During the summer months of 2022, I was in something of a unique position. I knew that, in the fall, I would have to complete the Johns Hopkins University Capstone Project, and I knew that this would take a fairly significant amount of time. I also knew that my summer courses were a relatively light workload, and so I determined that I should work ahead, and attempt to do as much preparatory work on the Capstone project as I possibly could. Assessing the artifacts and evidence to which I had access, I determined that I could write a full report on my students' academic growth in the 2021-2022 academic year, and in so doing fulfill each of the rubric requirements for the Dramatic Academic Growth section of the Capstone project.
Having then completed and formatted the report as a standalone document, I sent it to my Capstone Project coach for an initial look. Adding in her revision comments, I edited the report to answer each rubric criteria as exactly and completely as possible.
Below, you will see the final report, in its entirety. Inside the report are the necessary artifacts, pieces of evidence, and statistical conclusions required in the Capstone rubric. References and sources are also contained within the report itself. It can be viewed natively on this page, or opened in a new window for easier reading and text-searching. The Table of Contents is accessible as a pop-out menu on the left side of the screen when you open the document in a new window.
As demonstrated in the report above, my students experienced a positive level of academic growth in the 2021-2022 academic year, against a variety of hurricane-level headwinds. Those headwinds include persistent and widespread poverty, the return to in-person learning during the COIVD-19 pandemic, learning loss from the 2019-2021 period of the pandemic, associated trauma from said pandemic, and a first-year teacher (first-year teachers are not generally associated with strong academic growth). Their success is all the more remarkable considering these headwinds, but their level of progress is impressive under any circumstances. The majority of students made more than one year of academic progress, which went a significant ways towards combating pandemic-related learning loss and preparing my students for high school. I believe, as I argue in the report, that specific instructional decisions I made, as described in the quantitative section and as observed in the qualitative section, contributed to their success.