Midstate schools see mixed state score results

The state’s College and Career Ready Performance Index scores for the 2014-15 school year came out Tuesday, and Middle Georgia districts showed mixed results.

Scores in Houston, Jones and Peach counties all increased, with Jones County improving from 76.2 to 80.8 for the biggest improvement from 2014 to 2015. That district also passed Houston and Monroe counties for the highest score among seven Middle Georgia counties — Bibb, Crawford, Houston, Jones, Monroe, Peach and Twiggs.

Jones County school Superintendent Chuck Gibson said there were several keys to improving the district’s results — student engagement, faculty and staff efforts, supportive parents and a positive learning environment.

“All of those factors together factor into any kind of growth,” he said.

Even with a solid district CCRPI score, he added, there are still individual students to reach that could raise the system’s score even higher.

“There’s always that lens to look through for higher achievement,” Gibson said.

The index, first used for the 2011-12 school year, is intended to be a comprehensive measure of school achievement. It takes into account such data as test scores, graduation rates and other figures. The 2015 data was released later than would normally be expected due to the scoring process for the first Georgia Milestones assessments.

In the latest results, the overall state average was up from 2014, jumping from 72.3 to 75.5. Jones County and Houston County, which scored a 78, were the only districts above the state average for 2015.

Bibb County’s score dropped from a 62.2 to a 60.8, and Crawford, Monroe and Twiggs counties also showed a decrease. Monroe’s score dropped from 80.8 to 73.1, a downturn of more than seven percentage points, while Crawford’s fell almost nine points from 63.2 to 54.4.

Each of Monroe’s schools saw a decrease, including a drop of more than 10 points for Monroe County Middle School, which remained above the state middle school average with a score of 74.5.

“It’s just some different areas across the district where it did go down,” Mike Hickman, Monroe County’s school superintendent, said.

Hickman and other area leaders noted that comparing scores from past years is tricky because the 2014-15 numbers were the first to use the Georgia Milestones assessment.

Also, the formula changed for the 100-point CCRPI scale, said Tony Jones, research, evaluation, assessment and accountability director for Bibb County schools. For 2014, student achievement accounted for 60 points, with student progress accounting for 30 points and achievement gap — the gap between students at different achievement levels — accounting for 10 points.

For 2015, achievement carried just 50 points while student progress accounted for 40. That helped schools such as Burdell-Hunt Elementary, which picked up all 40 progress points on the way to a 70.4, improve by more than seven points.

“Some of them changed ... statistically enough to make it significant,” Jones said.

Hickman said Monroe County schools had been working to fix areas of need, but the timing of the data release was “awkward.” The 2013-2014 numbers didn’t come out until December 2014, meaning that half the 2014-15 school year had already passed before teachers and administrators could assess potential changes.

Despite the drop in CCRPI results, Hickman was confident in the “action steps” the district had taken, such as increased training for teachers on classroom strategies that has been going on for a few years now.

“We’re going in the right direction; it’s just going to take a little time,” he said.

Bibb County’s high schools followed state trends by increasing slightly from last year’s numbers, while elementary and middle schools both decreased for the district.

“So while we’re encouraged by some of the results, we do know there is room for us to continue to work toward improvement,” Curtis Jones, Bibb County’s superintendent, said in a statement. “Looking forward, we know this school year that attendance and discipline are better, and our belief is that will begin to translate into a higher student achievement.”

Tony Jones said that attendance plays a tangible role within the score formula, but it also plays an indirect role in other measures.

“Kids can’t learn if they’re not at school,” he said. “If they weren’t there, they’ve got gaps in their knowledge.”

Additionally, students who aren’t on grade level for reading will likely have a hard time scoring well on other test subjects, he said.

Still, he said that benchmark tests and other data releases such as the actual Milestones scores have allowed educators to work for progress in the 2016 numbers, the first full set of data since Curtis Jones took office in April 2015. Those scores are expected to be released by this fall.

“We can see trends, and we can know kind of where we’re at,” Tony Jones said.

This story was originally published May 3, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Midstate schools see mixed state score results."