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2018-19 Annual Report and World’s Best Workforce

Report

Table of Contents

I. Mission, Vision, and Core Convictions

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II. Student Enrollment, Attendance and Demographics

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III. Student Attrition 7

IV. Governance and Management/Administration

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V. Board Member Training 9

VI. Staffing 10

VII. School Director Professional Development Plan

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VIII. Finances 12

IX. Academic Performance 13

X. Professional Development 14

XI. Parent Satisfaction 15

XII. Innovative Practices 16

XIII. Major Accomplishments in 2018-19 and Future Plans

XIV. 2018-19 Continuous Improvement Plan

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XV. Authorizer Contact Information 21

Northeast College Prep Annual Report and World’s Best Workforce Report 2018-19

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I. Mission, Vision, and Core Convictions:

Our Mission:Northeast College Prep will ensure strong academic, social-emotional, and talent development in every member of its diverse student body, thereby positioning each student for college graduation, career success, and positive community impact.

Our Vision:Northeast College Prep students will be empowered with strong academic skills and knowledge, social and emotional intelligence, deeply-developed personal talents, commitment to the common good, on-going support from the NECP community, and a deep love of learning. Northeast College Prep graduates will thrive in the local, national, and international community in a wide range of professional fields. Northeast College Prep’s success will serve as a proof-point that all students, regardless of background, flourish when a school’s entire staff deeply believes in the potential and fully commits to the success of each and every one.

Our Core Convictions:1. All children have the potential for greatness within them.2. Healthy childhood development requires strong academic, social-emotional,

and personal talent development.3. Strong academic development must be demonstrable through objective

measures.4. In all areas of childhood development, not everything that matters can be

measured objectively.5. Diversity enriches our experience and makes us better prepared for an

increasingly complex world.6. A long-term commitment between staff members to develop and support one

another deepens a school’s positive impact on its students and its community.

7. A child’s education occurs amidst a partnership between the school and the family; a strong partnership increases the odds of a child’s long-term success.

8. The clearest path to becoming a great school is to learn from great models.


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II. Student Enrollment, Attendance and Demographics:

Student Enrollment:

2014-15: 146

2015-16: 187

2016-17: 259

2017-18: 282

2018-19: 329

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50

100

150

200

250

300

350Student Enrollment

Our enrollment was strong for the fifth consecutive year. We added 7th grade in 2018-19, as we continued on our growth trajectory of adding one additional grade each year, up to 8th grade (which will bring us to a full grown-out K-8 school during the 2019-20 school year).

Student Attendance:95 percent attendance is a goal in our authorizer contract. We did not hit

that goal in our first year, but we did in our second, third, and fourth year. We expected to hit this goal again in the 2018-19 school year. We did not quite hit our attendance goal of 95 percent in 2018-19. Our attendance dropped to 94.8 percent, down from 95.3 percent in 2017-18. In analyzing the reasons for this slight drop, we noticed that from mid-May to the end of the 2018-19 school year, attendance dropped down just below 89 percent. Attendance frequently drops at the end of school years as we have many students who go to Africa or the Middle East to visit family for the summer and leave before school ends, but during the 2018-19 school year, this drop was even more drastic. For comparison, attendance from mid-May to the end of the school year during the 2017-18 school year was just under 93 percent. We had more families travel abroad for the summer in 2018 than we did in 2019 and all of Ramadan in 2019 took place during the school calendar, including Eid al-fitr, whereas only most of Ramadan in 2018 took place during the school calendar and Eid al-fitr did not take place during the school calendar in 2018. These were significant contributing factors to driving our attendance down at the end of


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the 2018-19 school year, as we have seen over the years that attendance among our Muslim students during Ramadan goes down, and goes significantly down around the two Eid holidays. We calculated that if attendance from mid-May in 2019 had been 93% rather than 89%, our annual attendance would have been 95.2%, rather than 94.8%.

