How a New Hampshire District is Closing Gaps

Plainfield Elementary School

State: New Hampshire | Type of School: Small | Students: 179

Diversity: 93% White, 3% Asian, 3% other

For the teachers of Plainfield Elementary School in New Hampshire, the term “MTSS” meant lots of grunt work: going from data source to data source. In this small school, often with one teacher per grade level, this data mining was time-consuming and frustrating, and there wasn’t any time left to use the data to make a plan to help students. 

“So often the teacher perspective is, “where do I go to find the data?” says Christine Downing, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Plainfield. Christine, Principal Audra Bucklin and the team struggled to “mesh the data together to look at its relationships and connections in terms of how we support students.”

THE CHALLENGES:

All the Data, but Not Enough Time

Since the data integration was cumbersome, it took a lot of work to get a complete picture of student needs and proceed to the intervention planning. 

 “We spent more time analyzing the data versus really getting to the nuts and bolts, what are the specific learning needs of the student and what's our plan to address them. We often ran out of time for the conversation of what do we do next."

If they did get to plan interventions, it was hard to monitor and know if their work was making a difference.

THE RESULTS:

Structured Meetings and Clear Insights

Principal Audra Bucklin sought the help of Branching Minds and the team is seeing results! “Before the meetings were not as structured. But now you know that you're pulling up a meeting template in Branching Minds, the meeting template can guide you on the things we need to talk about. The meetings are more efficient, the time leads to actual action steps that people carry out.”

Even better, students are experiencing the results of this work.  Christine celebrated, “As a result of Branching Minds, we can really see the growth in the students. Our second grade had some tremendous growth recently in our NWEA from fall, and it's because we've been very diligent about the intervention plans we've been putting forth, and the teachers have been a vital part of that conversation. We're watching students gain a year, a year and a half, close a gap.”

And, an unexpected outcome is that teachers feel good about their work. “And I think that milestone for folks makes them want to go even further into the MTSS process.”