On Tuesday, the District hosted the Tri-State Consortium review team for a virtual visit of its K-12 social studies program. The program visit was led by Instructional Literacy Coaches Kristy Nadler (K-5) and Mark Stanford (6-12), Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Brian Culot, Ed. D, social studies teachers, along with building administrators and Superintendent Robert Pritchard, Ed.D.
The Tri-State Consortium is comprised of 47 school districts within New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Team members originally conducted a review of District schools in 2019, offering commendations and recommendations regarding social studies curriculum and alignment with updated New York State standards.
“This was a great opportunity to highlight the steps our District has taken to enhance our K-12 social studies program K-12 since the initial Tri-State review three years ago. Our instructional literacy coaches led off with a comprehensive presentation to highlight the work they have been spearheading with teachers and students to improve our curriculum and instructional practices,” said Culot.
The Tri-State model aims to provide external peer-review in support of promoting continuing improvement and progress toward advancing teaching and learning. “The Tri-State team provides specific feedback with our instructional leadership teams,” Nadler noted. “Leadership members convey the feedback to their building teams and discuss how to continue the great work we are already doing and ways to implement changes to best meet the needs of our students.”
Stanford added. “As a district, we are always looking for innovative ways to modify curriculum to meet the ever-changing needs of our students and days like today are instrumental in that work.”
Efforts to address recommendations have included the development of common performance-based assessments; embedding of metacognition strategies for students to reflect on feedback in a way that promotes growth; interdisciplinary alignment of social studies and ELA/English curricula across grades K-12; and, establishing metrics of student performance to better support grade-to-grade progression, particularly from grades two to three, five to six and eight to nine.
The Tri-State team was impressed with the progress made since 2019. “It’s hard to overstate how much work has been done, especially given the pandemic. I am so impressed how you responded to all the changes that were recommended during our last meeting,” said Tri-State Consortium Executive Director Martin Brooks.
