Good attendance is a critical ingredient for student success. When students are chronically absent – missing 10% of school or about two days a month over the course of a traditional school year, they fail to read proficiently by third grade, fail courses in middle school and ultimately drop out in high school. With the closure of schools this past spring, students lost out on even more on opportunities to learn as many struggled with distance learning. What can educators do to make it possible for students to attend every day in the new school year?
Administrators will learn about how the Accreditation Section plans to facilitate required visits for the 20-21 School year. Types of visits conducted per Rule 10 include; the 5-Year Continuous Improvement External Visit, Rule 10 and 14 Compliance Visits, and visits associated with opening a new school or program.
During this session, attendees will learn about the state board's new position statement on AQuESTT, including updates to tenet names, domain changes, and a new graphic package.
Ensuring access and opportunities to career and technical education programs will prepare learners for successful transition to postsecondary opportunities. This session will focus on strategies and resources that teachers use to meet the needs of each student.Special population students deserve equal opportunities in the career and technical classrooms. This session will focus on strategies and resources that teachers use to adjust to student needs.
Sydney Kobza, Assistant Director for Nebraska Career Education Tony Glenn, STS Education Specialist Greg Stahr, SkillsUSA State Advisor
How will you evaluate educator effectiveness when it comes to remote learning? In this session, we will identify the key components of a high-quality remote learning experience and explore ways to evaluate and offer support to teachers as they grow in this space.
Nebraska's 21st CCLC afterschool program serves students and families especially hard hit by the pandemic. The abrupt shift to remote learning reaffirmed that "it takes a village", but how do you get everyone on the same page? In this session we'll share 21st CCLC data, best practices and hear first-hand from an administrator and project director how they make sure the school day, afterschool program and community are invited to the table to collectively identify the needs and how best to support their students and families. Administrators in districts receiving a 21st CCLC grant are the target audience for this session, but all are welcome.
For over 10 years, the Nebraska Student Health and Risk Prevention (SHARP) Surveillance System has been providing a clear understanding of the health-related risk behaviors that our youth indicated they engaged in across the state. This session will provide insight to the changes being made to the next administration of SHARP and the questionnaires to better understand what impact COVID-19 has had and will continue to have on youth physically and mentally.
Chris Junker, HIV/Sexual Health Education Specialist Lindsey Hanlon, Network and Prevention Manager, Division of Behavioral Health Mekenzie Kerr, SHARP Project Manager, Bureau of Sociological Research Amanda Mortensen, Tobacco Free Nebraska
Join Hedy Chang of Attendance Works for a breakout session designed to enlist your existing student support or Multi-Tiered System of Support team to support attendance. This session will focus on mapping assets to promote health, relationships, wellness and supports for students and families. Participants will also hear about how they can leverage: The Attendance Playbook: Smart Strategies for Reducing Chronic Absence in the Covid Era and the accompanying implementation guide.
Debra Wehrmann DeFrain will introduce specific strategies for weaving mindfulness into all content areas and with all ages. Focus on no tech-low tech delivery will be offered to address equity in technology access. Best practices and the impact of teaching students to learn and practice self-care as part of crucial Social Emotional Learning will be covered, as well as incorporating these elements in the family and community setting.
Last year, 25 elementary school leaders participated in Nebraska's inaugural NAESP PreK-3 Leadership Academy to help them understand and align their building's early childhood programs, birth through third grade. Hear from graduates from the initial cohort as the NDE prepares to launch the second cohort of this academy later this year!
Supporting students with disabilities in multiple contexts is challenging. Assistive technology (AT) and Accessible Educational Materials (AEM) are two areas that can not only be used to meet the needs of students with disabilities in multiple contexts but may be required to ensure that legal requirements are met. This sessions provides an overview of AT and AEM and discusses how schools may use both to help students with disabilities achieve success in multiple contexts.
Brian Wojcik, ATP Education Program Supervisor Teresa Coonts, Director of Autism and Low Incidence Disabilities
The first half of this session with be an overview of the newly revised Nebraska Teacher and Principal Performance Standards. The second half will be about the alignment of the standards to the instructional model work in which districts are already engaged.
Kim Snyder, Director of Teacher and Principal Support
With the adoption of the new 2019 Nebraska Social Studies Standards, this presentation will briefly highlight the instructional shifts in social studies and then evaluate the innovative tools, including the Standards Instructional Tool (SIT) and Social Studies Framework, that have been made available to help educators across the state successfully implement the standards and create effective and engaging lessons.
ACT Staff will provide information about individual student and aggregate ACT Reports. This session will be focused on using these reports to assist students, to inform instruction and to identify areas for schoolwide improvement. We will discuss reports for the ACT as well as ways to use the PreACT reports to prepare students for the ACT. The session will consist of best practices and attendees will walk away with a better understanding of ACT reporting and data.
Families play a key role in student academic success, whether students are engaging in learning activities in your school buildings or while at home. Learn about several Nebraska projects which are designed to empower, educate, and give families a voice in the education of their children. Project leads will share what they’ve learned through ongoing conversations with families that could influence the work of schools.
