English Language Arts
Summary
The mission of the Pine-Richland School District is to Focus on Learning for Every Student Every Day. Within the PRSD Strategic Plan, long-term and short-term goals outlined in the Teaching and Learning category form the foundation for continuous improvement. One of the short-term goals for 2016 - 2017 was to design and pilot an in-depth program review process for two of our departments (i.e., Science and Health & Physical Education). That initial work led to a final report and set of recommendations for program improvement. The process itself was refined and used in 2017 - 2018 in the areas of Mathematics and Business & Computer Science. For the 2018-2019 school year, we reviewed the Social Studies Department and also modified the process for programming related to gifted and highly achieving students. During the 2019-2020 school year, three departments entered the in-depth program review process (i.e., English Language Arts, Library, and Music).
This report outlines the process, findings, and recommendations from that work related to the K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) Program. For context, there are 155 teachers and 11 paraprofessionals at Pine-Richland that provide direct delivery of ELA. ELA is the largest department with the most significant investment of time and resources. Given this fact, it is understood that the pace and deployment of change is dependent upon the impact of that change on other aspects of the educational program. The committee utilized the action-priority matrix to evaluate each recommendation and established an implementation timeline with associated cost estimates.