2014-15:

93.3%

2015-16:

95.0%

2016-17:

95.0%

2017-18:

95.3%

2018-19:

94.8%

91.0%

92.0%

93.0%

94.0%

95.0%

96.0%Student Daily Attendance

Student Demographics:

Student Demographics: Race/Ethnicity

Black: 68%

Hispanic: 13%

White: 16%

Asian: 2%

Multi-racial: 3%


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Student Demographics: Students Qualifying for Free/Reduced Price Lunch

Qualify: 90%

Do Not Qualify: 10%

Student Demographics: Primary Home Language

Somali: 38%English: 21%Spanish: 13%Arabic: 14%Oromo: 9%Urdu: 2%Wolof: 1%Soninke: 1%Mandinka: 1%Quechua: 1%Amharic: 1%


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Student Demographics: Where Students Live Northeast Minneapo-

lis: 36%South Minneapolis: 20%North Minneapolis: 19%Columbia Heights: 17%

As you can see in the graphs above, our students are racially and ethnically diverse and they speak a lot of different languages in their homes. 68 percent identify their race as Black. Within that group identifying as Black, the largest majority of students are of Somali heritage, followed by African-American, Oromo, and West African. Within the group that identifies as White, which was 16% of the student body in 2018-19, 88 percent of those families are from the Middle East or North Africa. Within the group identifying as Hispanic, which is 13 percent of our student population, those families come primarily from Ecuador or Mexico. 75 percent of our students live in the city of Minneapolis, with just under half of the Minneapolis residents living in our home of Northeast Minneapolis, and other large contingents from North and South Minneapolis. The largest growth is occurring in North Minneapolis, which went from 16 percent of our student population in 2017-18 to 19 percent in 2018-19. The 25 percent of our non-Minneapolis residents are concentrated primarily in Columbia Heights, but 8 percent live in other surrounding communities, including Fridley, Blaine, Little Canada, Brooklyn Park, and Brooklyn Center. The demographic diversity of our student population continued to grow in our fifth school year. By the end of the 2018-19 school year, for the first time, there was no single ethnic majority in our school. When we choose recruitment events to attend, such as Minneapolis’s Open Streets events and Head Start school fairs, and when we send out mailings, we do so in a very intentional way to ensure that all of the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of our community has equal access to information about our school.

III. Student Attrition:

From the end of the 2018-19 school year to the start of the 2019-20 school year we were able to determine the following data on student attrition/retention:

Students who finished the 2018-19 school year: 334 Current 2019-20 enrollment: 382


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Students who are new to the school for the 2019-20 school year: 129 (51 in Kindergarten)

Students who returned for the 2019-20 school year: 253 Students who did NOT return for the 2019-20 school year: 81 Percentage of students who returned: 75.7% Percentage of students who did not return (2019-20 attrition rate): 24.3% 2018-19 attrition rate: 14.7% 2017-18 attrition rate: 15.0% 2016-17 attrition rate: 16.8% 2015-16 attrition rate: 22.8%

No lower than 85 percent student retention (continuous enrollment) is a goal in our authorizer contract. We did not meet that goal from the end of 2018-19 to the beginning of 2019-20. The previous year our retention rate was 85.3 percent, and 85.0 percent the year before that. We are encouraged by the strong recruitment efforts during 2018-19 that led to a large increase of new students to the school. There were great efforts made, led by Director Erika Sass, to spread the word about the school more widely and to tighten up our student recruitment and enrollment processes, which led to this high rate of newly enrolled students showing up to school at the beginning of the school year. Of the new students that enrolled, we had a very high rate of students actually showing up to the school at the beginning of the school year (approximately 93 percent). At the same time, we are concerned about the high attrition rate from 2018-19 to 2019-20. We invest a great amount of time and resources in each student that comes to our building. Our teaching approach and our curriculum takes a huge investment in teacher training and coaching. Getting our students accustomed to our expectations in the classroom and common spaces takes a large and on-going investment of time and resources. When we lose students, all of that investment is lost and it has to be re-invested in the new students. Because this report must be completed by October 1, we have not yet been able to analyze closely the causes of the higher-than-normal student attrition.

IV. Governance and Management/Administration:

We held our fourth round of board elections in June of 2019. This resulted in the election of three new board members, Josh Crosson, Scott Murphy, and Whitney McKinley. Julie Edmiston, a community member, resigned from the board in July. These changes left our board with the following composition:

Courtney Carter – Board Treasurer, Community [email protected] Board Member: April 2013 to present

Jessica Waletski – Parent


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mailto:[email protected]

[email protected] Member: June 2017 to present

Joanna Schneider – Board Chair, [email protected] Member: September 2014 to present

Bill Graves – Governance Committee Chair, Community [email protected] Member: June 2016 to present

Josh Crosson – Community [email protected] Member: June 2019 to present

Scott Murphy – Community [email protected] Member: June 2019 to present

Whitney McKinley – [email protected] Member: June 2019 to present

The board members bring a wide range of skills and experiences, including legal, financial, fundraising, marketing, teaching, school leadership, and previous charter school board experience. Our board chair, Joanna Schneider, transitioned from interim chair to chair during the 2016-17 school year. Joanna is a highly respected teacher and founding member of the school community who brings with her prior charter school board experience from previously serving on the Hiawatha Academies board of directors.

