Moreland board wins national best practices award
Published: May 1, 2011
The K-8 Moreland School District in San Jose, with an enrollment of 4,135, has earned top honors for its size in the American School Board Journal’s Magna Awards, conferred annually by the National School Boards Association magazine to recognize programs around the country that advance student learning through school board best practices.
Moreland received the Grand Prize “for its outstanding success in closing student achievement gaps,” the Journal and Sodexo School Services, which sponsors the competition, announced. After the district began using data-collection benchmark assessments to guide instruction in 2006, English learners’ scores on California’s Academic Performance Index began a dramatic rise, surpassing the state’s API goal of 800 in 2010. Other subgroups made comparable gains.
The Journal’s own coverage highlights the board’s role in the change, focusing on Anderson Elementary School—which had the lowest API of any elementary in Santa Clara County before the board got involved.
“The board made it clear that an all-hands-on-deck approach was necessary to transform student achievement at Anderson,” the Journal reported. “The first step was to make staffing switches … including hiring a new principal and assistant principal. Next, the board directed resources to support new methods, including additional professional development time and the purchase of targeted instructional programs. The board backed up its directive by frequently putting updates on the board agenda and scheduling site visits to see the new methods and talk with teachers. By listening to Anderson teachers, board members heard the need for classroom volunteers. Using their role as community leaders, [board members] reached out and found volunteers to support the small-group instruction in the classroom. The program consists of residents, retirees, church members, and district parents. It provides more than 80 volunteers annually who work up to three hours a week.”
Representatives for Moreland and the other Magna Award Grand Prize winners—Missouri’s Joplin Schools, in the 5,000-20,000 category, and Florida’s Pasco County Schools, in the largest category—accepted $4,000 in scholarship funds at NSBA’s April 8-11 Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Easy link: