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Greenfield Union Schools, CA Uses Ellevation to Boost Reclassification Rate

Greenfield Union Schools, CA Uses Ellevation to Boost Reclassification Rate
Blog

Greenfield Union Schools, CA Uses Ellevation to Boost Reclassification Rate

Imagine for a moment that you are representing your district on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and you’ve made it to the $10,000,000 question. You hold your breath and wait for the final question. As the words slowly appear on the screen you read, “How many English Learners in your district are eligible for reclassification today based on their test scores and teacher approval?” Hmm, you definitely don’t have that number memorized. Perhaps you can phone a friend…

There was a time when Norma De Santos, English Learner Coordinator at Greenfield Union School District, wouldn’t have been able to answer that question on the spot. And, I’m sure many of you can relate. Norma confides, “When I first started at the district, I noticed there were several issues with our data. While we were fortunate to have data, it was all over the place." 
 
Now, however, Norma can call on any one of her district’s ELL educators and get the answer to that ten million dollar question within seconds. "Ellevation helped our district clean up the reclassification data which enabled us to reclassify students smoothly without any complications.” Greenfield realized that simply possessing mass amounts of student data wasn’t nearly enough to make sound decisions. To add meaning, organization and accessibility to that data, Greenfield implemented Ellevation, which allowed them to identify needs, modify instruction, and help students successfully exit the program. 
 

"You click a button and everything is there," says Norma De Santos

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On October 22, 2015, hundreds of Greenfield parents celebrated as the district reclassified more students than ever before. Using Ellevation, the district was able to identify that 11% of their English Learners were ready for reclassification, an increase of 3% from their largest exit group. “We had a great celebration in October,” Norma shares, “Parents were very happy. Our goal is to make sure those numbers increase every year.”

Without easy access to tools that allow personnel to make meaningful and timely decisions for their ELs, Greenfield Union and others would be challenged to meet their reclassification goals. 

“We needed data for intervention groups, summer school, and teacher assignments. Before Ellevation, I would have to filter, sort, and make spreadsheets to get that data. Now, I just run a report to find my students and their scores. Ellevation identifies my Long Term English Learners and allows me to tag them as needed. I send the reports to Principals and they start creating their intervention groups and rosters right away. I don’t know what I would do without this program,” Norma says. 

While we can’t help you prepare for any $10 million question, we can promise you that using Ellevation will help your district increase productivity, prepare for federal program monitoring, enhance collaboration and save you a great deal of time. Hopefully these improvements, in combination with great teaching and online student monitoring, will help you to achieve your reclassification goals. That in itself will make your brand new RFEPs and their families feel like a million, no, ten million bucks!


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