School turnaround and long-term transformation, built together.

One of the lowest-performing schools in Texas

Corpus Christi ISD first partnered with engage2learn in 2011, when a Magnet School Assistance Program grant set out to turn two existing schools into magnet schools. At the new magnet school, attendance rose from 93.1% to 96.8%, discipline referrals fell from 17.5% to 7.8%, and test scores rose 6-8% in every subject, more than 20% for students with special needs, in one year.

In 2014 the district won Texas Title I Priority Schools grants for its lowest-performing schools. One was Kostoryz Elementary: below 50% in every content area and grade level, discipline referrals climbing, rated Improvement Required, and so discouraging a place to work that it lost 70% of its teachers the year before the partnership expanded.

A three-year plan to change the culture

With a $5.7 million transformation grant, Kostoryz and engage2learn wrote a three-year improvement plan. Year one designed a shared vision for learning; year two defined clear methods for reaching it; year three put in place the systems that would sustain it.

engage2learn coached principals and teachers inside their school on best practices grounded in research, and captured their professional growth in its coaching platform, now GroweLab, so school and district leaders could see the effect on learning. Teachers learned to meet each student at their level with individual growth plans, and by the final year were running weekly collaborative instructional design time on their own.

From the bottom 3% to the 60th percentile

After one year, students were growing academically and teachers were confident in the new methods; heading into the second year, teacher retention rose to 94%. Kostoryz climbed from the bottom 3% of Texas elementary schools in 2014 to the 60th percentile, and its teachers still use the practices they learned, with rising scores to show for it.

609

places climbed among Texas elementary schools since 2014, Kostoryz Elementary

94%

teacher retention heading into year two, after losing 70% of its teachers the year before