City of Methuen Annual Report: 2012

C i t y o f M e t h u e n A n n u a l R e p o r t : 2 0 1 2readiness for all students. It is a wonderful example of what can take place when students dedicatethemselves to working hard academically and teachers and administrators work extremely hard toprovide students the necessary academic support that is required to succeed in rigorous coursework.Methuen High School enrolled fifty-nine (59) students with forty-one (41) of them attaining aqualifying score of a 3, 4, or 5 in 2009. In 2012, 554 students were enrolled in AP courses with 218received a qualifying score of 3, 4, or 5.In response to the state mandate that schools design an improvement plan each year, Methuen HighSchool has developed this School Improvement Plan (SIP). It is the product of an annual reviewconducted by the high school staff. The plan addresses the areas of test data, state standards,instructional approaches, professional development, school initiatives, and parent/communityinvolvement, all with the goal of raising student academic performance. A team composed ofteachers representing each department has worked collaboratively with administrators in a processknown as Performance Improvement Mapping (PIM). PIM is a model for planning ongoingimprovement. A large portion of the PIM process is aimed at test data analyses, primarily the MCAS.The high school PIM team met several times to analyze data and discuss the effectiveness of schoolprograms in relation to the mission statement, district goals, state standards, and the New EnglandAssociation of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) teaching and learning standards. From the dataanalyses, the team developed Performance Goals, Learning Objectives, Improvement Objectives, andAction Plans.An important initiative influencing the Methuen High School SIP this year is the preparationnecessary for the planned NEASC accreditation team visit in 2013. One requirement prior to the visitis the school self-study, a process currently being undertaken by staff committees. As part of this, theSIP team is matching the school programs with the most recent identified NEASC standards: CoreValues, Beliefs, and Learning Expectations; Curriculum; Instruction; Assessment of and for StudentLearning; School Culture and Leadership; School Resources for Learning; and Community Resourcesfor Learning. In addition, the school accreditation subcommittees have been examining and makingongoing refinements to the mission statement and curriculum/instructional approaches, with an eyetoward adjusting the selected processes and programs to accommodate the NEASC teaching andlearning standards.102The high school’s Professional Development Plan, in concert with the district’s goals, is based uponthe belief that teaching is a highly skilled craft and that all students can achieve at high levels, giventhe appropriate learning opportunities in the classroom setting. Professional development needs toprovide support for teachers to develop curriculum, to deliver instruction effectively, and to assessstudents’ learning on a continuous basis. Specifically, professional development offerings mustexpand teachers’ knowledge of subject matter, increase knowledge of standards-based curriculum,instruction, and assessment, and help teachers to make data-driven decisions in order to reduce theachievement gap.