The district’s vision is to create an education system that serves and supports all children

WOODLAND — Woodland Public Schools serves nearly 2,500 students in grades PreK-12 living throughout Clark and Cowlitz Counties. In order to support and educate students from such an expansive geographic area with incredibly diverse backgrounds and living situations, the district’s teaching and support staff use a variety of methods to ensure students attend school, meet state standards and graduate.

The district’s vision is to create an education system that serves and supports all children while ensuring each child has full access to and is engaged in an excellent education preparing them for responsible citizenship and a future of success.

Woodland Public Schools provides this progress report summary so parents, guardians, and community members can learn how Woodland’s school staff dedicates themselves to improving student learning.

Graduation rate

As a district, Woodland Public Schools graduates more than 85 percent of its students in four years with Woodland High School having a four-year graduation rate of 93.2 percent and TEAM High School with a 48.5 percent rate in 2018.

Woodland Public Schools outperforms the Washington State average by more than 5 percent compared to the typical district which graduated 80.9 percent of its students in four years in 2018.

Since 2014, Woodland Public Schools’ four-year graduation rate has increased from 78.1 percent to 85.2 percent, a total of 7.1 percent, where Washington State, as a whole, increased just 3.7 percent over the same time period from 77.2 percent to 80.9 percent.

Woodland High School

Nearly 10 percent more students graduate from Woodland High School in four years than the Washington State average.

In fact, Woodland High School saw a 12.6 percent improvement in a single year with a 2018 graduation rate of 93.2 percent over 2017’s rate of 80.6 percent.

TEAM High School

TEAM High School is Woodland Public Schools’ alternative high school. TEAM High School offers students with unique circumstances a way to earn their high school diploma while working full-time, taking care of their family, or a variety of other outside life effects which might prevent them from graduating if they had to attend a traditional school. In many cases, students who attend TEAM would have otherwise dropped out of school rather than graduating.

TEAM’s graduation rate improvement is substantial. In 2018, TEAM High School graduated 48.5 percent of its students in four years, more than doubling its 2017 graduation rate of 22.2 percent. “Although ensuring student success is certainly a team effort, we are particularly proud of Elizabeth Vallaire, TEAM’s Math and Science Teacher, who was selected as Teacher of the Year for Washington State in 2019,” said Michael Green.

To learn more about Elizabeth Vallaire, click here to read our feature article: http://bit.ly/WPS-TEAM-Teacher-of-the-Year-2019

Graduation within 5 Years

Not every student will graduate in four years. Sometimes, life gets in the way. For students who don’t graduate in four years, 85.4 percent of them graduate within five years at Woodland High School and 46.0 percent of students graduate within five years from TEAM High School.

Once again, TEAM High School’s year-over-year improvement is more than double, with TEAM’s five-year graduation rate improving from 21.4 percent in 2017 (students who were initially in the Class of 2016) to 46.0 percent in 2018 (students who were initially in the Class of 2017).

The district’s goal is to have more than 90 percent of students starting high school in 2022 to graduate within five years.

How Woodland Public Schools improves graduation rate

To achieve these results, district and school leadership created a renewed focus on helping struggling students. Using a targeted system of interventions and supports, staff members proactively identify struggling students. These students are offered additional tutoring, accommodations and other forms of assistance in order to help them finish their schooling and graduate.

“The results are incredibly promising but a single year-over-year comparison doesn’t make a trend,” said Superintendent Michael Green. “The staff remains vigilant to look for students who need assistance and dedicate themselves to providing every student with the aid they need to graduate.”

At TEAM High School, Jake Hall, executive director of Learning Supports and Alternatives, and Stacy Brown, finance director, developed a plan focused on improving graduation rates by using funds provided by the state’s Learning Assistance Program (LAP) to increase staff support for students.

The LAP funds provided extended learning time on Saturdays and throughout Summer 2018 among other benefits for the school. “Our talented and hard-working TEAM staff motivates and encourages students to work toward graduation,” said Green. “The results speak for themselves as the year-over-year improvement is outstanding.”