V. Board Member Training:

Our board members continue to take advantage of charter school board training opportunities in order to better equip themselves to perform the duties of a high quality charter school board. Over the 2018-19 school year, the following board training sessions were attended by board members:


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Data Practices and Record Retention, offered by Minnesota Association of Charter Schools (Board Members Graves, Edmiston, Carter and Schneider attended)

Board Governance, offered by Beth Finch of Charter Source (Board Member Edmiston attended)

Financial Oversight, offered by Beth Finch of Charter Source (Board Member Edmiston attended)

Employment Matters, offered by Beth Finch of Charter Source (Board Member Edmiston attended)

VI. Staffing:

Northeast College Prep has a highly dedicated and qualified staff. Our teachers now average just over five years of teaching experience. In most cases, these years of experience are in diverse urban classrooms. We had the following staffing structure during our fifth year (2018-19):

2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19Kindergarten 2 2 3 2 21st Grade 2 2 2 2 22nd Grade 1 2 2 2 23rd Grade 2 1 2 2 24th Grade 0 2 2 2 25th Grade 0 0 2 2 26th Grade 0 0 0 2 27th Grade 0 0 0 0 1Physical Education 1 1 1 1 1Spanish 1 1 1 1 1

(replaced by STEM

mid-year)


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Arabic 1 1 1 1 1Art 0 0 1 1 0Music 0 0 0 0 1ESL 1 2 2 2 3Academic Intervention 0.3 2 2 2 2.3SPED Teachers 1 2 3 (1 added

Nov. 2016)3.5 3.5

SPED Paraprofessionals 1.2 3 7.67 (2.67 added mid-

year)

10 10

Office Manager 1 1 1 1 1Director 1 1 1 1 1Assistant Director 1 1 1 1 1Academic Interventions Coordinator 0 1 (added

Oct 2015)

1 1 0.7

Dean of Students 0 0 1 1 1Curriculum & Instruction Coordinator 0 0 0 0 1Talent Development Coordinator 0 0 0 0 1Office Assistant/Outreach/Kitchen 2.5 2.5 3 4 4.5Operations Coordinator 0 0 0 1 1Social Worker 0 0.2 0.5 1 1Custodial 0 0 1 1 1Total FTE 19 27.7 41.17 49.5 53

Equitable Access to Excellent Teachers:All of our classroom teachers, specialists and supporting teachers in 2018-19

had the appropriate licensure area for their teaching assignment, except for a few cases in which we applied for and were granted a Tier 1 or Tier 2 license (formerly known as a personnel variance). In each of these cases, we were unable to find a licensed teacher who had sufficient experience and appropriate mindset to successfully teach our students, so we had to find an internal or external candidate who did have such experience and mindset and apply for a Tier 1 or Tier 2 license for them.

All grade level teams do common planning for all subject areas and all planning is aligned to state standards. During the 2018-19 school year, students took six math interim exams (every six weeks), as well as four Fountas & Pinnell reading assessments and three FAST reading and math exams throughout the year to ensure that they were progressing through state standards and appropriate grade level skills. Regardless of which classroom students are in (each grade had two classrooms), students are engaging with the same rigorous grade level standards and thus have equal access to a rigorous curriculum.


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VII. School Director Professional Development Plan

The school secured grant funding to send the Director, Carl Phillips, to Relay Graduate School of Education’s National Principals Academy during the summer of 2018. The school also sent the Assistant Director, Erika Sass, and the Curriculum & Instruction Coordinator, Joanna Waggoner-Norquest, to this training. The school also secured grant funding to provide executive coaching to the Director during the 2018-19 school year in areas identified as growth areas for him after an initial assessment.

