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Chugach Standards-Based System
Shared
Vision
Relevant
Standards
Multiple
Assessments
Meaningful
Reporting
Effective
Instruction
Shared Vision
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"Click
Here"
for an interview with Angela Totemoff, former CSD
student.
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"Click
Here"
for an interview with Community member from
Whittier, Dean Rand, on the importance of a shared
vision.
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Chugach School District (CSD) involves all stakeholders
in its strategic planning process - including students,
parents, community members, and businesses - to develop a
shared vision, organizational performance goals, a five-year
timeline of activities, and one-year targets. The goals
address student learning and development in basic skills,
individual needs of students, character development,
transition skills, and technology. In 2001, stakeholders
gave high satisfaction ratings to CSD in these five outcome
areas with basic skills at 96 percent, individual needs of
students at 89 percent, character development education at
84 percent, transition skills at 89 percent, and technology
at 89 percent.
Chugach School District includes traditional native
communities and non-native communities in the Prince William
Sound area, along with individual homesteads located in
mountainous and isolated island terrain to the south and
east of Anchorage. Chugach students are scattered throughout
22,000 square miles of this pristine, isolated and remote
area.
Our school reform efforts
began due to the realization that 90% of our students could
not read at their grade level and were having difficulties
experiencing success after high school. Our first step
towards reform was the initiation of the Onwards to
Excellence program during the 1995-1996 school year.
Throughout this process, regularly scheduled town meetings,
business partner meetings, and school meetings were held to
garner input about our common values, beliefs, and goals for
our school system and our students. Goals were prioritized
and action plans developed and implemented in order to
achieve these goals We now refer to the goals as our Five
Focus Areas: Basic Skills, Individual Needs of Students,
Technology, Transition (School to Life), and Character
Development.
Using input from our
schools, communities, and businesses, CSD developed
performance standard continuums for our ten content areas.
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development has
granted Chugach School District a waiver to forego
traditional Carnegie units, or credits, as graduation
requirements in lieu of our performance standards as
graduation requirements. Our students have demonstrated
remarkable improvements on a variety of assessments,
including the California Achievement Test.
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"Click
Here"
for interview with a teacher about why CSD needed a
change to the standards-based
system.
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Below is just a snapshot
of the gains that we have seen in the last 8
years:
Although student
performance continues to improve, as documented in various
formats, the Chugach School District is always looking for
ways to improve. Our continuous improvement model has been
implemented through ongoing staff development, which we
strive to have 30 days of annually for all CSD teachers.
This improvement process has led to researching the Baldrige
Criteria and beginning the implementation of a comprehensive
evaluation process that includes and connects student,
teacher, classroom, school, community, and district
evaluation tools and procedures.
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"Why Change?
Click
Here"
for interview with CSD principal.
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