focused on the higher leveraged/percentage standards

· Online lab experiences

· Student surveys

· MOCK EOC with test-taking strategies

· Teachers reviewed each question in detail, helping the students understand the why behind the incorrect answers they selected.

We look forward to positive results from this year's Biology EOC exam, which begins on April 17, 2023.

GOOD LUCK STUDENTS. YOU CAN DO THIS!

Contact: mcchristontj@scsk12.org;Terilyn McChriston

i-Ready Diagnostic 3:  The i-Ready end-of-year Diagnostic is right around the corner.  The window is open from 4/24/23 - 5/12/23.  Below are some reminders and resources to share with your teachers as they prepare for the final Diagnostic. 

• The final diagnostic will be assigned to all students.
• While the diagnostic is active, students will not be able to access personalized instruction until they complete their diagnostic assessment.
• Share the Preparing for a Subsequent Diagnostic presentation with teachers so they can energize and motivate students.
• Send an email to clarify expectations. You can use the template on page 11 to help craft your message.

Do you have K-5 teachers and leaders who need additional support understanding how to use Wonders for teacher-led small groups and workstations? Then, they should join us for the final session of the Wonders vendor-led professional learning series, "Using Wonders for Small Groups and Teacher-Led." Teachers and Leaders will gain deeper insight into using the Wonders curriculum to deliver teacher-led small-group instruction and independent student workstations. The session will also include tech-infused and offline practice opportunities. 

K-5 Wonders session: Using Wonders for Small Groups and Teacher-Led 

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 11th, 4 pm-5 pm

Register today: https://bit.ly/K-5WondersSpring2023

**Participants' names will be entered in a raffle for a chance to win some cool MSCS Swag!**
 

Attention all K-12 ELA Admin Leads and Teachers! 
 

We want teacher feedback around the current ELA curriculum resources as well as input around other resources needed to further support your planning.  Please click on the appropriate link to complete a short survey.  All those who complete the survey will be entered to win MSCS Swag!  Three winners per grade band will be selected. Additionally, be on the lookout in the upcoming weeks for opportunities to be a part of the LIVE in-person and/or virtual ELA Curriculum Reviews. (Curriculum Survey Flyer)
 

Survey Links:
 

                  K-2             3-5              6-8              9-12

Questions? Email ci_ela_team@scsk12.org.

Flyer:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1su_FBunGx9XNXaHkSWNkSi_IjGpWSbD_/view?usp=share_link 

The Department of Curriculum and Instruction released a new resource to support teachers with implementing the use of calculators in grades 3-12. See the attachment to locate the documents and watch a short video demonstrating how to utilize the resource.

Flyer Link 

Calculator Guidance Flyer (3).pdf

Video Link 

https://bit.ly/CalculatorVideos

Greetings School Leaders, 

The AOSS Manual includes information to support School Leaders in the event that a staff member is arrested at school.  Please take a moment and review the information below.

Staff Arrested at School

Disciplining around End of Course Exam - School leaders are encouraged to remember that we do NOT penalize students academically for misbehavior. Schools should make alternate arrangements to allow suspended students to come to the school to take major exams at alternate times and in alternate settings (i.e., library, cafeteria, admin’s conference room etc.). Please be advised that accommodations for testing should be made at the home school for any students who are referred to Alternative Schools within 2 weeks prior to testing (see per Policy 6055).

DHA Appeals During Spring - Please utilize and share the DHA Scan Bar with parents who are interested in scheduling Discipline Hearing Appeals (DHAs). 

Parents should not be told to await communication from the SEED Department but instead should be provided with a hard copy of the Official Letter of suspension (in hand or mailed), preferably at the time of suspension. Students should also receive their paperwork in hand. 

All suspensions should be entered within PowerSchool within 24 hours. 

Parents should be informed of the right to appeal immediately when the suspension is levied. Short-term consequences of less than 10 days are appealed to the Executive Principal. Principals should make themselves available to address parent concerns and requests to appeal. 

Suspensions greater than 10 days (expulsions) are appealed to the Department of Student Equity Enrollment & Discipline.  

For additional questions regarding discipline protocols, please email Dr. Blocker, District Manager of Equity, Discipline & Intervention at BLOCKERJ@scsk12.org.

School Staff MUST complete scheduling setup when enrolling a new student.  

Check out what’s happening in our employee Family Care Center (FCC) and school-based clinics (SBC). Student Support Services will offer the “The Clinic View” newsletter each month.

https://scsk12-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/edwardst1_scsk12_org/EaQcqeJDm1NJsKol8ZlhnBUBd9HBlOQbpEiXvLsYZOxuZA?e=pBGIOW

https://scsk12-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/edwardst1_scsk12_org/EU3j_YbzJIBPohy2A72oGOIBZzCOyS6kQSx9fkx9N-UKvQ?e=pg27zF

The MSCS Compass is a one-stop shop for all your PowerBI reports, including the new and improved Student Profile, which is now called Student Data 360. Watch our introduction and navigation video here - Intro to MSCS Compass  
   

What’s in PowerBI? Check out all of the reports we have available, here.  

Support Resources: Check out the DAIM Support SharePoint site, complete with additional video tutorials, walkthrough guides, and more!  
 

NEW Releases and Features: 

Check out our release plan, available here!  

Reports that are now available:  

• Suspension Ratios have been added back to the Student Discipline Overview and District Quick Report pages!
   
• RTI2 – SOAR Report is now available to help school data teams track performance across SOAR cycles!
  
   
• RTI2 – A: Student Progress Report is now available! Use this report to assess actual vs recommended instructional level and skill deficit movement for Progress Monitoring!
  • Check out the user guide here!
     