VIII. Finances:

Northeast College Prep finished the 2018-19 school year in strong financial health with a fund balance of $427,573 (6.9%). This is a strong position to be in after just five years of operations. The keys to this success have been strong enrollment, sound management, and robust fundraising. During the 2018-19 school year, we leaned on our history of strong enrollment and financial management, dipping just slightly into our reserves, rather than continuing to build them up. This was a strategic decision made by the leadership team and school board to prioritize building our brand and reputation over building up reserves. As a fifth year school, this was the right strategic move for the school. One particular financial challenge the school faces is high rent costs. The school spent about $200,000 more on its lease over the last two school years than it received in lease aid from the state. This is a challenge many charter schools face when growing and having to move, as it is very difficult to find the precise amount of space to both accommodate the school’s needs and avoid rental costs surpassing lease aid income.

One financial highlight of the 2018-19 school year was being named a recipient of the Minnesota School Finance Award for the fifth consecutive year. This is awarded to schools to recognize timely submission of financial data, strong financial health indicators, and accuracy in financial reporting. Another highlight was a fourth consecutive strong year of private fundraising. We raised a total of just over $420,000.

IX. Academic Performance:

Given that our student population was overwhelmingly from minority racial and ethnic groups and 90% qualified for free or reduced price lunch, our student achievement goals aligned with the goals of the World’s Best Workforce legislation to ensure that all students in third grade achieve grade-level literacy and all achievement gaps are closed.

2018-19 Math MCA Results:


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% students qualifying for free/reduced price lunch

% proficient - all students % proficient - students who qualify for free/reduced

price lunch

0

20

40

60

80

100

StateMPSNECP

Our students’ MCA math scores lagged behind those of the state as a whole, but exceeded those of the Minneapolis school district as a whole. As is evident in the graph above, though our students’ MCA math scores lagged behind those of the state when comparing all students, when disaggregated by free/reduced price lunch status, our students’ scores exceeded the state’s and significantly exceeded the Minneapolis district’s scores. We are proud that our students are performing better than the Minneapolis school district’s students in math without disaggregating for free/reduced lunch recipients, and we are also proud that when we do disaggregate that data, our students are significantly outperforming the district’s students. However, we believe that our students are capable of reaching much higher heights as we grow and learn how to best teach them, so we have planned additional professional development time for math for the 2019-20 school year. We also increased the rigor of our interim exams for next school year. The focus of our math professional development series during the 2019-20 school year will be deepening teachers’ understanding of the state math standards and how to increase the rigor of their math instruction through a deeper understanding of the standards.

2018-19 Reading MCA Results:


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% students qualifying for free/reduced price lunch

% proficient - all students % proficient - students who qualify for free/reduced

price lunch

0

20

40

60

80

100

StateMPSNECP

In comparing all students, our students’ results were well below the state’s and slightly below the Minneapolis district’s. It is noteworthy, though, that when the MCA reading score data is disaggregated for free/reduced price lunch status, our students’ scores significantly exceed those of the Minneapolis school district and are only slightly below those of the state.

X. Professional Development:

Meaningful, on-going, job-embedded professional development is a major focus for us every year. Erika Sass, our Assistant Director, continued to give targeted observations and coaching to our teaching staff as she had in previous years. Joanna Waggoner-Norquest, our Curriculum & Instruction Coordinator, joined Erika in giving targeted observations and coaching to our teaching staff.

The primary areas of focus for professional development during the 2018-19 school year were using math interim data to drive math instruction, using the Fountas & Pinnell reading assessment data to drive literacy instruction, and using writing interim data to drive writing instruction. During the 2018-19 school year, Joe Cole, 6th grade teacher and outstanding math instructor, began to provide some of the math professional development and coaching and he will continue to do so in 2019-20. The writing interim assessments were a new initiative during the 2018-19 school year.

We also had a total of 17 full days of professional development over the course of the school year, as well as 2 hours every Friday afternoon (students are


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dismissed two hours early on Fridays). This added up to close to about 180 hours of professional development over the course of the school year. In addition to the top priority areas of data-driven instruction in math, reading, and writing, additional professional development topics included the following areas of focus:

Responsive Classroom (RC) strategies, procedures, and techniqueso RC continues to be a foundational piece of our teacher training

approach. By the end of summer 2019, all teachers who had been with us for two years had been trained for at least one full week in formal RC training. We also spent about 5 hours during 2018-19 doing “in house” RC training within our staff. We will continue investing in this training, as the RC approach has shown great results in creating a peaceful, caring community, and in developing self-regulation strategies and intrinsic motivation in students.

