Ashkelon Excellence Program

The city of Ashkelon, in the South of Israel, is home to approximately 160,000 residents, including new immigrants from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia and Russia. Thirty-three thousand students are enrolled in the city’s education system of which 10,500 attend 13 secondary schools. The middle schools offer 13 excellence classes in 11 schools, serving 456 (28%) students. In 10^th grade, 26% of the students enroll in the five-unit mathematics track, however in 2019 only 14.6% of the twelfth grade students completed it. The municipality estimates that this drop down results from students arriving ill-prepared from middle school.

To address this phenomenon, the municipality is planning a program to raise the bar and expand the circle of excellence in middle school. They intend to open an additional 11 excellence classes in middle school, so that a total of 44% (728) of the students will complete an excellence class by 2024. The municipality will provide four additional weekly teaching hours for these classes in which the students will learn at a high level and strengthen their mathematics and science skills, to enable students who are able and willing to pursue the five-unit track in high school.

In order to support this effort, the municipality will commission an academic institution to provide the teachers with professional development. The academic institution will establish professional learning communities for 20 mathematics teachers, 11 mathematics department heads and 20 science teachers. In these communities, the teachers will become familiar with instructional practices and study materials that promote high-level mathematical thinking aligned with the excellence levels of PISA and its applications in science.

In the first year of the project, new teachers of the excellence classes will receive additional individual coaching. The municipality will also organize a forum for the 22 school principals, where they will share knowledge and common challenges. The principals, teachers and parents will also be invited to conferences and study days. Each year, the municipality will organize preparatory summer camps to prepare students for the next school year.

The goal of the program is that by 2024, 44% (728) of the ninth grade students will graduate from an excellence track, and that 80% of the graduates of the excellence classes will succeed on a diagnostic tool, aligned with the top 5-6 proficiency levels of the PISA framework.