Gwinnett set to boost students who fall behind

Getting back to grade level takes time, district says.

Gwinnett County Public Schools’ review of elementary and middle school students’ academic growth showed most students progressed in math and reading at the expected rate, but the district aims to see more improvement for students who started the year a grade level or more behind.

Staff said at Thursday’s school board meeting the next steps for improvement include training focused on teaching multilingual students, expansion of a reading elective and allowing for more tailored responses to a student’s struggles.

Here are some key points from the discussion:

The district uses a universal screener to identify students in grades K-8 who need support in reading and math. Students take screeners in August and in January. State law requires students in grades K-3 to take an additional reading screener at the end of the school year.

The January reading assessment reported 51% of students with skills below grade level, an improvement from 65% in August. The January math assessment reported 58% of students below grade level, down from 75%.

Students who started the year below grade level for the most part did not make the progress necessary to reach grade level, although about half of elementary school students who started one grade level below on reading were on-level by January.

Jewelle Harmon, the district’s chief accountability officer, said catching up after falling behind by a grade level or more often requires sustained progress over years.

Staff said many students below grade level have underdeveloped skills from the digital learning phase of the pandemic. Teachers and other staff often have to balance time revisiting those skills with ensuring the student is still getting instruction in their regular class.

Gwinnett is trying something new to help older students who struggle with reading. This year, it piloted a sixth-grade elective focused on reading. Next school year, the option will expand to all middle schoolers.

The district is working to tailor interventions to students’ needs rather than taking a standardized approach, said Hazel Moore, Gwinnett’s director of instructional development and support. New resources in math and English for speakers of other languages are incoming, and Moore said the companies providing those resources will train teachers with a specific focus on relaying material to multilingual learners. That will occur along with in-house professional development and coaching and emphasis on collaboration between teachers of similar subjects to share ideas and best practices.

Staff didn’t present demographic assessment data due to time constraints, but board members received the information separately. Board member Tarece Johnson-Morgan highlighted achievement gaps for Black, Hispanic, multilingual and economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities.