The state assessment data is back, and the data for Christian County Public Schools shows there is plenty of room for improvement as the district moves forward with goals to get there.
Speaking with local media, district officials explained the new assessment ranking system—its color coded this year, 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.
In elementary, middle school and high school levels, CCPS received an orange rating, one tick worse than the state average of yellow. Individual schools were also ranked on the system, with officials saying many schools were within only a few points of ranking yellow instead of orange—the highest ranked school in the district was Sinking Fork Elementary, while the lowest was Freedom Elementary, which has received a federal CSI designation, putting it in the bottom five percent of schools in Kentucky.
In some good news, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary has improved out of its CSI designation, and Assessment Director Zachary Hibbs says they’ve seen improvement in achievement gaps across the district.
District officials say they’ll be focusing more closely students with disabilities, to help close the achievement gaps between them and their peers. Students taking the ACT in high school also increased their composite scores at the same rate as the state, and the graduation rate remained above the state average at 90.2 percent.
Students in elementary, middle and high schools consistently had a higher or at the state level of percentage of novice scores in reading, math, science, and social studies, while also having less than the percentage or near meeting it for proficient-distinguished scores. Superintendent Chris Bentzel says they’re not happy with the results, and plans are already underway to get scores up across the board.
He says it’s their goal to see improvement by the end of the school year, with the goal of seeing schools and the district into the green ranking by the time assessment data comes back next year.
Bentzel says they’re no longer talking about COVID-19—this will be the first year they’re able to really focus on instruction and school life without any restrictions, and they intend to take advantage of that. You can view the data for the district as a whole or by individual school on the Kentucky School Report Card website.