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Running head: COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL ASSESSMENT

Kallie LaForest
Comprehensive School Assessment
Arizona State University
PPE 310
February 7, 2016
Dr. Hesse

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Assessment Results

This semester I am at Stetson Hills Elementary. Since I have only been here a few weeks
and I am jumping in mid-year, I had difficulty accurately assessing my school. I talked with my
mentor as I was assessing the school, but many of the things that she said that the school is either
not online or is not user friendly for parents and community members to navigate. This was a
weakness of the school. I tried to find out the P.E schedules and specifics about content or

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activities, and I finally noticed that there was little hyperlinks to each P.E. teachers website and
that there was a separate middle school athletics website.
Despite their weakness in easily accessible Physical Education information, the school
has many different online food and nutrition information. Most of this information comes from
the district. I found details about the different food options, one of which is vegetarian, and that
students entres come with milk, fruit and vegetable sides. There also is a fresh fruit and
vegetable bar for the students. The school lunch menu not only promotes the importance of
eating breakfast it also has a blurb about the ways that being actives can positively change your
day. These included better sleep, and mood, and it fuels your brain and it provides opportunities
to bond with friends. This combined with a quarterly wellness newsletter is a significant strength
of the school.

According to the results from the school Assessment tool one weakness of Stetson Hills
Elementary is lacking in curriculum. I believe that despite the information that is being released
online, there is a deficient of health and fitness being integrated into the classroom. There is not
connection from P.E. back into the general classrooms. I have seen little to no school wide
promotion of including health and fitness into all classes.
I have seen a school wide dance party for a whole school all time best. This is great in
theory, but the time that I observed it had two weakness. First of all it happened at the very end
of the day, so it did not act like a brain break. It just meant that the students packed up earlier. It
was also to a not a great song for dancing to (We Are the Champions), so many of the students
did not participate.

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One of the strengths that I have seen is in my mentor's classroom. One of the days most
of the students got their all time best, so my mentor pulled up GoNoodle and they did two
different dance videos. She also teaches social and emotional health at the end of the day with a
few of our students who have a social and or behavioral disability. She uses a social and
emotional learning curriculum called Second Step, which promotes skills for social and
academic success.
One way to improve the policies in place at my school is help foster a school wide
healthy and active approach to teaching. This ideology is in place within various teachers, but to
have a more significant impact it should be campus wide. Teachers do share their ideas and tricks
of the trade, but to get true buy in from all or most teachers it takes the trend to get so large they
feel that it is necessary to jump in and they have to see results. To do this it would take
administrators support and help to promote teachers to being using this approach. It would be
important to have some professional development to help the teachers who have not started get
their feet wet. More teachers using brain breaks and getting their students up and moving would
increase the students daily active time during school.
Right now P.E. is completely separate from the rest of the teachers, which makes it
impossible for the ideas and skills to be continued outside of P.E. You cannot begin to collaborate
if your have no idea what is happening in either world. If P.E teachers posted short blurbs of their
lessons like the core class teachers do, it would be a step towards collaboration. Collaboration
would benefit the core teachers, because they would be getting their students up and moving,
while allowing the P.E. teacher to begin enhancing their curriculum with the content the student
are learning. Math can connect to adding daily steps, or calculating distance or area of fields or

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courts they play on. Science can easily go hand in hand with health and nutrition. This would
help boost the two lowest sections of the comprehensive school assessment which are during
school and curriculum. The during school would improve because the core teachers would be
able to utilize what the students learn in P.E. to rejuvenate the students and keep them safely
participating in physical activities. The curriculum would improve because the P.E. teachers can
use their students background know from science to more effectively teach personal health and
nutrition.
Using the information from the Comprehensive School Assessment I can engage teachers
and students to work on improving the school score. The school already has a lot going for it, so
that creates incentive to work on being even better. With teachers on campus that have seen the
impact and how much it spread they will continue to be change agents, who are constantly
promoting more healthful behaviors.
The school has a once a year running fundraiser, which is good but spiraling off this
event the school could have many more physical activity events. A morning or evening hike on
the mountain near the campus, could be a really fun social event for the students to spend time
with their families and others, which being physically active. They also have a staff versus
student volleyball and basketball games, that could expand to include parents. I saw this happen
at my last school. If it happened more than once a year it would help build the school and
community connection, while have opportunities for all to be active and involved.
Analysing the school to see its strengths and weakness can help support my topic for the
Signature Assignment through allowing me to see where the growth can be made. To help

