This document discusses a plan called the STAR Reading Initiative (SRI) implemented at Dr. Lewis Dolphin Stallworth Sr. Charter School to improve student and teacher performance. The SRI had seven targeted areas to motivate students and improve teacher instructional strategies over six weeks. It assessed student abilities initially and weekly to monitor progress. Teachers used data to refine lessons and partnered with students. While the full 26-point gain on STAR exams was not achieved, 52% of students improved, showing the initiative had a positive impact. Teachers also gained insight into using data and student-centered instruction.

1. Motivating for Performance Effectiveness:
Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
By
Robin MooreZaid
Western Governor University
LMT1 610.5.3-04: Educational Leadership

2. The Motivational Strategy, SRI
The purpose of this paper is to discuss a plan that increases students’ motivation for academic
performance while increasing the teachers’ focus on students (or to become instructionally
student-centered) using a technique that ignites their desire to improve their own teaching
practices.
To improve teacher performance without teachers realizing that they were being trained to
look at data to drive instruction, a “Learning by Doing” concept, I designed a STAR Reading
Initiative (SRI) to progress a school’s reading and Language-Arts portion on the 2011 STAR
assessment by at least a twenty-six-point gain on the Academic Performance Index (API). It was
a six-week initiative between the months of February and April. The goals for the six-week
initiative was guided by four questions: What is it that the students must know and be able to do?
What are the students’ current abilities? How will we get them there? How will we know that they
learned it? (Dufour et all.2006). The SRI consisted of seven target areas intended to motivate
and increase the skill level of the students as well as increase the instructional strategies of teachers.
Four of the targeted areas focused on teacher performance and three focused on student
performance. The seven targeted areas were: the assessment piece, the instructional piece, the
monitoring piece, and the reflection piece; and the students’ initial ability level, their performance
gains, and how well they were motivated in the six weeks. The motivation piece was designed to
get students to partner with their teachers to monitor their own performance. The teachers came
up with a competition. Students were to compete on the amount of gains they could make per
week. The most gains at the end of the six-weeks won prizes per each grade level, 1st
2nd
, and 3rd
.
The students voted on the types of prizes they wanted. Each week data was collected to measure
progress. In addition, the entire grade-level with the most gains could win a pizza party. The

3. justification for the targeted areas was to devise a strategic, measurable, attainable, result-oriented,
and time-bound plan for monitoring students’ performance, while teachers gain insight into their
own teaching approaches. Furthermore, it is designed to help teachers make better decision when
planning lessons. To prepare teachers for this initiative, they were given a mini-training on the
“Whys” prior to its implementation, which is intended to be followed by a Professional
Development for “Understanding the purpose of SMART Goals” and how it is a tool to enhance
student achievement.
The School of Focus
Dr. Lewis Dolphin Stallworth Sr. Charter School, located in San Joaquin County, is an African-
American school that started as a private school in 1981 as Samuel N. Hancock Christian School
servicing local Christians within the (PCAF) Pentecostal Churches of the Apostolic Faith
organization.1
” The school eventually suffered enrollment issues that left them unable to continue
its services. The administration went forward and eliminated the private school and became a
public charter servicing majority African American students. Approved by their overseeing
district, the school had lofty ideas to encourage at-risk students using sports. Stallworth Charter
opened its K-12 doors as a public school in September of 2008. Its unique focus was to encourage
student interest for academics through its sports disciplines. In that first year, its football team was
headed for the state championship until the district found compliance issues that hindered the team
from competing. Stallworth Charter School suffered but maintained its focus to educate at-risk
students. It ranked one in the nation from a ten-point rating scale as well as dropped in test
performance the following year. The cause of the decline initiated administration and the executive
1
Influences and Challenges: From Private School to Charter School,
Meeting the Challenges Head-on.