International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) trainingo All of our teachers who joined us either in the first or the second year

are now trained in at least level one IB PYP. We began to send some more senior staff to level two IB training. We also were authorized as an IB World School in early 2018! We will send several staff members to local IB training in late winter 2020.

Educational Non-verbal Yardsticks (ENVoY) techniqueso ENVoY, like RC, continues to be a foundational program in our

approach to managing classrooms and common areas. Welcoming Schools community building and anti-bullying strategies

o We did several Welcoming Schools training sessions to create a safe and bullying-free environment for all students.

XI. Parent Satisfaction

Parent satisfaction with the school has always been very important to us and our parent survey feedback has always been strong. Early in the 2018-19 school year, before our first parent/guardian-teacher conferences in November, our teachers conducted home visits. We have done these every year since we opened the school. Once again, they were a highly effective strategy in our work to establish a foundation of trust and understanding between our families and our staff. We also held several family evening events at the school, including a Math Games/Community Resources night in September, parent-teacher conferences in November and March, Festival of Nations in February, and a kindergarten introduction event in April. In order to measure parent satisfaction, we conducted a parent survey in June of 2019 at our school carnival. The results are as follows:

87% of families said their child was very happy at NECP 90% of families said their child was learning a lot at NECP 95% of families said NECP is a very safe school 95% of families said they always feel welcome when they come to NECP 92% of families said they have (or would) recommend NECP to family or

friends


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XII. Innovative Practices

We believe that our combination of programs (International Baccalaureate, Responsive Classroom, ENVoY, Talent Development) is quite innovative. Our longer school hours than the local district, more professional development hours (due to two hours every Friday afternoon and teachers returning earlier in August than most schools), and abundant teacher coaching is also innovative and aligned to what research suggests is most important for the success of schools serving a high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Another innovative aspect of our school model is the language instruction and the way we offer two specialist classes daily. All of our students are learning both Arabic and Spanish, in addition to the primary language of instruction, which is English. Students have 45 minutes of language classes every day, rotating between Arabic and Spanish on alternating days. There is a large body of research showing that exposure to a student’s native language in school enhances success in school and English language acquisition. About 25 percent of our student body’s native language is either Spanish or Arabic and another 50 percent or so get significant exposure to Arabic from a young age through their religious instruction, so our model of offering Spanish and Arabic is strongly in line with research on promoting success in school and English language acquisition in our student population.

Students in 2018-19 also had either music or physical education every day, ensuring that there was time for either artistic expression or physical movement each day (in addition to daily recess). Fridays are shorter days because students are dismissed at 1:30, so students rotated between the four specialist classes. For the 2019-20 school year, we have also added an Art Teacher.

Our Talent Development Program is also innovative in that we are making it a part of what we do to ensure that all of our students find meaningful opportunities to discover and develop their unique personal talents. During the 2018-19 school year, we had a staff member with the title of Talent Development Coordinator for the first time. She was able to build on a database of talent development opportunities in the community that was initiated in years before, share information with families so that they could connect their children to some of these opportunities, and create our first-ever after-school programs. We did not originally plan to house after-school programs at our school site, but we have learned over time that many of the families we serve find it very challenging to get their children involved in talent development opportunities outside of the school setting due to transportation challenges, and the high value they place on the relationships they have with staff at the school. This is why we began some after school programs in the school. One highlight of our talent development program was an evening event in September at which families could come to the school to learn about, connect to, and sign up for talent development opportunities in the community. This has now become an annual event.


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XIII. Major Accomplishments in 2018-19 and Future Plans

Accomplishments:We had several major accomplishments in 2018-19, as cited below (along

with a few from the previous year): Welcoming School's Seal of Excellence (Spring 2019)

o Our nationally certified Welcoming Schools trainer (and Northeast College Prep School Director) provided training to teachers around embracing family diversity, creating gender inclusive schools, preventing bias-based bullying, supporting transgender students and exploring intersectionality over the last five years. Student lessons and family events culminated the learning. Less than 20 schools in the country have received this award and NECP was the only school in Minnesota to receive the award in 2019.

Schools That Work (Winter 2019)o Recognized as the only charter school in the “Schools That Work:

Stories of Relevant Learning” publication (p.23) and video (1:12-2:33) produced by Minnesota Comeback. Three Minneapolis schools were highlighted and Northeast College Prep was featured for our commitment to inquiry-based learning and helping students find their talents to guide them toward career fulfillment and positive community impact.

