The current reality of student performance in District 109 is far different than it was when TAP was implemented nearly a decade ago. The program and educational changes implemented in 2017-18 allow us to best meet the needs and abilities of our student body, and take advantage of the outstanding skills of our teachers and staff. The students in our schools are working at significantly higher levels than peers throughout the rest of the state and nation. All of our data from local assessments, such as the MAP test and from state assessments such as PARCC, support this reality. Our teachers are differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all students, and raise their achievement.

On average, half of District 109 students at every grade level are at or above the 90th percentile as measured on nationally normed assessment measures in both math and English language arts (ELA). This means that more than half of our students at every grade level are in the top 10% of student performance on a national level, or, more than half of our students perform better than 90% of all students in the country. Furthermore, 75% of our students across all grades are, on average, in the top 25% of students nationally.

Currently, 10%-12% of students are in TAP programming (about 30-36 students across the District in each grade level). Yet, we have more than 150 students at each grade level working at or above the 90th percentile as a result of our educational improvements and increased differentiation over the past few years.

We have far more students who should have access to the services of TAP teachers or other advanced learning specialists, and the learning opportunities that they provide. In order to expand access, we must change the structure and function of our programs.

These changes will not remove advanced programming, but will expand access to advanced educational opportunities to more students.

No. We expect the same high level of challenge and rigor, we just are implementing it with a greater number of students. This is a win-win situation. There is no data that shows including more students that are able and capable takes away from anyone else.

Students in the general education programs with near or same performance levels are growing at rates as fast if not higher than that of those in TAP. All of our students have been making monumental growth due to the changes in place since 2013.

Click here to view a presentation by Dr. Schwartz, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation, to the Board of Education at the February 4th, 2019 Committee of the Whole meeting, which includes data demonstrating student growth in the new model. 

No. TAP is an advanced curriculum program for approximately 10-12% of students. A true gifted and talented program serves approximately 1-3% of students; the District does not have such a program in place.

Throughout this year (2018-19), the District has worked with outside experts in gifted education to answer this exact question. We have reviewed numerous models, including self-contained, multi-age programs, and full-grade acceleration.

We have also created Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) for these students beginning this year. ILPs take into account each student’s needs - both academic and social emotional.

Last spring, we developed criteria for identifying gifted students. We will use a multiple-measures approach that may include academic assessments, WISC intelligence scales, CogAT, interviews with the child and their parents, and more. It is possible that this process will include student services departments at each school to identify the students and the best way to meet their needs.

It’s important to recognize the number of students in this group. If we identified a full 3% of 5th graders, about ten 5th graders across all four of our elementary schools would qualify.

The point of this initiative is to differentiate between high achieving students and those who are showing exceptional abilities, performing significantly above all other peers in the grade level.

We are phasing in all changes to our TAP programming a year at a time so that students currently in TAP will continue with that program. This year, the elementary changes started in 3rd grade; middle school ELA changes will only impact 6th grade (however, we rolled up the changes we made in accelerated math in grade 6 in 2017-18 to grade 7 for the 18-19 school year). We want to make sure we provide support for these changes as we move along. Our intent is that over the next few years, we will have successfully transitioned all programming after a measured and thoughtful approach.

The middle schools no longer offers language in 6th grade; that time will be used in classes with curriculum to support-social emotional learning and transitions for students to middle school. Over the next few months, our student services department will plan all details of the new program and its implementation.

In 7th and 8th grade, the middle schools will continue to offer Spanish and French, and expand language opportunities for students by adding in Hebrew and Mandarin. The goal is to align District 109 programming with Deerfield High School. We will match the DHS offerings so as to not leave any students out of the opportunity to take the highest level class offered in any language in high school. However, there must be sufficient interest to run a class.

In general, program changes do not require Board approval. Since these particular changes required staffing changes, the Board was asked to take action. Parents and community members always are welcome to provide input. Through the strategic planning and program review processes, the District received an enormous amount of feedback from parents, staff, community members and students. These changes took that input into consideration.

We recognize that early learning of languages is highly effective. However, the structure of our elementary programming did not support language learning. Please trust that the teachers of the program were wonderful!

Our elementary Spanish students receive instruction for 30 minutes only twice a week. This is substantially insufficient for any meaningful language instruction. An ideal program for language learning is a full immersion program where instruction is part in English and Spanish for the entire school day. For District 109 to implement a substantial early language learning program, we would need to commit to our students being instructed in Spanish in grades K-8 for at least 40 minutes a day, five days a week. Spanish would essentially be a core subject such as math, ELA, science, and social studies, and would require substantial reductions in other areas of our programming such as reductions to elementary specials such as art and music.

Expanding the elementary Spanish program was an option the administration considered. However, we felt that the necessary commitment needed to ensure all our students had an opportunity for true and meaningful language learning and bilingual opportunities was not the appropriate course at this time.

We fully support language learning and we believe that students beginning to learn a 2nd language in 7th grade still provides them the opportunity to achieve language fluency in the language of their choice by the end of high school.

The administration proposes that we hire a full-time teacher for each of the four elementary SmartLabs™. Students will attend the SmartLab for 60 minutes a week and do a variety of project based learning activities, as well as computer science/coding. In student engagement and other surveys, more than 80% of District 109 students requested more computer science education in their school day.

In addition, we also will take this opportunity to realign many of our elementary specials offerings. We will be adding an extra day of PE each week for all K-5 students. Currently, K-5 students attend PE only two days a week. Our students will get more exercise and physical education, and our District will be compliant with new state laws that require three days a week of PE.

We also will move the library to a more flexible schedule. Students will no longer have a 30 minute “library special.” Instead, each Library Information Specialist will have flexibility to work with grade levels on more extensive projects such as research projects that may require more than 30 minutes. The library will also be freed up for more classes to be in the space at the same time. Students all will continue to have regular time to check out books.