Kim Larson, Afterschool, Family and Community Engagement Specialist Jessica Boren, Assistant Director Veronica Estevez, State Parent Advisory Committee and Quality Control Coordinator Migrant Education Program, Title 1C Lindsay Limbach, Family/Neighborhood Engagement Coordinator Community Learning Centers Todd Schmeeckle, Parent Coordinator Parents Encouraging Parents (PEP) Conference
The COVID -19 pandemic abruptly ended the student teaching experience for the current class of new-to-the-profession educators. What will your district do to prepare these new hires for the immense challenges that lie ahead in an environment where their peer support may be limited? This session will explore onboarding ideas and strategies to help first year teachers develop as effective practitioners and integrated members of the school culture.
There will be an overview of the new Teacher Performance Standards and how the new standards inform the Clinical Practice Evaluation Rubric, with a focus on data driven decision making and equity within both tools.
Kelly Heineke, Director Educator Preparation Program Approval Kim Snyder, Director of Teacher and Principal Support Ryan Ricenbaw, Coordinated School & District Support Education Specialist IV
Rhonda True, Enhanced Assessment Grant Coordinator, and Trudy Clark, the Assistant Director of Statewide Assessment will provide updates to the Science Assessment System, including summer work done by educators to develop 5thand 8th grade classroom tasks to support science in the classroom and further updates about the NSCAS-Science test this spring . We will also introduce Audrey Webb, the new Science Specialist in the Office of Teaching and Learning.
Examine the NWEA 2020 MAP Growth Norms Study, which provides achievement status and growth norms for individual students and grade levels within schools in each of the four subject areas: reading, language usage, mathematics, and general science. Explore the study results, which are based on K-12 grade-level samples. Learn about the sampling used: between 3.6 and 5.5 million test scores from 500,000 to 700,000 students attending over 24,500 public schools in 5,800 districts.
In this session, NDE will identify essential actions necessary for compliance with the Nebraska Reading Improvement Act. Guidance to address timing and approaches to the fall assessment and unfinished learning for students with an Individualized Reading Improvement Plan (IRIP) will be provided.
The ADVISER District Administrator approval process was updated in June 2020. This session will review the updates and show District Administrators how to approve their Fall 2020 data in ADVISER.
Leadership is critically important in supporting educator well-being for reducing stress and challenging behaviors in the classroom so teachers can foster effective learning environments. This session shares research based social-emotional learning tools and resources to help teachers and children thrive thus promoting school readiness and continued success from preschool through 3rd grade. Community and other funding sources for professional development will be identified.
The key to improving results for students is making sure they receive quality instruction implemented with fidelity. If you are tired of spending hours writing improvement plans and not seeing results, it's time to take a look at what matters...fidelity of implementation. This presentation will give help with defining criteria of implementation and develop quick tools to measure implementation. Remember, implementation is about the system, not the individual.
Mental health and wellness concerns have increased greatly over the last year - for students and their families as well as for all school staff, regardless of their role. Addressing this on multiple fronts so effective teaching and learning can continue, whether it be in the classroom or virtually, has become an even greater challenge with the advent of COVID-19. This session will highlight three rural school districts that are meeting this challenge through partnerships with the state's Behavioral Health Regions, Educational Service Units, local service providers, community coalitions and affected families. Panelists from the AWARE-SEA Project sites in Chadron, South Sioux City and Hastings will share their experiences and insights into developing and expanding school-based mental health programs and social-emotional learning and supports to meet the needs of their students, families and school staff.
Join us to learn how elementary math teachers in two Nebraska districts increased their effectiveness in the early grade mathematics classroom through their involvement with a 5-state Networked Improvement Community (NIC), Discover how these educators have innovated their instructional practice and increased their knowledge and capacity to deliver evidence-based strategies. We'll also explore the role of mathematical discourse in improving student achievement as well as considerations for using rich math talk in remote learning environments.
When you think of your MTSS system is early childhood included? Multi-Tiered Systems of Support is a framework to support all students birth through age 21. This presentation will guide district implementation teams to align the work their early childhood programs are already doing to the larger MTSS system and help identify next steps for continuous improvement.
Provide support for educators in leveraging research guidance on use of RIT scores, key instructional practices, and support for teachers to address unfinished learning/summer loss challenges through use of MAP Growth data and goal setting with students.
Submitting the Annual Assurance statement can be stressful task for new Superintendents. Items on the Assurance Statement can trigger many questions and we are here to answer them for you. This session will focus on specific regulations and would be a great refresher for tried and true Superintendents.
Disruption? Not for us! Students engaged in Career and Technical Student Organizations still have opportunities to connect with the community, business and industry partners, and other members across the state, country and world! When schools participate in CTSO’s students will continue to apply what they are learning in the CTE classroom and build their career readiness skills while developing connections that will last a lifetime.
Kristin Vest, Career Field Specialist for Human Sciences and Education Greg Stahr, SkillsUSA State Advisor Jacqui Garrison, Career Field Specialist for Information Technology
This session will provide an overview of the system of principal support developed by Nebraska principals and their superintendents/supervisors. This system of support is innovative and includes a statewide focus on the importance of collaboration, specifically among principals, their superintendents/supervisors, the NDE, ESUs, and institutes of higher education.
Jeremy will discuss the results of his dissertation. This study focuses on results from a single state, Nebraska, over three years of the statewide administration of the ACT. The analyses include the use a series of ANOVA tests to determine if there are differences between mean ACT scores of student grade groups in related ACT Core courses. Additionally, the study examines the relationship between earned grades in these courses and impact on related ACT subtests.
