Opening Excellence Classes In The City Of Bet Shemesh

The city of Beit Shemesh, located in the outskirts of Jerusalem, has approximately 130,000 residents and is home to a very diverse population. A growing ultra-orthodox Jewish community comprises 65% of the residents and half of the population is under 18 years old. The education system in the city includes 43 middle and high schools, of which only 13 participate in the matriculation exam. Today, although 27% of the students start the five-unit mathematics track in tenth grade, only 17% complete the course in twelfth grade. The municipality estimates that this drop down is a result of students that arrive unprepared from middle school. In middle school, there are currently five excellence classes, in which only 20% (155) of the students participate.
To address this issue, the municipality is planning to open nine additional excellence classes, so that by 2023, 40% (300 students) of the city’s 9^th grade students will have the opportunity to learn at a high level. This effort will require assisting the 40 existing mathematics and 24 science teachers to improve their practice. The plan is to operate two professional learning communities for mathematics and science teachers of the state and state-religious schools, and a separate professional development community for the mathematics teachers of the ultra-orthodox schools. Guided by an academic institution, the teachers will meet for 60 hours in order to develop teaching practices that will suit the high-level mathematical thinking skills aligned with the excellence levels of PISA and its applications in science.
At the outset of the program, the teachers will attend a summer seminar to prepare them for the applied mathematical skills they will teach during the year. School principals and their heads of pedagogy will be invited to a professional forum, where they will share knowledge and common challenges and work on creating and embedding a culture of excellence in their schools. To operate the program, the city will appoint a municipal program manager and an organizational consultant. They will also organize local conferences to launch the program in each school year and allocate additional four teaching hours for five new excellence classes in the state and state-religious schools, and two supplementary mathematics teaching hours for four new classes in the ultra-orthodox schools.
The success of the program will be measured by using a diagnostic test with a goal for at least 70% of the students to successfully meet the 5-6 PISA levels in mathematics.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 374