Opening Enhanced Ability Groups

Established in 2010, Darca is a school network with 37 schools, attended by 24,450 students located mainly in the geographic periphery of Israel. The network collaborated with the foundation several years ago in order to increase the rate of graduates from the five-unit track in mathematics from 11% in 2013 to 18% in 2018. In recent years, the network changed its governance structure by collaborating with the Azrieli Foundation.

Darca has turned to us once again, since its graduation rate from the five-unit track dropped to less than 16% in 2020. The network noticed that a similar rate of students graduate their excellence classes in middle school and concluded that under present conditions, they are fully realizing their current pool of excellence. In order to expand the pipeline, they are planning to open enhanced ability groups in eight schools for 488 eighth and ninth grade students. The classes will receive two additional teaching hours weekly in mathematics, on top of the five hours of mathematics they already study every week. These hours will be devoted to teaching applied mathematics, using tasks to be selected from the material currently being developed by academic institutions, and aligned with PISA proficiency levels 5-6.

In order to support the teachers, the network is planning to organize professional development for 15 middle and high school department heads and twenty-five mathematics teachers of the new enhanced ability groups, the existing excellence classes and regular high ability groups. From the second year, the 15 department heads will attend a designated community at Oranim Academic College to learn how to lead school-based communities for the teachers who implement the new material. Darca also plans to train two teacher leaders who will provide instructional coaching to each of the teachers and the schools’ department heads once a month.

In addition, they will organize two annual study days for teachers and school principals in order to create a support network for the program and monitor progress. The goal of the program is that by 2025, at least 26% (538) of the ninth grade students will graduate from an excellence track as a result of their participation in the new enhanced ability groups. Success will be measured by a diagnostic tool prepared by CET, with the goal of at least 85% of the students graduating excellence classes successfully meeting the PISA framework’s proficiency levels 5-6.

* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 488