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Park Vista Community High School (2018)

Lake Worth, FL

School Counseling Core Curriculum Results Report

REVISED SECTION

Our “Introduction to High School” lesson was presented in September to freshman English classes. We began with a whole group lesson regarding high school graduation requirements, postsecondary planning, and resources within our office. The attached data reports reflect an increase in the percentage of students correctly identifying graduation requirements. Each post-test question was answered correctly by over 90% of students. In fact, there was a 78.19% increase in the percentage of students who identified the minimum GPA required for graduation. Based on this success, we plan to continue including this lesson in our core curriculum plan. Our pre/post-test focused on graduation requirements. One improvement we plan is including questions in our assessment pertaining to college readiness and resources within our office. For example, we hope to assess freshman understanding of the minimum number of academic units suggested for college bound students. This would help us further refine the effectiveness of this and future lessons regarding college preparation.

Our “How is GPA Calculated?” lesson was presented through our school’s live feed system to all freshmen during their 5th period report card distribution. The results for this lesson were mixed. The perception data indicated there is room for improvement for this specific lesson. While several of the questions had large percentages of change, this was due to extremely low beginning baselines. Overall, raw percentages on the pre/post-tests reveal that students did not master this content; 4 of the 5 questions were answered correctly by less than 60% of students. We have several theories for this. First, GPA is a difficult concept for students. It may be that this topic is one that, in the future, would be best presented over several lessons. Also, we presented the lesson in this format, in part, to protect teachers’ instructional time. However, as a result we had to rely on teachers broadcasting our presentation and administering our pre/post-tests with fidelity. Unfortunately, we only had a 30% rate of return on our assessments. For future lessons we plan to include an option to complete the assessment online through Google Forms. This will eliminate reliance on teachers to pass out, collect, and return forms, hopefully increasing the accuracy of our results. We also deliberated how having students watch a video versus having a live counselor present possibly impacted student attention to the lesson. We plan to redesign the video so that it is more visually appealing, possibly adding a video clip or music. Finally, for the next post-test, we plan to survey students’ impressions of the delivery method. Still, our outcome data demonstrates positive changes for our freshmen. Our End of the 3rd Quarter Grade Report for freshmen revealed a 39.8% reduction in students earning below a C on their report card when compared to 1st quarter baseline results. Our End of the Year Graduation Status Report reflects success in meeting our Program Goal to reduce the percentage of 9th graders who end the year with GPAs below 2.0.

Presented in an assembly format was our third lesson: “Developing a Plan for Success in High School and Beyond”. Our perception data suggests that students better understood high school graduation requirements and the course selection process as a result of this lesson. Our pre/post scores showed either a large percentage of change (Questions 1 and 3) or raw percentages that were above 90% (Questions 2 and 4). One specific piece of misinformation that we have been working to correct in our school community is the foreign language requirement. In Florida, foreign language is not required for graduation, but is required for admission to our State Universities. Recently, we’ve seen an increasing number of students incorrectly believing it to be a graduation requirement. We were especially pleased to see a 176% percent increase in the percentage of students who correctly understand this distinction. We also had over 95% of our students submit their course selection sheets. This indicates they understood the process presented through this lesson. Our outcome data demonstrates that 71.8% of our 9th – 11th grade students were on track to graduate at the end of the school year. This represents a 1.7% increase over the previous school year’s underclassman results. One change we plan to make to this lesson is to divide it by grade level. In recent years this lesson has steadily increased in length. Delivering it by grade level will support improved focus on the grade specific content we present. We are already collaborating with our administration to effectively facilitate this adjustment.

Grade Level: 9th grade

Lesson Topic: Introduction to High School

Lesson was Presented in Which Class/Subject:

ASCA Domain, Mindsets & Behaviors Standard(s): M3, BLS3, BLS7, BSMS10

Start/End: 9/19/16 - 9/23/16

Process Data (Number of students affected): 721 of 721 students participated in this lesson. (Students who were absent on the day that the lesson was presented to their class were called to the School Counseling Office to receive the information.) This is the second of four lessons in our Freshmenoloy Unit. This lesson was presented in 1 hour.

Perception Data (Surveys or assessments used): Introduction to High School Pre/Post Test

Q1: 98.2% of students correctly identified the number of community service hours required for graduation (39.7% increase)

Q2: 94.3% of students correctly identified the number of online courses required to graduate. (35.5% increase)

Q3: 90.7% students correctly identified the GPA required to graduate. (78.2% increase)

Outcome Data (Achievement, attendance, and/or behavior data): Analysis of the End of 1st Quarter Grade Report indicated that 170 of 721 freshmen earned at least one D or F on their 1st quarter report card. This is 23.6% of the class. At the end of the school year, 8.2% of freshmen had a GPA below 2.0, as demonstrated by the End of Year Graduation Status Report. This is a 14.6% decrease from the previous school year.

