Tag Archives: MAP

Lewis and Clark Elementary School in South Sioux City, Nebraska, reflects the town’s character. With a large population of native Spanish speakers, many of whom are factory workers facing high rates of employment turnover, it’s no surprise that English as a second language (ESL) children comprise 30 percent of the South Sioux City Schools population. Historically struggling to meet adequate yearly progress, Lewis and Clark Elementary School had its principal, Sheri Fillipi, truly worried with its students’ 2010 Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessment results. Sheri recalls, “I got one of those panicked feelings when I saw the scores.” A concentrated effort to determine the root cause of the poor results indicated a serious need for more support of the school’s ESL population.

The Lewis and Clark Elementary intervention strategy began with professional development targeted at in-depth data gathering and analysis. From the beginning, Sheri and her staff analyzed the practiced they followed that produced the troublesome results. At the issue’s core was a fragmented approach to intervention for the school’s 63 ESL students, who spent 30 to 120 minutes learning from different specialists with divergent instructional methods.