K-PREP and other assessment data for the Christian County School System and other districts in the state is available, and shows a year impacted heavily by the COVID-19 pandemic that the district is working to correct.
Due to an approved accountability waiver and no federal or state designations assigned to individual schools this year, officials with the district say this assessment data is more of a ‘temperature check’ within the school system that shows how their students are currently performing and how they can work to address the issues.
District Assessment Coordinator Zachary Hibbs says they’re not thrilled with the data, as it particularly highlights achievement gaps that must be closed, but he they were happy to see their students performed at similar levels to others across the state.
High school students seem to have been hit the hardest, falling short of the state level for proficient and distinguished scores in math, reading and science—Assistant Superintendent Jessica Addison says they believe that’s due to less time spent in-person for those students, as well as them having to take on more responsibilities at home due to the pandemic.
Hibbs says they’ve already implemented some instruction methods to help those students improve, and they’ll be going over each individual’s school data with them to create plans to benefit specific areas students struggled with in those buildings.
Individual school data is available online through the state’s school report card dashboard. Students who took part in the test—there was an 80 percent participate rate in the district—seemed to stay close to state levels in most subjects. Science had the poorest proficient and distinguished numbers, though students met or exceeded the state levels for proficient and distinguished in Writing. Hispanic student groups in CCPS actually exceeded state levels in all subjects that were tested.
The way the state processes assessment data will once again be changing in 2022, but officials are hopeful that after that they’ll be able to start reliably tracking their data over the years.