Implications: Our perception data reflects significant gains in student knowledge regarding graduation requirements. We believe that this is one of the most important school counseling lessons that we present because it sets the tone for our students’ transition to the high school learning environment. Our End of the 1st Quarter Grade Report gave us important information about students who needed more support in their transition. Each of the 170 students who earned below a C on their report card met individually with their school counselor, parents were notified, and additional resources were offered (ex: small group tutoring, study skills support, parent/teacher conferences, referrals to outside agencies). Our outcome data, as indicated by the End of the Year Graduation Status Report, reflects the success of this lesson and our comprehensive program of support for our freshman class. We exceeded our program goal of reducing the percentage of at-risk freshmen to 8.6%. Based on the success of this lesson, we will continue to include it in our core curriculum plan. While we focus on high school graduation requirements, we also include information on topics such as college readiness and resources available to struggling students. One possible improvement that we have discussed is including questions on these 2 topics in our assessment.

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Grade Level: 9th grade

Lesson Topic: How is GPA Calculated?

Lesson was Presented in Which Class/Subject:

ASCA Domain, Mindsets & Behaviors Standard(s): M2, BLS4, BSMS1

Start/End: 1/25/17

Process Data (Number of students affected): 692 of 719 students were present for this lesson. This is the fourth of four lessons in our Freshmenology Unit. This lesson was presented in 25 minutes.

Perception Data (Surveys or assessments used): How is GPA Calculated Pre/Post Test

Q1: 29.2% of students correctly identified a course that awards credit in one whole year (43.1% increase)

Q2: 10% of students correctly identified which grades are used to calculate GPA (614.3% increase)

Q3: 53.7% of students correctly identified the grade scale used for AICE courses when calculating GPA (33.9% increase)

Q4: 79% of students correctly identified the grade scale used for AICE courses when calculating HPA (106.3% increase)

Q5: 55.6% of students correctly identified grades that could be forgiven (172.5% increase)

Outcome Data (Achievement, attendance, and/or behavior data): Analysis of the End of 3rd Quarter Grade Report indicated that 102 of 719 freshmen earned at least one D or F on their 3rd quarter report card. This is 14.2% of the class, which demonstrates a 39.8% reduction in the percentage of freshman earning Ds and Fs from 1st quarter. At the end of the school year, 8.2% of freshmen had a GPA below 2.0, as demonstrated by the End of Year Graduation Status Report. This is a 14.6% decrease from the previous school year.

Implications: The results for this lesson were mixed. Our perception data reflected that there is room for improvement for this specific lesson. While several of the questions had large percentages of change, that was due to the extremely beginning baselines. However, we recognize that this is a difficult concept for freshmen and one that may require more than one lesson for students to truly master. We are considering changing the delivery of the lesson. While offering via live feed to all 9th graders at the same time lessened the impact on teachers’ instructional time, this lesson was our least successful of the year. We are going to look at ways to possibly improve the visual appeal of the lesson to see if that helps students to attend to the information better. We also had a low participation rate in our pretest/posttest (30%). We are going to collect data through a Google Form in the future to see if that will improve our participation rate. That being said, this lesson was a part of our overall effort to support our freshmen. Our outcome data, as indicated by the End of the 3rd Quarter Grade Report, showed a 39.8% reduction in the number of students earning below a C on their 3rd quarter report card. The End of the Year Graduation Status Report reflects that we were successful in meeting our Program Goal to reduce the percentage of 9th graders who end the school year with GPAs below 2.0. Our End of the 3rd Quarter Grade Report gave us important information about students who needed more support in their transition. Each of the 102 students who earned below a C on their report card met individually with their school counselor, parents were notified, and additional resources were offered (ex: small group tutoring, study skills support, parent/teacher conferences, referrals to outside agencies).

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Grade Level: 9th - 11th grade

Lesson Topic: Developing a Plan for Success in High School and Beyond

Lesson was Presented in Which Class/Subject:

ASCA Domain, Mindsets & Behaviors Standard(s): M4, M5, BLS4, BLS7, BLS8

Start/End: 1/30/17-1/31/17

Process Data (Number of students affected): 2,173 of 2,291 students participated in the lesson. This lesson is not a part of a unit. It was presented in 1 hour.

Perception Data (Surveys or assessments used): Developing a Plan for Success Pre/Post Test

Q1: 64.4% of students correctly identified graduation requirements (176.4% increase)

Q2: 96.8% of students correctly identified that all students would have an individual student planning meeting with their school counselor in April (4.1% increase)

Q3: 84.5% of students correctly identified the minimum number of academic courses suggested for seniors (111.8% increase)

Q4: 93.8% of students correctly identified the day that course selection sheets were due (66.6% increase)


2,182 students (95.2%) successfully completed the course selection process by returning their Course Selection Sheets.

Outcome Data (Achievement, attendance, and/or behavior data): As demonstrated by the End of the Year Graduation Report, 71.8% of students finished the year on track to graduate. (1.7% increase from previous school year)

Implications: Our perception data reflects that students better understood their high school graduation requirements and the course selection process as a result of this lesson. Our pre/post scores showed either a large percentage of change (Questions 1 and 3) or raw percentages that were above 90% (Questions 2 and 4). We also had over 95% of our students turn in their course selection sheets. This indicates that they understood the process presented through this lesson. Our outcome data, as indicated by the End of the Year Graduation Status Report, shows that 71.8% of our 9th – 11th grade students were on track to graduate at the end of the school year. This represents a 1.7% increase from the previous school year’s underclassmen population. As a result of the success of this lesson, we intend to continue to include it in our Core Curriculum Plan for future years. One change that we plan to make is to present it by grade level, so that we are able to better focus the content to the students' current needs.

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