• Numbers of FARMS students
• LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students
• Student Mobility Rate
• Quarterly Assessments scores - English
• PARCC Scores - English/Language Arts (Elementary grades 3, 4, 5)

Key Challenge #1: Free and Reduced Meal (FARMS) Students

Over the last decade, Lothian’s participation in the Meals program has increased each year, reaching over 52% in June 2019. The impact of socio-economic issues on mobility/transience, access to resources, and readiness skills is noticed in the classroom on a daily basis. Lothian has been a Targeted Title I school since the 2016-2017 school year. The implementation of strategies and supports, planning support for teachers, and parent nights have begun to build student, teacher and parent capacity. However, as this demographic continues to grow, new students join the school community who have not previously had access to these supports. 

The impact of socio-economic issues on parents’ ability to support their students' academic growth is also noted as many families have limited transportation options, work multiple jobs, or are single parents. The demands on families limit their ability to assist their students in accessing resources that support learning.  [Indicators 1, 5, 6, 10]

 Key Challenge #2: Limited English Proficiency of Students 

Over the last five years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of English Language Learners (ELL) who arrive to our school speaking little to no English; our ELL population reached 16.8% in June 2019. Many of the parents of these students do not speak English and require a bilingual facilitator or translation service.Teachers try to support the ELL population as much as they can, but often lack the tools necessary to help these students understand the content being taught.  In addition, it is common that some students learning English are also just learning to read and do math with little or no previous formal education. [Indicators 1, 5, 6]

 Key Challenge #3: Reading Assessment Data

The implementation of professional development around Guided Reading, Interactive Read Aloud, and Explicit Comprehension have positively impacted reading growth. Continued progress monitoring throughout the school year has helped our teachers track our student data more closely and to be responsive to student needs. Despite all of this, our students continue to struggle with reading on grade level text, and reading data continues to show a distinct discrepancy for FARMS and ELL students as compared to other student groups. Teachers look at student data diagnostically to determine which is responsible - accuracy or comprehension - when students do not meet success. Data analysis shows that students in grades 1-5  do not progress to the next level of text largely because they struggle with accuracy. [Indicators 5, 6]

While there have been many strategies reviewed to address comprehension difficulties, we have seen success using Anchor charts, Interactive Read Aloud lessons and Explicit Comprehension lessons.  PARCC and district assessments in the area of reading continue to call for a need to focus on literature and informational text standard 1. Students in grades 2-5 struggle to answer the Part B portion of questions correctly, which requires students to go back into the text and locate text evidence. Improving student reading levels, building perseverance and stamina should address this issue. Explicit comprehension lessons in grades 3-5 have also really helped to build comprehension skills and improve assessment outcomes. Students also need continued support in test taking strategies to eliminate tricky answer choices and focus on the best answer. [Indicators 5, 6]

• Socio-Economic Issues (employment, income levels, housing costs)
• Student Mobility
• Limited English proficiency for students and/or families
• Families in Crisis (mental, physical emotional, financial)

• Socio-economic community issues (employment, income levels, housing costs)
• Significant changes over time in student/community demographics