4. board to evaluate various perspectives that factored into the poor learning performance. The first
area to consider was instructions. Although there were many factors that contributed to inferior
performance, the SRI was but one attempt to start the ball rolling in the right direction. In effect,
this method also allowed teachers to participate in a strategic effort to improve their own
instructional performance by using a later revealed technique, SMART Goals.
The Strategic Method
A modified version from Solution Tree, S.M.A.R.T Goals is a strategic method used in the lesson
planning process. The process prompted teachers to define their goals and objectives as clearly as
possible by asking the four questions: What is it that the students must know and be able to do?
What are the students’ current abilities? How will we get them there? How will we know that they
learned it? After teachers could clearly defined the goals and the objectives, they estimated how
they would achieve these goals from a starting point of the students’ current skill level. The starting
point identified the distance between the current ability and the targeted goal. This measuring
system helped develop the steps to move the students’ abilities to its future destination. The steps
are the instructional activities. The objectives explained what the students’ will do using various
systematic activities throughout the duration of the initiative.
To identify the starting point of the students’ abilities, teachers used a type of pre-
assessment to begin the lesson planning process. Pre-tests, in this case, are a type of formative
assessment used in the construction and revision process of the instructive efforts. In other words,
formative assessment identifies the students’ current skill level in order that lesson plans focus on
the learning results of the students rather than the presentation of the lessons. Educators were

5. continuously encouraged to look for ways to strengthen their instructional strategies by looking at
the results from the distinct types of formative assessments throughout the week. Although the
results of the pre-test were beneficial, the weekly feedback was even more beneficial in that it
forced teachers to evaluate their own instructional techniques. Weekly evidence from the post-
tests revealed whether the students understood the lesson. The post-tests, on the other hand, did
not give teachers any best practices to improve instruction, but it gave them a reason to search for
best practices from the results of the data. Also, the post-tests informed the Administration of the
learning progress of students. We labeled this type of assessment a summative assessment,
although it was more formative in nature. It gave us a weekly performance report that marketed
students’ progress. Summative assessments are rarely exclusive in practice because of its
characteristics with having formative assessment embedded within. In other words, during the
six-weeks no assessment was extremely summative until the final assessment, which demonstrated
the winners for each grade. The STAR results were final and the culminating practice exam gave
immediate feedback as to what might occur on the actual exam.
The Purpose
The purpose for monitoring gains throughout the six-weeks was to provide a clear picture of the
gaps from the targeted goal. Teachers and administration were able to gather information about
the student performance to discuss and strategize a plan on how to reduce the gaps through
motivational strategies and various instructional techniques. In addition, the formative and
summative assessment tools helped teachers understand the processes for becoming skilled at
teaching, assessing, and monitoring students learning. It also helps them identify the learning

6. standards and what it takes to develop skills to reach the standard goals. Furthermore, the two
assessment tools help teachers and students to become partners in the students’ learning.
Conclusion
Although SRI was designed to increase student performance by twenty-six point, it provided
additional information about the teachers’ instructional performance. SRI was the initiative to
introduce the school to the Professional Learning Community (PLC). It was an eye-opening
initiative for teachers. 70% of the teacher population understood the important of being student
centered and the process for instructional effectiveness. Furthermore, it was useful to the overall
culture in that it demonstrated the importance of data driving for effective instructional planning
using a simple SMART goal tool that can also be used to measure overall school goals. It is unclear
at this time if the school achieved its goal on the STAR exam of an API 26-point gain; however,
the culminating results of the assessments concluded that 52% of the entire population increased
in student performance. There’s reason to celebrate. This means that the initiative had a positive
effect on the school although there’s still a way to go. Nonetheless, the school is sure that they are
moving in the right direction.

7. Reference:
Baldridge National Quality Program. (2007). Education Criteria for Performance Excellence.
Retrieved from http://baldridge.nist.gov/PDF_files/2007_Education_Criteria.pdf
FACT. (2011). Formative Assessment for California Teachers. Retrieved from
http://www.btsa.ca.gov/FACT/default.html
Gay, L.,Mills & Airasian, P. (2009) Educational Research: Competencies for analysis and
applications (9th
ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn & Bacon.
Sagor, Richard. (2000). Guiding School Improvement with Action Research. Alexandra, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. (2006). Learning by Doing: A Handbook for
Professional Learning Communities at Work™, pp. 2–4.