Helemano Elementary
"If we can accept our current reality, believe we can make the necessary adjustments, and commit to improving; then every Helemano student will achieve to their highest potential.”
— PRINCIPAL ERNEST MUH
When you look at your SY13-14 results, what are you most proud of?
Principal Muh: Helemano Elementary provides all students the opportunity to achieve to their highest potential by providing a safe and caring learning environment. I am most proud of the ability of our dedicated school staff, enthusiastic students, supportive parents, and community members who worked together to help improve attendance and increase student achievement in the areas of math and science.
What strategies, initiatives, efforts, under way at your school helped contribute to or are critical to your success?
Principal Muh: Our school’s professional learning community uses the data team process and the response to intervention (RTI) framework to help students achieve success. (These are two of the "Six Priority Strategies" for implementing the
Strategic Plan.) Teachers use the learning team process to regularly monitor the progress of students as well as to adjust instruction to meet student needs. Teachers also use the RTI framework to identify struggling students and provide timely interventions to close the achievement gap.
What are you focused on this year (SY 2014-15) to continue your success?
Principal Muh: The school’s curriculum, instruction, and assessments are focused on helping all students achieve to the expectations of the
Common Core Standards. In English Language, our emphasis has been to increase text complexity, address text-dependent questions, include more short-focused research and opinion writing. In the area of math, our focus is on improving mathematical practices by making sense of problems and persevering to solve them.
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About Recognition Schools
Schools in the Department's Strive HI System achieve "Recognition" — the highest step — based on their status as either a
High-Performing or
High-Progress school. Federal parameters limit Recognition to no more than 5 percent of all Hawaii schools.
High- Performing School criteria
- Meet or exceed annual targets for all student groups
- Graduation rates in top 10 percent of all high schools
- Current year gap rate less than 30 percent
High-Progress School criteria
- Increases of 15 percent or higher of all students’ proficiency over three years
- Highest increases in grad rates (top 10 percent of schools with increase of 10 percent over three years)
- Reduction of gap between High-Needs and Non-High Need student groups by 10 percent or more over 3 years (cannot meet gap reduction by lowering performance of non-High Needs group.)
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