Introduction

that different children need different kinds of help to achieve the provincial standard.They set challenging but realistic goals in partnership with students and their parentsand carefully plan their instruction to meet those goals.The improvement planning process begins when teachers and administrators gatherand analyse relevant information about students in their schools. This analysis enablesteachers and the school to identify areas in which improvement is needed and toestablish meaningful, specific, and realistic goals for future achievement.The setting of realistic goals depends on the following:• effective information management – By gathering and analysing student assessmentdata and other relevant information (e.g., observational notes, anecdotalrecords), teachers and administrators ensure that their improvement strategies arebased on a correct understanding of students’ levels of achievement. Analysis ofinformation and reliable assessment data also helps them identify how classroominstruction and assessment practices have affected student performance.• teamwork across grades – Laying the groundwork for improving achievementin mathematics in the primary and junior grades has to begin in Kindergarten andcontinue through Grade 6. Schools are more likely to achieve and sustain a highlevel of achievement if they promote cross-grade collaboration and a collegialapproach.The main source of information about student achievement is classroom-basedassessment and evaluation. Teachers base their assessment and evaluation of studentwork on the achievement chart published in the Ministry of Education’s curriculumpolicy document The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Mathematics, 2005 or on theexpectations outlined in the curriculum policy document The Kindergarten Program,2006, as appropriate. Improvement planning is always driven by the comparisonbetween students’ achievement and the expectations of the Ontario curriculum,combined with the estimated impact of instructional strategies. However, teachers canalso put classroom-based data into a broader context and apply it to their improvementplanning by:• sharing classroom assessment results and other pertinent information across gradelevels, within the primary and/or junior divisions and within the school;• using board-wide assessment results, when available, to analyse their students’progress in relation to that of students in other board schools that have similar –or very different – characteristics;• learning to understand and interpret the assessment information gathered bythe EQAO, which tracks province-wide trends and patterns of improvement.This guide contains a chapter on assessment strategies for classroom teachers(see Chapter 8: Assessment and Evaluation, in Volume Four).Achieving and Sustaining Improvement 9