“Good to Great” Grant from Minnesota Comeback (Winter 2019 to present)

o We applied for and received this grant. The purpose of the grant was to assist us in going from “good to great.” This process began with a school quality review funded by the grant and done by Bellwether Education. It then led to us using the school quality review to identify our top priorities to improve as a school over the next four years and a “success plan” for how to hit those top improvement priorities. It concluded with an appeal to Great Minnesota Schools for additional grant funding in order to be able to implement the “success plan” with fidelity. This appeal was successful in securing $472,000 over the next four years to implement this success plan. The grant will pay for curriculum, training, and technical supports.

Authorized International Baccalaureate school (2018)o In 2018, after a rigorous three year process with international

evaluators, we received our International Baccalaureate authorization. Now, we are an official International Baccalaureate (I.B.) school in the primary years after meeting a series of benchmarks ensuring our school is teaching the program with fidelity.

High Quality Charter School (2018)o The Minnesota Department of Education analyzes academic

proficiency and growth, as well as achievement gap closing data in order to compile a list of high quality charter schools each year. Less


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https://vimeo.com/292865418

https://issuu.com/mncomeback/docs/mn_comeback_schoolsthatwork_web?e=35091450/70128744&blm_aid=21523

than 20% of schools receive this distinction and we are proud to be recognized in 2018.

District 60 Award (2018)o Senator Dziedzic, the Minnesota Senator for District 60, which

represents Northeast Minneapolis, surprised the school, students, and families with a District 60 award for creating an excellent school for the students and families of Northeast Minneapolis.

Another significant accomplishment during the 2018-19 school year was the success in English language acquisition of our English Learners. The North Star state accountability system, now in its second year, is shining a light on some very positive data with regard to our success with our English Learners, data that was more hidden prior to this new system. This data comes from the ACCESS test, the annual assessment of learning for English Learners. Based on the ACCESS test score from the 2017-18 test, a learning target was created for every English Learner who took the ACCESS test that year. The state then measured the average progress of each learner over the 2018-19 school year, based on their 2018-19 ACCESS score. Here is how we compared to the Minneapolis school district and the state:

ELs’ average progress toward their target learning goals: Minneapolis district: 62.6% State: 56.8%Northeast College Prep: 70.4%

% of ELs meeting their learning targets:Minneapolis district: 35.4%State: 40.1%Northeast College Prep: 44.3%

Future Plans:

One of our major future plans is a re-structuring of our Instructional Leadership Team (ILT), which we are initiating in the fall of 2019. More on this below in the Continuous Improvement Plan, but the summary is that we have found a way to provide an outstanding instructional coach to every teacher in the school, with each coach supporting just 8-10 teachers, a ratio we were never able to come close to achieving before. We are excited to begin this initiative in fall 2019.

We will also be in the third year of our Alternative Delivery of Student Interventions Services (ADSIS) grant in 2019-20. This grant enabled us to continue to have 2.3 academic intervention teachers and a full-time social worker for the 2018-19 school year. In 2019-20, we will continue to be able to staff two intervention teachers and one full time social worker who will do proactive behavior interventions for students. The academic intervention teachers will continue to be instrumental in helping us meet the particular academic needs of a wider range of students. Our school serves students from an incredibly diverse


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range of racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic, backgrounds and circumstances. Meeting the particular needs of each student is an on-going challenge. Having these academic intervention teachers will continue to greatly enhance our school’s capacity to meet all of their needs. The social worker will provide leadership and support in meeting social and behavioral needs for our students. He will also assist our student’s families in accessing needed resources outside of our school.

A major plan on the horizon soon will be expanding into the lower level of our new building. During the summer of 2019, we completed three semi-major projects in our current space in order to create two more classroom spaces and one large office space. Because of these projects, currently we have enough space to house our program for just a little while longer, but we will need additional space soon. We expect to expand into our lower level soon.

XIV. Northeast College Prep: Continuous Improvement Plan 2019-20 Northeast College Prep is implementing many different measures in the

upcoming 2019-20 school year to continue our process of improvement.

Areas of Focus for the 2019-20 School Year:This continuous improvement plan will focus on our academic goals, which

are those in our authorizer contract:• The school will demonstrate grade level and school wide proficiency

rates in math and reading that exceed those of the state of Minnesota and Minneapolis Public School District.

• The percentage of students achieving “on track” growth in math and reading will exceed the state average.

