Equity
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10 Years After Courtade Elementary Showed Us What’s Possible, Work Remains to Close Our Student Achievement Gap
It’s been 10 years since one of our schools has been recognized for closing the achievement gap between our economically challenged kids and our kids who are not. But a decade later, we’re still facing significant gaps in student achievement with too many economically disadvantaged kids struggling to keep up. In 2015, Courtade Elementary was…
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Educational Equity, Traverse City’s Economically Disadvantaged Kids & TCAPS’ 2023/24 Annual Education Report
Our 2023/24 annual education report was made public earlier this month on mischooldata.org. It’s a 133-page beast that includes educator qualifications, student assessment, and accountability data. Here are a few takeaways about educational equity and our economically disadvantaged kids: 3rd Grade Reading Proficiency (Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress – M-STEP) 3rd Grade Math Proficiency…
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From at risk to opportunity: Reframing how we talk about our kids and educational equity
When it comes to educational equity, let’s start saying “opportunity” instead of “at risk.” – opportunity kids > at risk kids– opportunity funding > at risk funding– opportunity schools > at risk schools– opportunity reports > at risk reports– opportunity dashboards > at risk dashboards– opportunity youth > at risk youth Why? Because it puts…
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50% of Traverse City’s opportunity 3rd graders are not proficient in reading
50% (229)* of our at-risk opportunity 3rd graders (452)** are not proficient in reading. Are we doing everything we can to help our kids who are furthest from opportunity succeed? Solutions We (our community) can do a better job of helping all of our kids succeed by: - Leveraging best practice policies to close the…
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Opportunity: 42% of Traverse City’s 3rd graders are not proficient in reading
42% of our 3rd graders are not proficient in reading*. On a state level, the gap between economically challenged kids and those who are not is around 30 percentage points (I haven’t seen TCAPS data on this but I expect similar challenges here). Student achievement equity is a critical issue Our recent study sessions on…
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Ty’s Responses to the Traverse City Record-Eagle For Story On TCAPS School Board Candidates
*UPDATE*: My responses were added to the story’s online version. My responses were left out of today’s Traverse City Record-Eagle story on the candidates for our school board. Here they are: How do you think the district should respond to conflicts with parents over cultural issues like book bans, religion in classrooms, and LGBTQ+ rights?…
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3 Important Issues Facing Traverse City Area Public Schools
Prior to interviews with the Traverse City Educators Association and Michigan Educators Association, school board candidates were asked to submit responses to several questions. One question was, “What do you see as the three most important issues facing Traverse City Area Public Schools?” Here’s my answer. One: Declining Enrollment We’re down 75 kids this year…
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On Mission-Based Budgeting & Decision Making at Traverse City Area Public Schools
Last week, I sent this email to the community as a heads-up about a special Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) school board meeting that was called the night before (four days before school was to start). The Traverse City Record-Eagle followed up with a great story about that meeting in last Sunday’s paper. In…
TY FOR TCAPS 