State accreditation grades released last week by the state for Calhoun County Schools featured some positives and negatives.
The positives came in the form of four schools – Bruce Elementary, Bruce High, Vardaman Elementary and Vardaman High all earning a B in the letter grade system. The negatives came from Calhoun City Schools where the elementary and high school both received a D while the middle school, which is no more, was graded an F.
Despite the disappointment in the Calhoun City marks, the overall performance by the school district was an improvement.
“We were 20 points higher than we were last year and we are approaching a B district wide,” Supt. Dr. Lisa Langford said. “We were just 14 points short this time. That is our goal district wide. We want to be a consistent B district.”
Looking over all the data from the state, Dr. Langford said there was plenty to be excited about.
“Obviously there are some strong spots we were very pleased with. We had two high schools – Bruce and Vardaman – who earned two levels of improvement from Ds to Bs. That’s not easy to do. That’s quite a feat,” Dr. Langford said. “Those two schools worked hard all year. It was quite evident all year they were focused and monitoring their progress well and it showed.”
Looking deep inside the numbers, Dr. Langford said the schools deserve credit in all areas, but they also were effective in focusing on specific areas of need.
“They did well all around. There is no way you can earn that level of achievement and not do well across the board, but both schools paid a great deal of attention to their seventh and eighth grade tests,” Dr. Langford said.
The formula for calculating scores for high schools with more than just ninth through twelfth grades was changed by the state, which benefited the district. Seventh and eighth grade students have more state tests to take as opposed to ninth through twelfth graders who are tested strictly in the four subject areas – English, Algebra, Biology and U.S. History.
That put a higher percentage of the burden of the overall school in the past, for schools like BHS and VHS, on the 7th and 8th grade scores, compared to more traditional high schools in the state. This year the state separated the seventh and eighth grades as a separate school score and then converted those and the ninth-twelfth scores into one with a weighted mean.
“This helped us because we did focus on our seventh and eighth graders because they were a point of concern last year,” Dr. Langford said. “It paid off and those schools deserve a lot of credit.”
Other highlights included the performances by Bruce and Vardaman elementaries.
“Bruce Elementary went from a C to a B and were only four points from an A,” Dr. Langford said. “What you can take from that is our decision to restructure and bring the fourth grade down was very successful for us. It functioned exactly the way we expected to function. They did a wonderful job.”
“Vardaman Elementary is always strong. I think in the history of Mrs. (Dedee) Lee’s tenure they have had a C twice and every other time they’ve been above that, which is phenomenal,” Dr. Langford said.
Vardaman Elementary excelled with the “EL” component, which boosted the entire district in a big way.
“They blew it out of the water,” Dr. Langford said. “They are a really good school that always has high expectations for themselves every year.”
Bruce Upper Elementary maintained a solid C.
Calhoun City Middle School has since been dissolved and absorbed into Calhoun City High School as part of more district restructuring in attempt to improve some of the issues that showed in this year’s accreditation grades with the school earning an F.
“We knew when we did our final benchmark in February that we had some major concerns to address,” Dr. Langford said. “We started taking action at that time, planning and putting supports in place to address those needs.”
Calhoun City High School earned a D. Factors included some less than positive “banked” scores from the year prior that put them in a hole and they lost ground on graduation rate which counts twice.
“It’s not bad, that’s just a fluctuation from year-to-year,” Dr. Langford said of the graduation rate. “It was still above the state average.”
Calhoun City Middle and High Schools are now all together under one administration and the district has added a math interventionist, English language interventionist, altered the schedule to include an enrichment period for additional support, added an assistant principal (Nicole Chandler) who is an instructional specialist, and a mentor teacher.
“It’s worth noting the greatest number of new teachers in the district are at Calhoun City High School,” Dr. Langford said.
They also added a full-time lead teacher in Coach Chad White.
“He’s strong instructionally as well,” Dr. Langford said.
Calhoun City Elementary dropped from an A to a D. Dr. Langford explained the phenomenal growth the prior year lifted the school to an A, but it put the school in an extremely difficult situation to maintain that level.
“It’s almost impossible to keep an A,” she said.
While some drop was expected, falling to a D was certainly well short of expectations. Changes made to try and address things include scheduling co-teaching in third and fourth grade to take advantage of some staff strengths inside the school.
“I think that will be very beneficial,” Dr. Langford said.
They also added a full-time lit coach.
Bruce and Calhoun City elementaries have also added part-time amplified data coaches through the state, which will also be a big benefit, she said.
Dr. Langford said the district is putting a lot of emphasis on raising proficiency levels at all schools.
“We are continuing to work toward higher levels of proficiency with our students. That’s an area that has been below the state average for us,” she said. “We’ve always done a good job of growing students, but we need more students to be proficient, because that means they have mastered the curriculum and are ready to move on to the next grade. That’s a focus area for us.”
Those efforts include identifying issues as early as possible and then providing additional supports for those students to try and get them where they need to be.
The district isn’t offering excuses for any of the results, but there are realities that do create greater obstacles for Calhoun County Schools that many districts in the state don’t incur.
“We could always use more staff, in all locations. The bigger districts have all sorts of interventionists, data coaches, support personnel, that we’re unable to provide,” Dr. Langford said. “There are programs we could use. There is a program called School Status that we could really utilize, but it is very expensive. It would help us in our overall cause because it encompasses so many different things – it’s a communication piece, progress monitoring, provides data on specific locations and demographics – but it’s a lot of money.”
The district did acquire a $700,000 competitive STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) grant for an after school and summer enrichment program for students in grades 6-9 at the Career and Technical Center that is also expected to pay big dividends. The Journal will be profiling that program in the coming weeks.
“Overall I think we do a phenomenal job with what we have. We’re one of the few districts that doesn’t have assistant principals and counselors at every school,” Dr. Langford said, “not to mention all the other support staff that larger districts have that we don’t.”
“We’re in such a better place than we’ve been. We are constantly working to change our culture and raise expectations across the board. It’s going to take a while to get to where we want but we are making progress,” she said. “I feel like we are providing more instructional support for our teachers than we ever have and we are more transparent than ever before and gaining trust through the actions we are taking.”