Coppell Independent School District

The D.A.T.E. Grant requires districts to develop and implement a teacher awards program. In doing so, district-level planning committees must be established to set goals for their district awards plan that are consistent with and motivated by their District Improvement Plan. Once the district goals have been determined, district-level planning committees must create an awards plan that is either district-wide or that targets select campuses. If a district chooses to implement the program in a subset of campuses, then districts are required to target their most high-need campuses.

Funding is intended to support the establishment of district awards programs that accomplish the following:

• Award teachers for positively impacting student achievement.
• Create capacity and sustainability for improved instruction within the district.
• Align with overall district goals.

Through a district comprehensive needs assessment, CISD's planning committee selected mathematics as the area targeted for student improvement. After analyzing Performance Series data and reviewing district TAKS data, it became apparent that mathematics was an area of needed improvement. Achievement gaps among subgroups further reinforced this conclusion. District and campus improvement targets were established for the implementation of CISD's D.A.T.E. grant.

The grade levels identified, based on the use of Performance Series and TAKS data, were grades 3 through Algebra 1.

In the future, previous years' data will be analyzed, and targeted content areas will be selected. Next year, the planning committee will utilize district data to select the targeted area for the 2011-2012 grant cycle.