“Student Success is the Only Option” is the mantra by which the Greenville Public School District operates.
And, although it’s very early in the school year, student success is “something to celebrate” in light of the Mississippi Department of Education releasing the unofficial Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) test scores.
The district’s accountability rating improved from an F to a D as it acquired a total of 506 points, scored using MDE’s accountability model.
Matty Akin improved from an F to a B; Armstrong maintained an A rating; Emma Boyd improved from a D to an A; Stern improved from a D to a C; Trigg improved from a C to an A; Weddington maintained a C rating; and Greenville High improved from an F to a D rating.
Points are awarded based on test performance in the categories of advanced, proficient, growth and low growth, also known as “bottom 25%,” in the areas of Reading, Math, History and Science.
Superintendent Glenn Dedeaux created a chart that reflected how the district has been graded for the past seven years.
GPSD has gone from 440 in 2016, 463 in 2017, 499 in 2018, 453 in the years 2019-2021 and 505 in 2022.
“Due to Covid, that 453 was maintained as a waiver and this year, coming off of last year and Covid, we actually have a 506 according to the state accountability model today,” said Dedeaux.
His chart also included percentages representing the data (proficiency, growth and low growth) of each tested area at the district level and reminded that 2019 and 2020 were considered “Covid” years with solely online and virtual learning taking place.
“So therefore, we kind of had a drastic learning loss,” Dedeaux pointed out. “However, coming back from 2020, the district did an outstanding job as far as working on learning loss and addressing learning loss and getting back up to 21.4% in proficiency in reading.”
He also commended the district for doing a great job in History proficiency on the high school level.
Concerning growth, Dedeaux noted the zeros listed for tested areas in 2021 with the reason being that MDE did not measure growth as it followed a “Covid year.”
“But if you look at how we performed in growth this year, you will see that we are meeting and exceeding in growth,” he said.
Reading growth for the district was measured at 51.6%; math growth at 62.6%; reading low growth at 57%; and math low growth at 65.8%.
“In order for us to maintain and potentially move it forward, we definitely have to start working on proficiency and addressing our classes and making sure we hit that proficiency mark,” Dedeaux highlighted. “For the past two weeks, I have been meeting with our principals and we were going over the goals for this coming year and the things that we are looking at are our “ABG’s” — that’s our attendance, behavior and our grades.”
He also stressed the importance of making sure attendance is at 95% at all of the schools in the district.
“In order for us to teach our students, they have to be there,” he added. “We definitely need to make sure that we’re doing that.“
