Executive Summary

Rollin Lee Isaacs Elementary School is in the historical 5th Ward Kashmere Gardens area of Northeast Houston and the North area office of Houston ISD. At the end of the 2019 – 2020 school year, Isaacs had a total of 306 students. Isaacs presently provides instruction for students in grades pre-kindergarten to fifth grade. The current principal of Isaacs Elementary is LaJuana Armstrong- Jean, who has served as the instructional leader for the past two years.

The mission of R. L. Isaacs Elementary School of Career and Service is to equip students with the essential tools to be academically and socially successful through rigorous instruction and character development. The vision of R.L. Issacs Elementary is to cultivate life-long global learners with an emphasis on becoming a distinguished and National Blue-Ribbon school.

The school motto for R.L. Isaacs Elementary is, “Promoting a Culture of Excellence!” R.L. Isaacs’s school ethnic demographic breakdown for 2020 – 2021 is currently 58% Hispanic, 41% African America and 1% White.  The breakdown per program is 96% Economically Disadvantaged, 42% English Learners, 10% Special Education, 1% Gifted and Talented. 

Overall Data Analysis

The data used for our needs assessment is derived directly from the 2018 – 2019 STAAR results and TELPAS assessments as well as the TEA accountability tables, Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPS), data from PEIMS, HISD Chancery, and the Texas Special Education Report Card. 

READING: Reading showed a decrease in all accountability levels: Approaches 50% (-5 points), Meets 33% (+1 points) and Masters 13% (-2 points). Reports indicate that understanding analysis of literary and informational text was the lowest performing categories; however, gains have been made in 5th grade while third and fourth graders have experienced a decrease in scores within this category. 

WRITING: STAAR 4th grade Writing results indicate a decrease in scores, with 28% (-16 points) of the students meeting standard compared to 44% in 2018. Seventeen percent (-10 points) of the students performed at the Meets level and 2% (-2) at the Masters level. This demonstrates an essential need to improve students’ skills in all reporting categories, ultimately affecting student performance at the Meets level. 

MATH: Fifthly-three percent of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students met standards on the 2018-2019 STAAR Math assessments, a decrease of 21% compared to the previous school year (74% met standard overall). The percentage of students performing at the Meets levels also decreased 13% from 47% to 34% and 18% reaching the masters level. When comparing horizontally, 3rd grade scores also decreased significantly from 81% in the previous school year to 68% in 2017 -2018.  As a result, there is a need to continue to increase the number of students meeting and exceeding grade level expectations on all math tests, with a focus on increasing the number of students performing at the Meets and Masters level on STAAR.    

SCIENCE: STAAR 5th grade science results indicate a decrease of 17% points in scores, with 42% of the students meeting standards, compared to 59% on the 2017-2018 school year. The number of students performing at the Meets levels also decreased from 20% to 12% and only 2% reached Masters.  As a result, there is a need for more hands-on experiments and labs done by classroom teachers. Key factors resulting in a decrease in scores is attributed to less rigorous instruction achievement needed by both our Special Education group of 19 students in the 5th grade cohort along with a need to improve teaching for our ELL students in 5th grade, a large body of 42 ELs students. The Special Education subgroups’ scores were a by-product of having one (1) resource teacher on campus with a caseload of 19 students in 5th grade.

Areas of Focus

ATTENDANCE: Students will obtain 97% attendance rating for the 2020 – 2021 school year

READING: 60% of the students in grades 3-5 will score at the approaches level on the May administration of STAAR and 70% of students in grades PreK-2nd grade will master reading TEKS at the end-of-the-year formative assessment.  

MATH: By the end of the 2020 – 2021 school year, 72% of 3rd - 5th grade students will score on the Approaches Level on 2021 STAAR math and 70% of Pre-K - 2nd grade students will master Math TEKS on district assessments. 

SPED: By May 2020, 100% of students with disabilities will have met Texas Progress Measure on state assessments in Reading and Math.

Special Population: Students classified under the umbrella of special populations will show at minimum a 1% growth on district and/or state assessments in the area of Reading or Math.

Major Initiatives and Strategies

In order to affect immediate and significant strategic change across all content areas, several school-wide initiatives will be rolled out. Primarily, the implementation of sheltered instruction will be adopted to provide the proper support and scaffolding for every single student especially our special populations, addressing the language proficiency of ELs’ already existing gaps and regressions due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Additionally, a school-wide writing plan will be mandated for all grade levels and graphic organizers will be utilized throughout the content areas to scaffold, embed depth and complexity and higher-order thinking skills. This will ultimately serve all students in elevating rigorous instruction on our campus so our students are prepared for state assessments and career and college readiness standards.

Furthermore, we will implement a Busy Bee Interventions Block which will utilize Focus Intervention, MSTAR and ESTAR resource materials to address skill deficits. To ensure effectiveness, weekly/bi-weekly progress monitoring of tier II and tier III students will be implemented by all teachers and support staff. 

Regarding specific content, teachers will implement the strategic use of number fluency strategies and daily guided math to yield increased growth in order to close large gaps in math proficiency. In addition to incorporating thinking maps/graphic organizers and quickwrites per the aforementioned campus writing plan, literacy teachers’ primary focus is alignment of lesson cycle that leverage high-impact read-alouds, academic vocabulary and STAAR-aligned exit tickets.

To build capacity in our staff and ensure all are prepared to implement school-wide and content-based initiatives, administrators will host monthly after-school professional development sessions.

Furthermore, school instructional leaders monitor the effectiveness of tier I instruction by administering biweekly checkpoints and leverage vertical PLC and planning protocol to address data, feedback and coaching in order to be consistent in newly implemented high-impact strategies.

Lastly, the campus will leverage district curriculum, professional development and district support to model, train, and monitor progress of all strategic initiatives detailed in the 2020 – 2021 School Improvement Plan.

SIP