At Wednesday’s regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of Greenville Public School District, Superintendent Dr. Debra Dace informed the board of the progress the district is making towards the goal of an improved accountability score from their current F ranking.
One result Dace gleamed from the data presented to the board was the growth in reading scores for those students who scored in the bottom 25 percentile in reading across the district, noting they are halfway there in meeting their goals for improved reading scores.
“This shows that we’re really focusing our efforts on those students in the bottom 25 percent,” Dace said.
Dr. Loretta Shannon expressed her concern as to whether those students who received honors such as Principal’s List and Superintendent’s List accurately correlated with assessment performance.
Shannon said her concern was genuine and emphasized while there are long lists of who kids who have received esteemed academic honors, the state assessment data indicates otherwise.
Shannon posed whether the students are really attaining mastery of skills or, “Are we patting ourselves on the back saying ‘I’ve done a good job and here they are?’”
Dace said the assessment program being implemented, Case 21, mirrors very closely to what students will see on the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP) test.
Dace added those items provided by Case 21 is the district’s way of trying to ensure that the rigor is there.
