9.+NATC+position+on+high+quality,+effective+teaching

====The New Hope School District is committed to recruiting, hiring, and developing highly qualified reading teachers. The reading curriculum that will be adopted is grounded in current research, student centered, and promotes authentic practice and assessment. Teachers will be trained, by a team of experts, in the Reading Workshop the summer prior to implementation. Teachers will be given a host of materials to peruse over the summer. The team of experts will be available prior to school to help teachers set up classrooms, answer questions, and provide additional information. Over the course of the year, the team of experts will model instruction, co-teach, and provide informal evaluations. Teachers will also have the opportunity to observe master teachers. Three times a month teachers will meet either as a grade level or as a faculty to discuss the successes and challenges of the reading workshop. Teachers will focus on a specific area of the workshop over the course of the year and will conduct action research in their classrooms to help them improve their pedagogy. The training and implementation of the reading workshop will span over a three-year period. ====

==== The New Hope School District is committed to providing a data-driven assessment system that provides high quality instructional feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. The proposed assessment system is research-based and includes both value-added formative assessment and authentic assessment. Data-driven instruction (DDI) will accurately assess student learning and data-driven decision making (DDDM) will improve instruction. A data-driven assessment system promotes high quality, effective teaching through ongoing progress monitoring that is used to make informed decisions to differentiate instruction for diverse learning styles and abilities. In addition, this system not only links assessment to instruction, but also links instruction to the curriculum and the curriculum to the State academic content standards which are tied to high stakes end-of-course and end-of-grade-level State testing. The training and implementation of this comprehensive process for assessment will take place over a three year period. ====

==== The New Hope School District is committed to building an educational community where teaching professionals constantly strive to advance individual student achievement as well as their own professional development. These two goals are achieved through the implementation of Professional Learning Communities, specifically Whole Faculty Study Groups. This initiative focuses on the utilization of District teachers, and their expert knowledge, to increase student learning and professional development opportunities throughout the District. ====

====The New Hope School District is committed to providing support, guidance and training for all teachers new to our school district. New teachers are paired with veteran mentors to help the new person navigate the official expectations and easily integrate with the existing school culture. Here at The New Hope School District we are unwaveringly committed to the success of our students. Therefore, in order for our students to be successful and derive worthwhile growth, their teachers must also attain a high degree of achievement in their chosen field. We take this commitment very seriously and hope to retain good teachers. Through this initiative and guided professional development we endeavor to turn our new “good” teachers into “great” teachers. For these purposes we turn to our distinguished veteran teachers to take on the role as mentor. These mentors are selflessly willing to give away what they know about the art of teaching and the knowledge and traditions of our district. Hence, we rely on our veteran teachers to empower newcomers to be successful and develop into master educators in the New Hope School District. ====