ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
Proficiency scales for schools throughout USD 480 could soon see some changes thanks to some action by the USD 480 school board at its most recent meeting Monday evening.
“Proficiency scales define the performance expected of students to reach a learning outcome. Often presented in the form of a rubric, these scales represent a progression of learning goals across levels of difficulty. They can be set for an institution as well as for individual programs depending on what’s needed,” Assistant Superintendent of Academics Dr. Maria Gomez-Rocque said. “Our Marzano consultant has been supporting the middle schools with the proficiency scales in ELA for three years. During professional development days this year, the consultant has been building knowledge about the use of proficiency scales for principals, instructional coaches, and the secondary math and ELA departments. These critical concepts are important for development, and they are for all K-12 students for the core content. If you’ll remember, we got some of this work started with the middle schools, and they started with the ELA proficiency scale. Our consultant has been helping us during our professional development days in the capacity of working with our administrators, our principals, our instructional coaches as they’ve taken on that additional work and so there’s that continuity from the middle schools to Liberal High School starting next year. The scales support the KESA Standards Alignment districtwide by focusing on the rigor of the assessed standard and brings clarity for teachers planning instruction. We’re very excited to be getting started with this work, and we’ve also brought in a little math as well. We have one more contracted development day with our consultant and if everything works well, we’ll have him work with the secondary ELA department and start analyzing and customizing the proficiency scales there. He’ll also work with the elementary schools so they have that knowledge about the proficiency scales.”
One of the goals of these changes, Gomez-Rocque said, is clarity.
“We want to make things a little easier to understand, especially since we have so many interim teachers, we want to provide that clarity so they understand the work we’re doing with the standards alignment. This way, we know everything is consistent, the students are progressing like they’re supposed to, and the standards are where they’re supposed to be,” Gomez-Rocque said. “Level 1 is skill proficiency, and then Level 2 is effective teaching in every classroom so the proficiency scales directly align with the work we’re doing for standards alignment and bringing clarity for the teachers to understand the level of rigor they need to be assessing the students at in order to reach mastery. We’re currently working on Level 3, which is the guaranteed and viable curriculum. We’re working on all of those together, and while there’s a chance we might eventually get up to Level 4 (which is more of the standards-based grading), I don’t think we’ll get all the way to Level 5. We want to understand our standards and make sure we’re teaching to the rigor of the standards before we start talking about advancing that high. We’ve made some good progress, but like everything else, there's still work to do.”
“Part of our goal is to slow down somewhat and manage the pacing so we can catch people up to a better understanding,” Superintendent Dane Richardson added. “We want to bring the teachers and faculties along so we can get their buy-in and input so it doesn’t feel like this is something we’re doing just to do it, and we don’t want to just rush and rush through it all. This is good work, we’re all in on it, and we can see things coming together. The goal is for the entire district to have a good understanding.”
After some more discussion, the board ultimately voted 6-0 (with board member Jesus Baeza absent) to approve the purchase of the Marzano Resources Critical Concepts Proficiency Scales for $65,065.
In the meeting’s other new business, the board also approved a bid from Scantlin's Furniture in the amount of $134,300 for bathroom flooring at Cottonwood Elementary School and Sunflower Elementary School and updates to the ESOL Endorsement Tuition Agreement. The board also approved early graduation applications for Jayden Trejo Esqueda, Ismael Vieyra and Jonathan Rivera Robles and an agreement with Skyward ERP Software to streamline USD 480 business and finance software functionality, which would begin July 1, 2027. To conclude the meeting’s new business, the board approved a community natatorium Memorandum of Understanding and a bid from Lee's Heating and Air in the amount of $11,598 to replace a failed cooling coil that services the small gym at Liberal High School.
