Macon Charter scores below Bibb average on most Milestones tests

The first round of Georgia Milestones test results are in for Macon Charter Academy, and the numbers weren’t favorable for the first-year school.

The charter school had a lower percentage of students who tested “proficient” on the assessment than Bibb County’s overall percentage in 20 of the 24 Georgia Milestones content areas.

In four of those areas — fourth-grade math, fourth-grade science, fifth-grade social studies and seventh-grade science — none of Macon Charter’s students achieved the “proficient” level.

Bibb County school Superintendent Curtis Jones said he was particularly concerned “about the growth of students” and how that was reflected in the scores.

“A charter school is supposed to help us,” Jones said.

Part of MCA’s charter, or the contract it operates under, was an intention to feed Central High School’s International Baccalaureate program. By the end of the 2016-17 school year, the school is supposed to match or beat the district and state College and Career Ready Performance Index scores, which are based largely on Georgia Milestones results.

Jones pointed to individualized data the district had compiled that reflected that some students had regressed during their year at Macon Charter Academy. Some students who had scored as “developing learners” last year are now testing as “beginning learners.” That’s the lowest of four achievement levels and indicates that the student has not demonstrated proficiency in the grade-level knowledge specified in Georgia’s content standards.

Georgia Milestones scores are broken into four groups. “Beginning” scores are in the lowest tiers, and students would be held back in third, fifth and eighth grades for such a score in reading or math. The “developing” level is second and comprises students who can go to the next grade but will need remediation, while “proficient” and “distinguished” scores mean a student is ready for the next grade in that subject.

“Macon Charter had too many students who moved backward as far as grade band,” Jones said.

More than 80 percent of Macon Charter’s students tested as “beginning learners” in fourth- and seventh-grade science, which was also true of Riley Elementary School at the fourth-grade level and Ballard-Hudson Middle School at the seventh-grade level.

MCA founder and governing board President Monya Rutland described the scores as a “baseline” result and pointed out that the school was in the middle of the pack in many of the scores when compared with other Bibb County schools.

“We’ve had some children that had great needs, and that’s OK,” she said.

While the overall results were not ideal, Rutland said the scores would provide “guidance” for the upcoming school year. She noted that Jones himself had called his first year a baseline year for the district, and she wanted the same consideration for MCA.

“I don’t see this as doom and gloom,” she said. “I see this as just a prescription.”

Macon Charter is expected to open Monday with the rest of Bibb County’s public schools despite facing an Aug. 18 termination hearing before the state school board. The termination process had been set to begin in early May after the state found issues with the school’s governance and operations, including teacher training, but a reorganization filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court delayed that timeline.

The school’s leaders have since abandoned that bid to focus on the termination hearing since Judge James Smith ruled in June that the stay related to the filing didn’t apply to the local or state school boards.

Rutland said she hoped that the Milestones scores would have no bearing on the school’s possible closing.

“I don’t see this as weighing in on termination because it’s baseline,” she said.

As long as the school remains open, Jones said the district will have to be more hands-on with Macon Charter’s regular student assessments during the year. In addition, he pointed to teacher qualifications as another area that may need more district scrutiny.

“I think this year we’re going to look harder at that,” he said.

Beyond that, Jones said there wasn’t much the district could do between now and the Aug. 18 hearing. He couldn’t say for sure when the school would close if its charter is terminated.

“My hope is the parents will decide whatever they want to do by Labor Day weekend,” he said.

Macon Charter Academy has a called governing board meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday.

This story was originally published July 27, 2016 at 5:27 PM with the headline "Macon Charter scores below Bibb average on most Milestones tests."