• RTI2-A – Universal Screener report now contains Early Warning System data for high school students!
  • Check out the user guides here! 
  • NOTE – Due to an issue with exports coming in from i-Ready, Characteristics of Dyslexia and Benchmarking Next Steps reports are currently not populating for high schools. We are working on a fix and apologize for any inconvenience.
     
• A new user guide is available to help navigate the Current School Flag in several Student Data 360 dashboards: Student Assessment, Student Attendance, Student Discipline, Student Grades. This allows you to toggle between the Current Enrollment and Total Enrollment (including withdrawals and transfers) for a selected school. The guide explains how to use the filter and the different ways it can impact the data you are seeing.

Coming Soon!  

• Student Surveys updates to include Panorama data.
• OAG Report updates to include Retention flag.
• Chronic Absenteeism updates to current year calculation
• Progressive Discipline Rate updates to incorporate BrightBytes interventions.

Data Quality

We are working on a fix to the Ready Graduate dashboard resulting in an undercounting of EPSOs for some students. We will provide updates as soon we can and apologize for any inconvenience.

System Optimizations: Student Data 360 reports have been optimized to load at a much faster rate. These include:  

• Student Attendance – Current Load Time: 00.05.42 seconds  
• Student Assessment – Current Load Time: 00.05.89 seconds  
• Student Discipline – Current Load Time: 00.07.68 seconds  
• Student Enrollment – Current Load Time: 00.06.47 seconds  
• Student Grades – Current Load Time: 00.07.39 seconds  
• Student Snapshot – Current Load Time: 00.03.63 seconds  
• Student Surveys – Current Load Time: 00.04.40 seconds  

We are working on optimizing performance on as many reports as possible and your feedback is crucial. Please reach out if you experience any issues so that we can identify major pain points. Email us at DAIMSUPPORT@scsk12.org  

 
Trainings:  See our Training Calendar available here!

Virtual Office Hours: 

• This week (4/11 and 4/13) – we will cover the RTI2-A Screener and Benchmarking Reports.  Next week (4/25 and 4/27), we will have an Open Forum Q&A session.
• VOH is held every week on Tuesday and Thursday at 3:30 PM  
• The format alternates every other week between an Open Floor Q&A session and an overview of a new and/or relevant report.  
• Recordings of any tutorials go out to everyone on the calendar invite and will be available on our Support Page.  
• Sign up at this link today!  

Under Construction:  Does something look wrong? Check our Data Quality Updates.  
 

ATTENTION Counselors: We need your help! Please go in and check your intervention plans in BrightBytes and remove the “Protected” access flag. This is very important and impacts the ability to see accurate OAG compliance, RTI-B compliance and Progressive Discipline information in PowerBI.

For more information on how to remove the Protected flag, look here.  

Power BI Access: Principals can give school staff members access through the PowerBI Access App. If you see someone in the Access App that should be removed from your school, contact DAIM Support (DAIMSUPPORT@scsk12.org) and we can assist.

Additional time is available to students on this year’s TCAP Achievement and End of Course tests. As a district, we have decided to give all students the available additional time rather than asking students if they need additional time. Additional time is available for each subpart of the grades 3-8 TCAP Achievement tests and the End of Course (EOC) tests. Additional time is also available on some parts of the second grade TCAP, but there are parts of the second grade TCAP for which additional time is not allowed.

Additional time is in addition to the required time (sometimes called recommended time) for each subpart.

A detailed email explaining the protocol to follow was sent to Building Testing Coordinators on Wednesday, April 5.

All students should get the allowed additional time, but test administrators MUST NOT give students more than the required (recommended) time plus the allowed additional time. The only exception would be for students who already get extended time based on an IEP, 504, or ILP because these students would get required time plus additional time plus extended time. 

Giving more time than the state allows would result in a testing irregularity and nullification of the student’s test and would count against a school’s participation rate.

Professionalism represents 5% of the overall TEM rating for both tested and non-tested teachers and must be completed and finalized by both the educator and the administrator to receive an LOE (Level of Overall Effectiveness) score. 
 

Professionalism containers are currently live and educators may begin inputting narratives, uploading artifacts, and completing self-scores.  The deadline for teacher completion is Friday, April 21, 2023.  

100% of Professionalism containers must be completed and locked by Friday, May 12, 2023.  

For questions and/or concerns about instructional evaluation, please contact EPS by phone at 416-2475 or via email at eps@scsk12.org.

According to T.C.A. § 49-1-302 , each district or charter organization must utilize at least one approved growth measure for Non-Tested teachers.  To adhere to this mandate, Memphis-Shelby County Schools elected to utilize TEAM Student Growth Portfolios.
 

Principals: Please encourage your NTGS Portfolio Educators to log into their Portfolium Accounts to select their Portfolio Model and Collections for SY2022-23. 

While there is no deadline for Point A Submissions, educators are strongly encouraged to submit their Point A and B Submissions prior to the 11:59 PM local time, May 1, 2023, deadline.  

*Please note:  Per the State, no further submissions will be allowed after the deadline.  Any Portfolio missing any of the four collections will be marked Incomplete (I) and an LOE (Level of Overall Effectiveness) score will NOT generate for the school year. 

Questions/Support

For issues accessing the platform, general questions about submissions, changes in job/role that do not require portfolio submission, please contact the District Portfolio Lead, Ayodele Hall, at hallam@scsk12.org. 

The deadline for  EOY Report containers to be completed and locked in PLZ is Friday, May 12, 2023.  

For questions and/or concerns about instructional evaluations, please contact your EPS Advisor by phone, at 901-416-2475 or via email at eps@scsk12.org.