Thornapple Kellogg Schools
Ensuring Student Success!

We are committed to developing the best possible curricular opportunities for the students of Thornapple Kellogg Schools.  As a result, we continually work to meet and exceed state and national standards by aligning to local, state, and national content expectations.  Our school improvement process has evolved to include a systemic process for annually evaluating the need for change and improvement.

In order to ensure continued growth relative to student achievement, teachers and administrators work together to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  We began alignment procedures several years ago by adopting a process known as the Power Standards.  Teachers and administrators have been utilizing this process collaboratively to prioritize state standards and to create common assessments.  The goal is to align curriculum K-12, but also to develop more meaningful and useful data through our assessment process for the purpose of informing instruction at the classroom level. 

At Thornapple Kellogg, we use a variety of common assessments, including MEAP, Michigan Merit Exam (MME), Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), Dibels, and a host of locally developed common assessments.   The data derived from these assessments serves to drive our instruction through the development of intervention strategies created by data teams.  Our teachers and administrators regularly assemble in these teams to discuss best practices and develop intervention strategies based on the assessment results.

Beginning in the fall of the 2011 school year, all school districts in the state of Michigan will begin implementing the Common Core Standards.  The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have worked collaboratively with representation from 48 of the 50 states to develop these standards.  As a result, almost every state in the Union will implement K-12 common core standards in the fall of 2011.  To date, only language arts and math have been developed, but science and social studies well be completed sometime in the very near future.  We will utilize the Power Standards process to transition these standards into our curriculum at Thornapple Kellogg.

Thanks to the dedication of our teachers, support staff, administration, and our students, we continue to rank high in MEAP scores as compared to surrounding districts, as well as those districts in the Kent ISD, of which we are a part.    Please feel free to call our office with any questions regarding curriculum and instruction.