We also developed additional (and more detailed) goals through the “Good to Great” process. These goals are as follows:

Academic Goals: MCA Math (proficiency): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through

2022-23), here are our target numbers for school-wide proficiency: 48%, 55%, 63%, 68%

MCA Reading (proficiency): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers for school-wide proficiency: 46%, 52%, 59%, 67%

MCA Math (on-track growth): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers for school-wide proficiency: 50%, 55%, 60%, 63%

MCA Reading (on-track growth): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers for school-wide proficiency: 50%, 52%, 57%, 63%

MCA Science (proficiency): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers for school-wide proficiency:


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34%, 40%, 46%, 53%

Student Talent Development Goals: Percent of students involved in a talent development opportunity: Over the

next 4 school years (from 2019- 20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers: 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%

Percent of students who increased personal areas of passion from BOY to EOY (survey data): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers: 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%

Teacher Growth Goals: Percent of teachers who believe coaching support is making them a stronger

teacher (survey data): Over the next 4 school years (from 2019-20 through 2022-23), here are our target numbers: 80%, 85%, 90%, 90%

In order to hit these goals, over the course of the “Good to Great” process, we did some re-thinking of how we structure coaching and support for teachers. This change was stimulated by a number of factors, including the two-week intensive training for the Director and Assistant Director at Relay Graduate School of Education during the summer of 2018, as well as the recommendations of the school quality review by Bellwether Education. The school quality review included classroom visits, stakeholder interviews, and curriculum and data reviews. The data from the school review helped us establish 3 major priorities to focus on in order to go from "good to great." These priorities are:

• Build out and train a high functioning Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) that can support and push teachers to increase their effectiveness quickly

• Help teachers teach with more rigor and engagement so that students master state standards

• Ensure the school's curriculum is at the appropriate level of rigor to help students rise to standards mastery.

Establishing these priorities led us to re-structure our Instructional Leadership Team (ILT). We made the determination that we need four instructional coaches, which would give us an instructional coach for every 8-10 teachers. This determination was based on dozens of conversations we had with leaders from the some of the nation's highest performing charter school networks--Uncommon Schools, Achievement First, YES Prep, and KIPP. The leadership team participated in the Relay Graduate School of Education during the 2018-19 school year, which is where we had a chance to speak with these folks.

Once we had determined that this change in our ILT structure was the key to moving the needle on academic progress, we decided to restructure our ILT to add 4 instructional coach positions. We eliminated a few positions and moved four outstanding internal teachers/administrators into these roles. Beginning in the 2019-20 school year, each of these instructional coaches will work closely with 8-12


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teachers. This work will consist of at least one weekly classroom observation, one observation feedback session, and one weekly "data meeting." The data meeting each week will involve the teacher bringing the most critical assessment data from that week's instruction to be analyzed together with the coach. The teacher will bring assessment data (or student work) that shows whether or not students are mastering the key weekly standard(s). Then, together with the coach, the teacher will analyze the data (or student work), see what students are not understanding, and make a plan for how to address the gaps in understanding over the next week. The school leaders that we spoke to at Relay Graduate School of Education who had a structure like this told us it totally changed their school's ability to meet students' academic needs. With this change, each teacher will have an outstanding coach who has a background as a teacher with a track record of success in urban classrooms. Because of the low coach to teacher ratios, their coach will have the time necessary to dedicate to their growth.

The role of the board in the continuous improvement plan:Our strategic planning process also resulted in several actions taken on the

part of the board to strengthen oversight of the school’s pursuit of charter contract goals. One such action was to create an Academic Committee to monitor the school’s progress toward the annual academic goals. This group is meeting quarterly to review interim assessment data, monitor progress, and ensure that the Director is accountable for academic outcomes. The Governance Committee, another outcome of the strategic planning process, made great strides last school year to align the Director evaluation to the annual and interim academic goals. This work done by these committees, along with the work by the administrative team, is ensuring that there are clear lines of accountability from the board to the Director, through the administrative team, and down to the teachers, so that no student falls through the cracks.

XV. Authorizer Contact Information

If you would like to contact Northeast College Prep’s authorizer directly, you may contact Liz Wynne, Executive Director of Student Achievement Minnesota, at:

Student Achievement MinnesotaP.O. Box 581639Minneapolis, MN [email protected]://www.samnllc.org/contact-us


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http://www.samnllc.org/contact-us

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