Grade Levels: 9-12

Highland High School Web Site

Annual Review

July 25, 2006

Background

At the end of our seventh year as a Professional Development School, Highland High School has much to celebrate.  Our preservice teacher education initiatives continued to contribute to the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of emerging professional educators.  We continued to align our PDS goals with those established for PL 221, and tried in numerous ways to support faculty in achieving their objectives in various projects they undertook to accomplish school-wide, as well as teacher-specific, initiatives.  Although unsuccessful, we moved forward in our pursuit of external funding to support various PDS activities and plan to resume grant-writing activities in 2006-2007.   Building administrators and teachers clearly value the university-school partnership and perceive the PDS liaison as a contributing member of their professional community.

With ever-increasing pressure to provide "hard proof" that professional development activities directly result in improving standardized test scores, our partnership continues to struggle with designing and implementing data collection strategies that could provide such proof.  In addition, central administration-defined professional development activities have eroded time available for initiatives identified by HHS teachers and administrators resulting in a decreased sense of self-efficacy among many of the teachers at HHS.  Teacher morale, which had become increasingly more positive over the past several years, is now, to some extent, plummeting.  In response to these circumstances, we have framed our PDS goals for 2006-2007 to support school-wide goals established for PL 221 purposes, continue our excellent work in the area of preservice teacher education, and attempt to procure external funding to support our efforts.

As we look ahead to the new academic year, the bulk of construction to Highland High School will be completed with all teachers located in renovated rooms.   We've also just learned that the superintendent, Dr. Timothy Long, has resigned and Dr. Mikella Lowe, current assistant superintendent, will assume interim superintendent duties as ACS conducts a search for a new superintendent. Obviously, we cannot predict how this change in central administration leadership will effect our Professional Development School efforts, but we hope this bodes well for our partnership.

Teacher Preparation

2005-2006 Goal:
Research and draft grant proposals for submission that will support our continuing efforts to improve teacher preparation in our programs and that speak to the professional development needs of both student teacher and cooperating teacher.

Progress:
Our grant writing activities focused more on pursuing a Discovery Grant to support a number of initiatives aligned with PL 221 goals.  However, many of those initiatives actively involved (or would have involved) preservice teachers completing field experiences at Highland High School.

2006-2007 Goals:

1. Revisit the CARS initiative, especially the service option, and draft a proposal to be shared with AndersonHigh School, and the three middle schools.
2. Develop a quick reference guide for cooperating teachers regarding the LAMP and CARS initiative.

Staff Development

2005-2006 Goal:
Identify and implement ways to support staff in achieving goals established in the PL 221 plan in the areas of language arts, mathematics, attendance, cultural competency, and stronger home/school connections.

Progress:
We wrote and submitted a Discovery Grant to provide funding to support the PL 221 goals.  Although we did not receive funding, faculty pursued many of the initiatives as part of their professional development activities during waiver time.  In addition, many teachers also pursued these activities during their personal time.  The PDS site council provided feedback and support to all sub-groups and individual staff members.  We also processed grant applications from sub-groups and individual teachers to support specific initiatives.

2006-2007 Goal:
Support faculty in identifying and implementing professional development initiatives that positively impact student achievement.

Research

2005-2006 Goal:
Further continue to investigate and develop support networks to facilitate the dissemination of all PDS/staff development research including seeking grant monies to support dissemination via publications in journals and presentations at conferences.

Progress:
Regular newsletters were published and distributed to all teachers, central administration, and BSU partners.  A web site was created specifically to disseminate information and showcase Professional Development School news and activities.  Conference presentations and several publications appeared reflecting our work.  No grant money was located for these activities.

2006-2007 Goal:
Pursue Discovery Grant and  IndianaImproving Teacher Quality Grant to support partnership activities.

Student Learning

2005-2006 Goal:
Support faculty strategies undertaken to accomplish PL 221 action plan objectives aimed at improving student learning.

Progress:
The PDS site council provided feedback and support to all sub-groups and individual staff members.  We also processed grant applications from sub-groups and individual teachers to support specific initiatives.  Unfortunately, many teacher-defined activities were stopped or delayed due to a lack of time.

2006-2007 Goals:
Design and implement data collection strategies to track the progress of 21^st century scholars from freshman to seniors. Initiate and support collaboration with MadisonCountyLiteracy Coalition to establish a group of volunteers for teaching reading to student non-readers.

Prepared by the HighlandHighSchoolProfessionalDevelopmentSchoolSiteCouncil
Submitted by Dr. Cathy J. Siebert, PDS Liaison