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Academic Distress

Below is information on Covenant Keepers' improvement plans and initiatives. Click here for documentation.

School Improvement Status

School Improvement Status: Needs Improvement

Covenant Keepers Charter School was placed on Academic Distress in May of 2014. The label of Academic Distress was given due to ACTAAP Benchmark test scores from the past 3 school year.

Covenant Keepers is working to be removed from the Academic Distress list and to be awarded the title of an achieving school.

Our school is implementing the following strategies to make strides in academic improvement, along with the help of our external provider (APSRC):

1) New Instructional Methods:

All teachers are required to use the GANAG lesson planning schema developed by Dr. Jane E. Pollock. The acronym GANAG stands for the structure of the lesson:

  • Goal Setting For The Learners:
    The student will write down the goal for the day in the form of an “I Can” statement, and rate his/her current mastery of the goal on a scale of 1 to 5.
  • Accessing Prior Knowledge:
    The teacher will give the student an opportunity to prepare his/her brain for learning by engaging the student in a task that makes connections to previous learning experiences. This can be in the form of a brain teaser, a quick video, a question, a visual, or another method.
  • Apply Knowledge:
    The student is given a task to complete in a group or individually that allows him/her to practice the new skill and interact with the goal for the day.
  • Generalize The Goal:
    The student returns to the goal, perhaps summarizing or answering a question for an exit ticket, and again rates his/her current understanding of the goal, which is likely to have changed due to the student’s experiences in class.

A significant part of the GANAG schema is Interactive Notebooking.

The use of interactive notebooks allows students to be active participants in their learning. The teachers will often give students pictures, diagrams, and notes during a lesson, and the students can paste these supplemental materials in their notebook for future reference. These go on one side of the open notebook, while student drawings, questions, and independent work are completed on the opposite side.

The interactive notebook also serves as a record of student learning, and the student can use the information written and pasted into the book to study for a test. Teachers can view how students have progressed through a unit and watch their level of understanding change.

2) Discipline Policies

Covenant Keepers has initiated a demerit policy to track student behavior. Students are given demerits for actions and behaviors that are deemed detrimental to the classroom and our school environment.

3) Leadership Team

The leadership team meets weekly to discuss issues relating to school improvement. As each member of the leadership team has his/her own area of expertise, the team is able to address obstacles and develop plans to improve the school. Using Indistar Indicators as a guide, the built in research tool allows the team to view improvement efforts that have been proven effective at schools across the country.