It’s that time of year again, as school systems across Kentucky comb through the return of their testing data to see what it says about their students and their systems—and that includes Christian County Public Schools.
The accountability system used to evaluate schools to color-coded with rankings going from red, orange, yellow, green and blue, with red being the worst and blue being the best. Those rankings are determined from six indicators including assessment results in reading and mathematics, results in science, social studies and writing, English learning progress, quality of school climate and safety, postsecondary readiness for high schools and graduation rate. It also comes with an indicator for a factor known as “change”.
District State Assessment Coordinator Zachary Hibbs says that “change” is both a blessing and a curse, as whatever amount that score is, is then doubled. Hibbs says that can drastically change a school’s ranking.
With that in mind, the overall rankings for the district didn’t change much from last year—the elementary schools are in the ‘yellow’, middle schools in the ‘orange’ and high schools in the ‘yellow’.
Where things did change is in the student rankings, especially in math, as students across the board achieved less novice scores and more proficient and distinguished scores. Elementary schools dropped their novice designations from 32 percent in 2023 to 29 percent in 2024, and their proficient and distinguished went from 39 percent to 42 percent.
In the middle schools, novices fell to 36 percent from 41 percent, and proficient and distinguished went to 34 percent, up from 30 percent. That holds true in math for the high schoolers as well, with novice rankings down to 37 percent from 43 percent, and proficient/distinguished up from 23 percent in 2023 to 27 percent in 2024.
Reading novice and proficient/distinguished percentages stayed fairly similar in comparison to last year’s scores.
Superintendent Chris Bentzel says there were areas of pride, including Hopkinsville High School being within one point of becoming ‘green’, Crofton Elementary sporting the highest overall index in the district, and Sinking Fork showing the most improvement in overall index.
He says they’re particularly proud to report that they had no Target School Improvements designation for African American or Hispanic students for any school in the district, and in fact, those students had a higher percentage of proficient and distinguished scores than the state average, along with less novices.
While Freedom Elementary School did fall into the ‘red’ category this year, they are not designated as a Comprehensive School Improvement facility. Bentzel says there’s work to be done, with the data showing improvements, but plenty of things that need renewed focus.
Bentzel says up until two years ago, CCPS had had a CSI—or a ‘priority school’—in the district for nearly 20 years, and that is not the case now. Officials say they are proud of their students hard work, and they will continue to focus on those areas that need help, especially in science and for students with disabilities in the district.
