Board members at W.S. Neal High School Tuesday night
The W.S. Neal HIgh School FFA Band played and sang "House of the Rising Sun" for the Escambia County (Ala.) Board of Education at Tuesday night's meeting for School Board Recognition Month.
Escambia County (Ala.) School Superintendent John Knott addressed the recently released failing grade given to Escambia County High School by the Alabama Department of Education's State Report Card at Tuesday night's board of education meeting at W.S. Neal High School.
The 'F' given to ECHS places it in the lowest 6 percent based on the ACT Aspire test given to students grades three through eight and 10 across the U.S. last year.
"This assessment did not align to the standards we teach," said Knott. "It is hard to have confidence in data from that particular test. We recognize that we need to improve and work hard to reach our goals."
The Alabama State Report Card provides information based on academic achievement, academic growth, chronic absenteeism and student engagement for third through eighth grades. For 10th grade, it utilizes these in addition to both graduation rates and college or career ready data.
According to the Alabama Department of Education website, there are currently both federal and state reporting obligations which are necessary to fulfill the school accountability requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, and the Legislative School Performance Recognition Program Act.
The state of Alabama as a whole earned a C grade, with 79 points scored overall.
Alabama schools earned the following percentages in each accountability indicator: academic achievement-60.27; academic growth-87.86; graduation rate-87.0; college and career readiness-66.0; and chronic absenteeism-17.68 (the last two are for high schools only).
For the 2016-2017 school year, the average scores in Alabama were 38.98 percent in reading proficiency, 43.64 percent in mathematics proficiency and 34.72 percent in science proficiency. Compare those to Escambia County's scores of 37.42 percent in reading, 37.28 percent in math and 29.47 percent in science. These and other scorers can be found and compared to other years, systems and schools by visiting 54.201.18.221/apps/report-data/pages/Compare on the internet.
"We found some deficiencies and we've put in place a plan of action to address them," said Knott. "At Rachel Patterson, we've put in reading and math best practices, we've got reading specialists, math specialists, a tremendous amount of professional development, mentoring programs as well as best practices for leadership and other educational resources to help with improvement. We regrouped and came up with a new plan. Our schools are working hard and it will be shown in our test scores."
"This report card is very disappointing," said Board Member Danny Benjamin. "We want our schools to be above failing status. We look forward to your bringing us data on how to address these issues."
The next board meeting will be at Escambia County High School at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 22.
