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Academic impact shows up in many ways, whether through state assessment results, graduation rates, or anecdotal stories about student progress. During the edLeader Panel “Building Academic Impact Into Your District Strategies: Making the Grade,” we learned it can be challenging for districts to determine the best ways to demonstrate impact for school-level reporting, district stakeholders, and their communities. But one Texas district found a way.

Coppell Independent School District, a high-performing district located near Dallas, Texas, with more than 13,000 learners, began exploring innovative approaches to track student success more than five years ago. Dr. Angie Brooks, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, explained they wanted to look at progress beyond academic success. “We may have a learner coming in who may be a very high-performing learner, but how are we measuring growth for that child to ensure that they have had that year’s worth or more of growth?”

About Coppell Independent School District

The district includes students representing 91 countries who speak more than 64 different languages. With numerous economically disadvantaged and specialized populations, it was important for district leaders to consider how to be intentional with student growth and measure gains beyond academic—areas traditional assessments do not capture.

According to Dr. Brooks, they started by considering end goals: “What is it we want our students to learn?” and “How will we know if the students are learning?” 

4 Takeaways for Driving Growth: How Coppell Created a Systemwide Culture for Thriving

Coppell leaders first began making sure all efforts aligned with district core beliefs. In addition, it aligned professional learning community work and training; high-priority learning standards, scope and sequence, and curriculum documents; assessment platforms (NWEA MAP, state tests, and their literacy platform programs); and all MTSS data and centralizing in the Panorama Student Success platform.

Dr. Brooks reiterated that Coppell’s efforts have been a work in progress. This type of change doesn’t happen overnight or in one school year, but the foundation set now creates the opportunity to improve—and accurately measure the impacts over time.

Four essential ways you can make the same impacts in your district include:

1. Make data-based decisions

At Coppell, understanding success on a minute level informed decisions for better systems at district and campus levels. “We wanted to ensure we can capture their social and emotional growth. How can we also ensure that we are looking at the behavioral growth within what they’re doing? And then how are we capturing that in a way as a district,” said Dr. Brooks.

2. Rollout an MTSS methodically

Guiding questions set a foundation for aligning an MTSS framework. It informed Tier 1 instruction, focusing on small-group instruction and formative assessments, and Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions.

According to Mary Kennington, Director of Accountability, Assessment, & Multi‑Tiered Systems of Support, it’s been important to make sure “we’re not just responding.” Use an MTSS to be proactive and look at trends, small-group instruction, formative assessment, how to go about data-based decision making, identifying the problem, and then identifying when to move a child to a more intensive level of instruction. “That’s just the academics,” said Kennington. Coppell also measures behavior trends and things like absenteeism as hallmarks for preventing student dropout.

At the campus level, Jennifer Martin, Principal of an elementary school in the district, said, “We set academic goals and behavior goals.” Educators get weekly collaborative opportunities to look at ways to work together on these goals. “We’ve even incorporated our behavior specialists and counselors, really just focusing on the whole child,” she said.

3. Build capacity for all teachers and staff to use data in everyday practices

One effective strategy for Coppell included “working with all educators during the summer to really dig into some of the work, bringing people in, writing our curriculum, talking about what are we looking for when we’re saying this is how all of our learners will have growth opportunities, but also aligning those campus resources as a whole,” said Dr. Brooks.

“MTSS is the work you do within professional learning communities. It has to align with your core values, mission and vision, and how we utilize PLCs to carry out the work,” said Kennington.

4. Leverage a data platform to identify and track student impact

Kevin Hazel of Panorama Education explained that the platform can help districts connect with stakeholders and the community through feedback. For Coppell, it could also capture all the critical data alongside other student outcome data like attendance, behavior, and academic data for a one-stop solution to monitor progress and goals. A one-stop solution is essential, according to Dr. Brooks. You have to make things user-friendly, one that’s easy to document, or it puts up barriers for stakeholders. If there are barriers, it may not be fully adopted, wasting time and money.

Learn more about this edWeb broadcast, Building Academic Impact Into Your District Strategies: Making the Grade, sponsored by Panorama Education.

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Panorama Education partners with K-12 schools and districts across the country to collect and analyze data about social-emotional learning, school climate, family engagement, and more. With research-backed surveys and a leading technology platform, Panorama helps educators act on data and improve student outcomes. Panorama supports 15 million students in 21,000 schools and 1,500 districts across 50 states.

Article by Suzanne Bell, based on this edLeader Panel