Annual Education Report

February 2, 2024

Dear Parents and Community Members:

We are pleased to present you with the Annual Education Report (AER), which provides key information on the 2023-24 educational progress for Zeeland Quest. The AER addresses the complex reporting information required by federal and state laws. The school’s report contains information about student assessment, accountability, and teacher quality. If you have any questions about the AER, please contact Joe Grit for assistance.

The AER is available for you to review electronically by visiting the following website https://bit.ly/2LrBERa or you may review a copy in the main office at your child’s school.

For the 2023-24 school year, schools were identified based on previous years’ performance using definitions and labels as required in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). A Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) school is one that had at least one underperforming student subgroup in 2018-19. An Additional Targeted Support (ATS) school is one that had a student subgroup performing at the same level as the lowest 5% of all schools in the state in 2017-18. A Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) school is one whose performance was in the lowest 5% of all schools in the state or had a graduation rate at or below 67% in 2016-17. Some schools are not identified with any of these labels. In these cases, no label is given.

Fortunately, our school has not been given one of these labels.

As a building we continue to work on making sure that all of our students are challenged in their learning and that they all are making academic gains throughout the year. We continue to use the following comprehensive programs with fidelity: Phonics First in grades K-2, Structures in grades 3-5, a rigorous reading program, Ready Gen, along with the continued work in a progressive and successful reading & writing workshop in all elementary grades. In addition, we continue to make Project Based Learning the main method of instruction at ZQuest, giving teachers the opportunity to integrate reading and writing into their science and social studies curriculum at all grade levels. Our middle school students also continue the use of PBL with the resources of Mi Star Science and Big Ideas implementation, along with TCI social studies and language arts.

State law requires that we also report additional information that we have included below from the 2021-22 & 2022-23 school years:

PROCESS FOR ASSIGNING PUPILS TO THE SCHOOL

Students in Zeeland are assigned based upon their geographical home location. ZPS also offers school of choice openings, which are placed after the residents of Zeeland are assigned to their home school. Our Spanish Immersion & Balanced Calendar PBL programs are filled on a first come, first served basis and may change the building of choice for students. There are 7 elementary schools in Zeeland and those schools feed into two middle schools, Cityside and Creekside. New Groningen, Roosevelt, ZQuest, and Quincy elementaries feed into Creekside Middle School and eventually to Zeeland West High School. Adams, Lincoln, and Woodbridge elementaries feed into Cityside Middle School, and eventually to Zeeland East High School.

THE STATUS OF THE 3-5 YEAR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Over the past three years, the district has been working through steps in the MICIP platform to identify three key goal areas: SEL (social-emotional learning), Mathematics, and English Language Arts. ZPS elementaries are in the process of implementing Second Step, a social-emotional core learning resource. At Zeeland Quest, our focus has been adjusting our social emotional work through our MTSS-B process. We have updated our rubric to simplify expectations as well as creating clear and concise consequences and interventions. We also continue to support students through our SEL curriculum and our be nice initiative. Zeeland Quest also has a leadership group for our 4th and 5th grade students. At the middle level, we continue to work with a group of teacher leaders in the process of choosing the appropriate SETL curriculum. As that is being determined, we lean on the be nice curriculum, along with restorative practices during times of conflict. A PreK-12 Math Coalition is working to examine math achievement and instructional practices district wide. At Zeeland Quest, our focus has been the continuation of working toward common essential standards, along with vertical alignment that follows our scope and sequence. We are utilizing the mastery learning loop day, which is differentiated instruction on content being learned that puts emphasis on increasing student performance on those specific state standards. We continue to create interventions based on need in math at all levels, K-8, and use the data collected from our district’s math coalition to help guide our instructional practices. The district is beginning to examine ELA data, following an implementation cycle that began 9 years ago to determine strengths and needs. At Zeeland Quest, we have identified the following strengths and needs: ZQuest is working on refining our reading and writing workshop model and also continuing to learn, in order to effectively integrate the skills and strategies our students are learning and practicing, into our PBL units in cross-curricular ways.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EACH SPECIALIZED SCHOOL

Students in the elementary program at Zeeland Public Schools are given the opportunity to participate in a variety of experiences in addition to traditional education programs that include special education, Gifted and Talented for 4th/5th grade students, Spanish Immersion, and Zeeland Quest (a K-8, year-round balanced calendar, project-based learning school).

IDENTIFY HOW TO ACCESS A COPY OF THE CORE CURRICULUM, A DESCRIPTION OF ITS IMPLEMENTATION, AND AN EXPLANATION OF THE VARIANCES FROM THE STATE’S MODEL

The Core Curriculum for our school is based upon the State of Michigan Standards and National Common Core Standards. This information is available at our school office or on our district website. Zeeland Public Schools makes sure our students are provided challenging lessons that are consistent across grade levels. A team of Zeeland educators regularly evaluates and revises our curriculum to ensure that classroom lessons meet state requirements for kindergarten through twelfth grade.

THE AGGREGATE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT RESULTS FOR ANY LOCAL COMPETENCY TESTS OR NATIONALLY NORMED ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

aggregate test data

IDENTIFY THE NUMBER AND PERCENT OF STUDENTS REPRESENTED BY PARENTS AT PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES

During the 2022-23 school year, Zeeland Quest had 144/150, comprising 96% of parents representing their student(s) at parent-teacher conferences.

CONCLUSION

ZPS is proud of the work happening in each building. The commitment of district staff to ensure that all Zeeland students are able to learn in an environment where they feel safe, valued, and loved is evident at all levels. At Zeeland Quest, we are proud of the ongoing growth that students are making. Our teachers and parents are committed to the education of our children, and we have created a culture that allows our children to feel safe, valued and loved, all while knowing that there are no limits to when, how or where we learn.. With the partnership of family and community, we take pride in fostering lifelong learners.

Sincerely,

Joe Grit