Prince George County in Virginia has a long military history stretching back to the American Civil War. Today the military tradition continues at the Fort Lee Army Garrison, a key post in the U.S. Armed Forces, and the children who live here are served by the Prince George County Public Schools. The school district received a 2009 DoDEA Partnership Grant to implement changes in mathematics education and pedagogy at the middle school level.
Prince George County Public Schools is located 25 miles southeast of Richmond, the state capital. Bordered on the north by the James River and the City of Hopewell and on the west by the Appomattox River and the City of Petersburg, the county played an important role in the Civil War. Appomattox Manor served as the headquarters for Union General Ulysses Grant. Major battles were fought at the site of today’s Petersburg National Park.
The school district serves children living post at the Fort Lee Army Garrison. Fort Lee serves as the site of the Quartermaster school and provides administrative and logistical support to the Army. Prince George County Public Schools is using its 2009 DoDEA Partnership Grant to implement the Moore Math Project. The project is based in J.E.J Moore Middle School that serves students in grades 6 and 7, of which 25.8 percent are dependents of military families.
The project is using research-based best practices to achieve its goal of increasing military students’ math achievement. The project is incorporating components of the Cortez Math Program across all subjects. The district is also using components of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Program as a remediation intervention, and as one of the instructional strategies for the math afterschool tutoring program. In addition to offering math afterschool tutoring at Moore Middle School, the project is offering the math afterschool tutoring at the Fort Lee installation. The Moore Math Project is offering focused professional development to strengthen teachers’ knowledge of math content, pedagogy, and effective research-based and differentiated instructional strategies as well as continuous teacher coaching in math instruction. The project is using quarterly benchmark data to monitor teacher and student progress and make instructional decisions.
Renee Williams, Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Services, coordinates the program components, professional development, instructional coaching, and the afterschool tutoring program. Hugh Mumford, a retired Prince George County school principal, is the project director and oversees the implementation and delivery of the grant project.
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Oceanside Unified School District is located in North San Diego
County, California and serves over 19,000 students, of which 8% are from military
families stationed at Camp Pendleton Marine Base. In order to support Oceanside’s
growing military families, the district was awarded a DoDEA grant, designed to provide
targeted intervention in language arts for the schools most impacted by the mobile
military dependents.
The Targeted Intervention for Pendleton Students (TIPS) project serves
students in grades K–8 at three elementary schools that serve the majority
of the military dependents. Stuart Mesa and Santa Margarita Elementary Schools with
99.9% and 97% military dependents respectively are located on the base while North
Terrace Elementary School with 77% military dependents is located off the base with
an entrance from Camp Pendleton. Jefferson Middle School is the fourth school in
the project with 33% of its population as children of military personnel.
The TIPS project focuses on the implementation of two research-based language arts
programs: Voyager Passport for grades K–3 and READ 180 for grades 4–8.
Voyager Passport provides daily, 30-minute lessons featuring explicit, systematic
instruction in key critical reading skills. Each daily lesson combines a comprehension,
vocabulary, and fluency module. Scholastic’s Read 180 intervention program for grades
4–8 includes a wide range of direct instructional materials to teach phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development, and text comprehension plus
specialized instructional strategies for writing and test-taking. The programs allow
for individualized computer support as well as small group instruction and independent
work.
Teachers have been trained in the program implementation through full day workshops
and in service. In addition, both intervention program have a site support system
which provides consultants to visit the campus and work with teachers as they implement
the program.
The project has site project leaders who are responsible for the day to day implementation
of the grant components including monitoring program implementation and student
progress, accessing assessment data and providing support to teachers. The program
is coordinated by Sherry Freeman de Leyva, who has 30 years of classroom and site/district
administrative experience in the Oceanside Unified School District.
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