School attendance

Research shows that consistent school attendance directly affects a student’s likelihood to graduate, and this result may certainly make sense to readers: The more a student attends school, the more likely he or she will be to experience success in their academic career.

In order to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism (defined by a student missing more than 10 percent of a school year or approximately 18 school days), the Board of Directors and district leadership increased emphasis on the importance of attending school each day, communicating with students and families about the need to attend school.

Increased school attendance district-wide

Woodland Primary School and Yale Elementary School had the highest chronic absentee rates for the district in 2016 at 23.0 percent and 25.0 percent, respectively.

In 2018, Woodland Primary School more than halved its chronic absenteeism to 10.9 percent, a 12.1 percent decrease. Yale Elementary cut its absentee rate to 12.8 percent, a decrease of 12.2 percent.

Since 2016’s peak, chronic absenteeism decreased 4.5 percent district-wide with 2018’s overall rate dropping to 13.1 percent.

The district’s goal is to have the rate of chronic absenteeism below 10 percent by 2020.

How Woodland Public Schools improves school attendance

Following a sharp increase in the rate of chronic absenteeism for the district to 17.6 percent in 2016, the district hired Stacy Mouat to serve as the district’s Truancy Specialist.

Mouat worked with school administrators, school staff, students and families to raise awareness of students’ attendance rates while working with families to find ways to ensure students attend school every day.

“Ms. Mouat helped raise awareness about attendance by reaching out to parents and families through personal meetings, phone calls and even individualized informational letters for every student in the district,” said Green. “The efforts of Stacy Mouat along with the secretaries, administrators, staff, students and families are laudable as improving school attendance requires a collective effort.”

State assessment performance

Washington State requires all public school districts to administer the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) for students in grades 3-8 and grade 10 each year in the spring. The annual SBA is divided into two subject areas – Mathematics and English Language Arts.

When comparing year-over-year performance for Woodland Public Schools, students met the state standards in all tested grade levels for English Language Arts and in 4 out of 6 tested grade levels in Mathematics.

English Language Arts from 2017-2018

Below are the rates of improvement year-over-year for grades 3-8, however, comparison data for the High School level is not available due to state-mandated changes to the assessments:

• 3rd grade: +9.8 percent increase
• 4th grade: +3.9 percent increase
• 5th grade: +9.2 percent increase
• 6th grade: +8.3 percent increase
• 7th grade: +15.1 percent increase
• 8th grade: +5.1 percent increase

Mathematics from 2017-2018

Below are the rates of improvement year-over-year for grades 3-8, however, comparison data for the High School level is not available due to state-mandated changes to the assessments:

• 3rd grade: +17.4 percent increase
• 4th grade: -8.1 percent decrease
• 5th grade: +1.7 percent increase
• 6th grade: +7.6 percent increase
• 7th grade: +10.1 percent increase
• 8th grade: -2.7 percent decrease

How Woodland Public Schools improves assessment performance

Woodland Public Schools’ administrators and teaching staff focus strategically and purposefully to ensure students achieve success throughout their academic careers.

Teachers continually sharpen their practice using tools such as in-class assessment to support high-quality instruction. By assessing students throughout the school year, teachers can identify struggling students and provide them with additional instruction to help improve their skills and learn material.

The district’s goal is to have more than 80 percent of Woodland’s students meet the state standard on the mandated assessments in Mathematics and English Language Arts at all grade levels. Additionally, the district aims to improve student performance year-over-year and to exceed the performance of demographically-similar school districts.

“In order to close the performance gaps, we will need to continue to work strategically,” said Green. “We will continue to improve student learning by utilizing the various support systems we have in place at all grade levels.”

Want to learn more?

The above article provides a summary overview of the performance of Woodland Public Schools, however community members interested in reviewing additional data including even more detailed data from the above sections can download the Performance Target Report from the district website.

The Performance Target Report is available from this link: http://bit.ly/WPS-Performance-Target-Report-2019

Information provided by Woodland Public Schools.