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promote the growth at this school or my future school having research on the connection
between exercise and stress will be a supportive incentive.
Information
I am at Stetson Hills Elementary School in the Deer Valley Unified School District.
Stetson had 1,025 students enrollment in 2014 and 18.4 percent of the students were on free or
reduced lunch according to School Digger. The proportions of ELLs was not reported likely due
to the population being too low. School Digger reported that in 2014 the student to teacher ratio
was 18.9 to 1. The racial makeup of the school in 2014 was, 88.6% White(794 students), 12.6%
Hispanic (129 students), 3.4% Asian (35 students), 2% African American (20 students), 11
American Indian students, and 3.1% two or more races (35 students) Stetson Hills Elementary
serves students from Kindergarten to 8th grade.
Stetson Hills Elementary is located in a suburban area in Glendale. It is public school that
does not qualify for Title 1. According to AZ Report Cards Stetson received a letter grade of a A
in 2014. The community surrounding the school has a higher percentage of households without
kids according to United States Zip Codes. This could impact the community involvement and
connection to the school.

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References:
Stetson Hills Elementary School (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2016, from:
http://www.schooldigger.com/go/AZ/schools/0775002128/school.aspx
Stetson Hills Elementary School (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2016, from:
https://www.azreportcards.org/AcademicIndicators/Indicators
Stats and Demographics for the 85310 ZIP Code (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2016, from:
http://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/85310/

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Criteri
a
Assess
ment
SCOR
E:

School
Contex
t
SCOR
E:

Exemplary: Points (5)

Proficient: Points (3)

Unsatisfactory: Points (1)

A minimum of 2
strengths and 2
weaknesses were
described
Assessment was
completed online and
posted to your
EPortfolio
Suggestions to improve
school policies were
clearly stated
At least 2 suggestions
to engage stakeholders
were provided

A minimum of 1
strength and 1
weakness was
described
Suggestions to improve
school policies were
stated but lacked
sufficient detail
At least 1 suggestion to
engage stakeholders
was provided
Assessment was
completed online and
not in your EPortfolio

Assessment was not

completed online or in
your EPortfolio
Strengths and
weaknesses were not,
or poorly described
Suggestions to improve
school policies were
not stated
No suggestions to
engage stakeholders
were provided

School context
contained detailed
information on
grade levels
% free/reduced lunch
enrollment,
proportion ELLs
average class size
urban/rural/suburban,

School context
contained some
detailed information
on
grade levels
% free/reduced lunch
enrollment,
proportion ELLs
average class size

School context
contained little detailed
information on
grade levels
% free/reduced lunch
enrollment,
proportion ELLs
average class size
urban/rural/suburban,

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ethnic makeup
urban/rural/suburban,
state test scores
ethnic makeup
AYP status
state test scores
All of the following are AYP status
listed in the file
Most of the following
document name
are listed in the file
submitted
document name
Lastname.firstname.ass
submitted
ignment#.course#
Lastname.firstname.ass
This rubric was added
ignment#.course#
to the last page of the
This rubric was added
document submitted
but not at the end of the
Your document was in
document submitted
APA 6.0 format,
Document was in APA,
including cover page,
however errors were
body and reference
found in formatting of
section with no errors
the sections

ethnic makeup
state test scores
AYP status
Few of the following
are listed in the file
document name
submitted
Lastname.firstname.ass
ignment#.course#
This rubric was not
added to the document
submitted
APA was not used