|
By Joel Frady
One week after the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results,
part of the national No Child Left Behind program, announced
that only one of the five Ashe County Schools met AYP, the preliminary
results from North Carolina's ABC's of Public Education (a state
accountability model) tell a different story.
At a press conference held on Thursday, Aug. 6, Ashe County
Schools Superintendent Travis Reeves announced that all five
schools made positive growth during the 2008-09 school year.
The ABC model is based on end-of-course testing in reading,
math and science, and the results showed everything from schools
meeting expected growth, such as Ashe County High School (which
raised their performance composite from 81.4 percent to 82.8
percent) to the high growth achieved by the other four schools.
Blue Ridge Elementary raised their score from by 13.5 percent
(from 53 percent to 66.5 percent) while Mountain View Elementary
(70 percent to 81 percent), Westwood Elementary (71.9 percent
to 81.6 percent) and Ashe County Middle School (75.8 percent
to 82.5 percent) also posted large improvements.
The high school, middle school, Mountain View and Westwood will
all be recognized as Schools of Distinction by the North Carolina
Board of Education, while Blue Ridge will be recognized as a
School of Progress.
"All in all, we're very proud of the progress that we've
made," said Reeves.
Only Mountain View Elementary met AYP, a standard based on each
school meeting expectations in a variety of subgroups based
on factors such as race, economic situation and learning ability.
Each of the other four schools only missed achieving their AYP
goal by one subgroup, and Reeves had said that the AYP results
were "not a comprehensive indicator of everything that
is happening in the schools."
While he feels the ABC results are a "separate story"
from the AYP results, he said that the ABC results provide "a
better story as a while school." He later added, "as
you look at our scores compared to state averages, they're quite
significantly higher in many areas. Not that we're complacent
… there's still a lot of room to grow, and we know that
and our teachers know that. They're working very hard to grow
in many different areas."
Keith McClure, director of curriculum for grades seven through
12, said that they will be focused on making sure that needy
students get "early interventions" and that each school
is working on professional learning communities that will "look
at areas that need improvement and create strategies to meet
the goals."
Reeves noted that each class must be taken into account when
making these plans.
"We know that every year, students are different,"
he said. "They have different needs, strengths and weaknesses
and come from different families. It's kind of hard to compare
this year's third grade to last year's third grade.
"We have to focus on each class and student individually,"
he added.
Kim Barnes, director of curriculum for preschool through sixth
grade, said that they are also "working harder to involve
parents in their childrens' education." She noted that
morning and afternoon tutoring programs also play a big role,
along with extracurricular learning activities such as those
offered by the N.C. Cooperative Extension.
In a statement, Reeves said that "good is not good enough
for our students. We must continue to improve and provide the
absolute best academic experience for our students, pre-Kindergarten
through grade 12."
To find out more about the Ashe County School system, click
to www.ashe.k12.nc.us or call (336) 246-7175.
|
Get Firefox