The Mississippi Department of Education, after more than a year delay, released new accreditation grades for all public schools last week for the 2014-15 school year with Calhoun County dropping to an unofficial D, based on the A-F grading scale.
The D is unofficial for the county because a waiver from the state allows schools and districts to stick with the previous year’s grade if it’s higher due to the major changes made in the testing and accreditation system.
The grades are based on a new curriculum, new test, and a new accountability model that significantly changed the rules for schools in one academic year.
Raven Hawkins
Calhoun school officials view the D grade as an “invalid assessment” due to the myriad of problems the district experienced trying to administer the PARCC test used at that time, which has since been replaced.
“Rural schools in Mississippi didn’t have the bandwidth to participate in these assessments successfully without delays, loss of the test, having to come back and finish another day, creating even higher anxiety for students and teachers, which all correlates to student performance,” Calhoun Testing Coordinator Raven Hawkins said. “The districts that did score at a competitive level had bandwidth, one on one initiatives, and facilities where kids didn’t have to rotate in and out.”
The PARCC exam was the first all computerized exam for Calhoun students and the district’s internet capabilities, and lack of computer labs, severely hampered the district’s ability to test, Hawkins said.
“We have one computer lab with 21 working computers with students having to be divided up to test in shifts,” Hawkins said.
She noted schools actually had to spend more hours and days testing than in the actual classroom.
“It was just an unfair assessment to our students, and I don’t mean just our district, but any across the state, any students having to deal with the same adversities ours had to.”
“If you look back at paper and pencil testing, for our socio-economics and the population we serve, we scored at a very high competitive level,” Hawkins said. “I feel we will again as we go forward with MAP.”
MAP (Mississippi Assessment Program) is the new state system that was administered last year replacing PARCC. It is also all on computer, but the school district, through a series of grants, made significant upgrades to its bandwidth prior to last year’s testing.
“I anticipate our MAP scores will be higher this year when we get them back in September,” Hawkins said.
If not including the waiver, Mississippi results on the PARCC exams from two years ago show:
•3 A districts
•12 B districts
•68 C districts
•62 D districts
•1 F district
Calhoun County dropped from a B to a D as a district, so they will retain the B as their official rating.
Among all the surrounding districts, Grenada and Lafayette County both earned Bs. Chickasaw, Houston, Webster, Water Valley, Coffeeville, Oxford, Pontotoc County and City all earned Cs. Okolona is a D.
Individually, the county’s schools scored as follows:
Bruce Elementary D
Bruce High School D
Bruce Upper Elem. C
Calhoun City Elem. D
Calhoun City Middle D
Calhoun City High C
Vardaman Elem. C
Vardaman High D
Hawkins acknowledged the district is waiting on the more current results in September from last school year to get a better evaluation, which she believes will be improved from the grades above.
“I believe we will do much better,” Hawkins said. “The scores might be lower for third grade because it’s a new test, and that could be a trend for years until we have enough computer labs and one on one initiatives in the second grade and lower.”
“I think the third grade reading gate last year was a good picture of how we will be represented with MAP,” Hawkins said. “Our initial third grade test scores, without any restests, was 91% passing. That’s incredible, and I think we need to focus on that being a valid score. It was also a testament to having those reading coaches we haven’t had before that gave us an equal playing field with schools that are much larger.”