Dupage Policy Journal

Things are looking up for Hadley Junior High School as a recent Glen Ellyn School District board meeting revealed the campus had been redesignated as a school to watch.

The district welcomed the news as it sets the bar for not Hadley, but other district campuses. Hadley was first designated as such in 2018 and is now redesignated this year.

A school to watch in Illinois is a campus that excels in academic excellence, social equity, developmental responsiveness, and systems and structures. The designation opportunity comes every three years, although Covid set Hadley back a year to a four-year gap.

Principal Steve Diveley addressed the board and recognized the many staff and programs that help Hadley run efficiently.

“Really that the most important thing, I think, from a board level, board perspective is what the schools to watch is really a continuous improvement model,” he said.  

The four areas that the school is assessed on and that they evaluate themselves on and try to grow and improve in each year are those listed above.

School staff shared the efforts they had made to improve in each of the four areas that they need to excel.

“We use that rubric that we get evaluated with,” said Diveley. “We use that at least once a year to evaluate ourselves internally, and it is how we keep track of the practices that are deemed most efficient, most effective for students who are an 11 through the 14-age group. The Hadley staff spends time reviewing the rubric, looking at the different descriptors and changing our practices, our programs, the things we do in the classroom, and to achieve the designation year like every three years for the redesignation, we have to show growth from where we were before. That first time is just you doing it. And then this time we had to show how we have grown over the past four years from where we were before.”

For their systems and structures component, assistant principal Bob Guzzetti said they have specific middle school student leadership teams and ties with teachers to ensure no students fall through the cracks. They also have team coordinators for all ten division teams in the building, who work with each other to ensure all groups align. For social equity, they follow a 60/20 model, which is 60 minutes of instruction to 20 minutes of intervention and support time to ensure students receive support.

The third component, departmental responsiveness, includes a daily check between students and teachers to establish communication.

For academic excellence, Hadley focused on co-teaching, which means all teachers, all students, special ed or general, experience community teaching and learning each week. The school has also curated a map of assessment data to examine student achievements and challenges across the entire building and all subjects.  

Hadley has also been chosen to host as an exploratory site and will be presenting their methods at a conference on June 16.