Career readiness programs and strategies to combat reading and math learning loss are major priorities in the Mars Area School District's draft 2021-24 Comprehensive Plan.

The plan was posted to the district's website for public review following a board meeting Tuesday night. The board is expected to approve the plan at its regular meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 9. Barring any concerns or issues, it will send the plan to the state Department of Education by Nov. 30.

The plan focuses on “where we are in time, where we need to go, and creat(ing) goals to get there,” according to Superintendent Mark Gross.

“We want it to be a document that is actually a workable document, not just things on paper. Things we are actually doing,” he said. “This is going to be our focus over the next couple years.”

Interventions

The plan focuses on the concept of “targeted intervention,” which involves teachers frequently checking in through “prescriptive” teaching to make sure that students are keeping up with where they should be in terms of the curriculum. Prescriptive teaching identifies which parts of the curriculum students might be struggling with, and allows teachers to adjust their teaching strategy to meet those needs.

The district plans to focus specifically on English/language arts (ELA) and math, which were identified as the subject areas in need of the most intervention.

Gross said one goal of the programs is trying to catch education issues before they become more severe. The interventions also are designed to help shrink the achievement gap in the district's special education and educationally or economically disadvantaged populations.

“Statistically speaking nationwide, it's fairly common that there is a gap, but the goal is to try and close that gap,” he said.

The district will bring in three literacy education programs — Fundations, Wilson and Sonday — at the elementary and special-education levels to focus on “multisensory learning,” integrating different learning styles into reading and language arts teaching.

The district also plans to revise and refine its Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Initiative (MTSS) by providing more time for students to work with teachers in smaller groups during “What I Need” (WIN) periods during the school day.

“(The programs) try and meet the needs of the neediest students,” Gross said. “They're identifying skill deficits, and if there are skill deficits, the emphasis is on meeting kids where they are.”

The plan also emphasizes the district's continuing focus on college and career readiness.

“It's about exposing students to careers early, often and yearly up and through high school,” Gross said. “There's a strong focus on career readiness, where students will be doing activities related to careers in each grade level, and collecting (parts of a portfolio). That portfolio follows a student all the way up through high school.”

The portfolio component has been in place for several years, but Gross said the district wanted to hone in on the continued attention to professional development for students.

“We wanted to highlight in the plan that is still a major goal area of ours because the workforce is changing, and different career opportunities are available,” he said.

Some changes already in place

The school district already has implemented some changes, including restructuring the elementary school level schedules during the day to accommodate more WIN time.

MASD has also begun using Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to create after-school reading and math programs.

“We're using our ESSER funds for the resources and activities surrounding our intervention efforts,” Gross said. “Our ESSER monies are really targeting our remediation efforts in reading and math. The emphasis is making sure we are prescriptively teaching to student needs in an effort to not only improve test scores, but to narrow the achievement gaps that we've noted in our studies.”

While the district didn't acquire specific new programs such as Fundations for math teaching, the after-school programs at the secondary level and the intervention teaching overall feed into the larger reading-math focus.

“We still are using our time wisely after school with our ESSER funds and also with that WIN time to make sure we are still looking at the student-specific data,” Gross said. “Basically, we're keeping kids caught up with where they need to be.”