The Kentucky Department of Education released the 2017-2018 student assessment results Tuesday, which showed the Christian County Public School District had reductions in novice and an improved graduation rate.
District Assessment Coordinator Tracey Leath presented the data and stated that no school or district will have an overall score as in past years due to the passage of Senate Bill 1. In addition, she said the reporting method of the new accountability system for 2017-18 is not comparable to the 2016-17 results because it is not fully operational.
Leath stated the one area they have to celebrate is the elementary schools decreased their overall novice in reading.
According to Leath, the results also showed improvement in novice reductions in all four accountable areas in middle schools: reading (1%), math (6.4%), social studies (3.3%), and writing (5.5%). In addition, district middle school students scoring proficient and distinguished increased in the four accountable areas: reading (4.5%), math (3.7%), social studies (2.7%), and writing (11.1%).
The data also showed Christian County High and Hopkinsville High Schools were all above the state’s graduation rate of 90.8.
There were also some other significant individual school highlights, including novice reductions at elementary schools.
Those schools are Crofton, Millbrooke and Indian Hills Elementary Schools.
Because schools are no longer labeled Proficient, Distinguished, etc., as in the previous system, schools who have at least one student group performing below all schools by level are labeled Targeted School Improvement (TSI), a or Comprehensive School Improvement (CSI), meaning that a school overall is in the bottom 5% of all school by level.
Statewide, there are approximately 431 schools that were identified as TSI schools of which Christian County has seven schools with this label. In addition, there are approximately 51 schools statewide labeled as CSI, including Freedom Elementary and Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary Schools. Leath noted Freedom was only half a percentage point of not being labeled as a CSI school.
Superintendent Mary Ann Gemmill noted every district will have their challenges, especially with an incomplete new accountability system that is not fully operational.
