Liberty Junior High School

School Information

School Name:  Liberty Junior High School
School Address:   600 W. Kansas
                         Liberty, MO 64068
School Phone:  (816) 736-5380
School Fax:  (816) 736-5384
Principal:  Scott Carr
Principal E-Mail:  scarr@liberty.k12.mo.us

Demographics

Number of Students:  1188
Number eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch:   12%
Percent of Limited English Proficient:  NA
Percent of Special Education:  NA
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:

• White  (91%)
• Black  (5%)
• Hispanic  (3%)
• Asian/Pacific Island  (1%)
• Other  (1%)

 

Present Student Achievement Data in at least 3 points to demonstrate trends. The data report should always include the most recent school year and should always offer a basis of comparison (for example, state scores, national scores, similar SES schools)

	2006 (School/State)	2005 (School/Stae)	2004 (School/State)
Reading	55/42	n/a	n/a
Writing	66% above 50	63% above 50	62% above 50
Math	67/42 (rank 6th)	24% (rank 24th)	22% (rank 30th)

 

	2006 (School/State)	2005 (School/Stae)	2004 (School/State)
Science	66% above 50	64% above 50	64% above 50
Social S	68% ablove 50	60% above 50	59% above 50
Other	6-8% D&F's	7-9% D&F's	13-15% D&F's

 

Please feel free to comment on any aspect of the data that you feel is particularly significant.
We are very proud of our students’ increase in their standardized scores on Missouri’s MAP Math test. We believe this improvement over the past three years is a reflection of how our math collaborative team has focused on the essential skills and content that students needed to be successful. The team has worked together to create aligned assessments that measured the students’ growth with these specific skills. The team’s goal is to continue creating formative assessments that are predictive of how students will perform on the year end MAP test. They then identify students that struggle and re-teach and re-test in order to close these gaps in learning.

 Please present any additional information that indicates your efforts to build a professional learning community have had a positive impact upon students and/or teachers.

During our time becoming a PLC, we have attempted to focus on developing a culture that balances student accountability with celebration and recognition. We believe that this focus has created a school climate that encourages teachers to recognize student achievement at all levels and to create timely and tangible incentives that encourage our at-risk students to improve. We feel our improvement in both standardized scores and our reduction in D’s and F’s represent this cultural change for our students.
We have initiated Josten’s Renaissance program to create a building wide recognition program. All of our assemblies are focused on celebrating academic success rather than being pep assemblies for our sports. Our students get fired up during these high energy, student created assemblies. Our data shows that nearly two thirds of our student body currently has a 3.0 GPA or higher. Less than 10 percent of our students are below a 2.0 GPA.
Over that past two years this change in climate has encouraged our teachers to focus on learning by expecting students to complete work rather than accepting a zero. They also put a great deal of energy and time into helping students when they do poorly on assessments, writing samples, and other learning products by allowing our students to re-test and re-write with specific feedback.

 Please elaborate upon strategies you have found to be effective in any of the following areas:

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Many of our collaborative teams are growing in their understanding of formative assessments and how to use them to measure and predict student achievement on identified essential outcomes. We are working to identify what we are calling “Power GLE’s (Grade Level Expectations).

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

At the 8th grade level we have a mandatory advisory program for entering students with D’s and F’s from the sending school. Team teachers communicate with one another to keep updated on homework that needs to be completed. Each day during advisory the teacher supports and guides the students to get their work done. If a student needs particular help with an assignment, they can travel to another advisory teacher that teaches that content. This gives additional instructional support. If the student is not done with the work then they are expected to stay after hours until they are completed. Our data shows that over 70% of these at-risk students have no D’s or F’s by the end of the first semester. Many of these students report that this is the most success they have ever experienced in their school career.

 

 

3. Building the capacity of teachers to work as members of high performing collaborative teams who focus the efforts of their team on improved learning for students.

In the beginning of our PLC process, we asked teachers to come in before school once a week to develop collaborative teams. In order to honor the time teachers put into this, we re-tooled our schedule to build collaborative team time. Teachers meet in common grade level and content area teams each Tuesday and Thursday for one 45 minute period. This time is for the teachers to focus on instructional needs such as content pacing, strategies, common assessments, identifying essential outcomes, and lesson studies. Common assessment results are reflected on by the team and decisions are made based on this data. Teams decipher standardized testing scores that are related to their content to make sure that they are aligning their instruction with state and district expectations. These teams have the power to make adjustments to their curriculum map based on their collected data.
As these teams continue to grow and mature, they are beginning to discuss their expectations for homework and grading. These are great conversations that begin to dig at our values and how we make decisions based on a focus on learning rather than teaching.

 

List any Awards and Recognition Garnered by Your School

Identified as a Top 10 School in the State of Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the 2006-2007 school year.

We are very proud of our state testing scores. These have placed us as the sixth highest scoring school out of schools with at least 250 students in grade 8.

We have presented our success at the St. Louis PLC Institute in 2006 for Solution Tree, The Missouri Dept. of Education’s Pathway Conference, The Northwest Regional Professional Development Council conference at Northwest Missouri State University, The Missouri Dept. of Education’s Powerful Learning Conference, and Park University’s Teaching and Business Conference.

We are a continuing school that has completed a three year commitment with Missouri’s Accelerated Schools/PLC grant program through the Kansas City Regional Professional Development Council at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.