How a New York District Supports High School ELL Students with Branching Minds

Mineola UFSD High School

State: New York | Type of School: Suburban | Students: 2,784

Diversity: 68% White, 17% Asian, 13% Latino, 10% other, 2% Black

Free or Reduced Lunch: 31%

“Visible Learning” is a core value for the educators in Mineola USFD, a suburban district on Long Island, NY.  You’ll see this value painted on the walls along with other district values such as Growth Mindset and Pursuing Excellence.

“We have been steeped in MTSS for many years in our district, and we are very learner-centered. Being able to collect all of this data that we were gathering on learners, we were seeking a solution to paint a really good picture of our learners in an easier way than we were doing it,” shares Jenn Maichin, Mineola High School Assistant Principal. 

Even though the elementary schools in Mineola have been leading the way with MTSS, the high school was slow to implement the same practices.  Jenn and her colleagues needed a way to make it easier to identify the specific support their high school learners actually needed. 

THE CHALLENGES:

Scattered Data and Over-Identification

With data scattered across different places, it was difficult for teams to create a holistic picture of students, including differentiated student support for high school students learning English as a second language. “Before Branching Minds, we were having a difficult time bringing everything together.” 

The siloed data often resulted in ELL students being referred for special education services when they really just needed more language support, causing confusion and resistance from teachers. “Before, MTSS was just seen as a means to classify. Shifting the narrative is easier when you're showing the data.”

THE RESULTS:

Data Clarity and Teacher Momentum

With the help of the Branching Minds platform, Jenn and her team are moving the needle for those ELL students. “We're able to be very clear on who's growing, who's not, what interventions that we're putting in, tracking those interventions, being able to test them in their home language and in English, and have all of these data points come together to create a profile of that learner so that we can look at the indicators and see who's growing, who's not, what we need to do”

Even better, teachers are buying in.  “We're starting to shift the narrative. We're not fixing everything that's an issue, but we are making progress towards it. We can track that now and make it visible. That feels good to a teacher because they work so hard to be able to do this and they care about kids.”

With an MTSS process and Branching Minds in place, Mineola educators are seeing their language learners grow and are not referring as many students for special education services that they may not need.

➡️Learn more about Mineola's District Level work on their episode of Schoolin' Around.