Work continued this summer on completing curriculum development in Social Studies, Mathematics, ELA, Science, the Arts, Health, and ESL. During the last two years, more than 250 new curriculum documents have been developed and approved by the Newark Board of Education. With that strong foundation in place, our attention shifts to implementing the curriculum with teachers and principals at schools. To that end, the Office of Teaching and Learning provided in-services to all central office and school based administrators, as well as all teachers during the last few weeks. The focus for all of these professional learning sessions was on implementation of curriculum and the improvement of academic outcomes for students.
A major finding from the professional learning work done with summer school principals and their staff in 17 schools was that administrators lead better and coaches coach better when they have deep knowledge of the curriculum to be taught and the pedagogy at a lesson and unit level. Using the district’s Academic Walkthrough Protocol, each school based administrator was supported by a central office staff member in order to keenly focus on the implementation of curriculum and the quality of instruction. This collaboration impacted student achievement. The majority of elementary students made academic progress in reading and mathematics this summer, while our high school students continued their outstanding performance in credit recovery with nearly 95% of the students earning high school credits. Across the last three years that level of performance has stayed consistent. Our commitment to raise achievement remains our central focus with all efforts directed to this mission.
