CROSS COUNTY — The Arkansas Department of Education has released its grades for school districts and individual schools.
All schools in the Wynne School District maintained their level from the previous year, except one. However, Wynne Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Moore said not to read too much into that.
“The junior high went from a B to a C. If you just look at that, you don’t understand exactly what’s behind that,” Dr. Moore said. “Last year, they grew significantly and growth is a huge part of that. If you’ve got a student that’s a level one [out of four]. … Three and four are at grade level or advanced. In a level one, if a student grows, you get points for them coming out of the bottom 25 and growing. Then, you also get points for them meeting achievement.”
Dr. Moore said the school received double points for many of those students due to the growth the junior high experienced last year.
“This year, one of the things that you don’t see, all you see is letter grade and you think we went backwards… In achievement, which is what you want, you want kids scoring on grade level or above, threes and fours,” he said. “Our African American population at the junior high grew 13.29 percent in achievement. That means there’s an additional 13.29 percent of those students scoring on grade level or above. They were 44.7 percent the year (the junior high) grew to a B, but they were 58.06 percent this past year.”
The Cross County School District also saw one of its schools — the high school — drop from a B to a C.
Cross County Superintendent Dr. Nathan Morris said the C is a high C and may change after some additional paperwork is submitted to the Arkansas Department of Education.
“Our student achievement stayed up pretty well in the high school, close to where it was last year, but the growth was tremendously less. We need to change that,” Dr. Morris said. “Even when you get someone to a score of three or four, or if you’ve got students in level one intensive support, what they call the bottom quartile, and the twos, it doesn’t matter where you are, we want to see growth every year. Every child deserves to be able to have to grow and we missed the mark on some growth in the high school.
“Our growth was pretty stagnant at the elementary school. Even though their achievement went up, their growth was pretty stagnant which is better than going down,” he added. “We’re going to do some things district wide that we’re going to hone in on growth a little more.”
