Lamb: Kids, teachers more than a test score
Education | Sulphur Springs
The Texas Education Agency recently released district and campus accountability ratings, and Sulphur Springs Independent School District Superintendent Michael Lamb says there’s more to the story than just the As and Fs.
“I’m going to point out some places we’re doing really well, but also some places we’re not doing so well,” Lamb said at the regular SSISD school board meeting Monday. “I want to acknowledge our three primaries [campuses]. We have a lot of work to do, but there’s no denying a district grade of 88 is pretty good. We’re very close to having an A.”
However, Lamb stressed that kids are more than just a test score, and the educators do much more than a letter grade represents.
There are three components to accountability ratings—student achievement, school progress and closing the gaps. Each campus receives an individual rating, and each of those ratings factor into the district’s overall rating.
Student achievement measures individual student performance and progress on the STAAR test—how many met or mastered the grade level material in reading, writing, math, science and social studies—as well as college, career or military readiness (CCMR) and graduation rates. SSISD had a high graduation rate of 96.6% but did not improve by 1.2% as required by TEA. As Lamb pointed out, after reaching a certain high point, it can be difficult to continually improve.
Bowie, Lamar and Travis Primary Schools received lower scores in the Student Achievement category due to the fourth grade students moving to Sulphur Springs Elementary. Third grade is the first grade level tested, so those campuses cannot show student growth on the STAAR.
School progress measures how many students in a district or campus improved from year to year and how those numbers compare to similar districts or campuses across the state. The statewide comparisons are based on similar economically disadvantaged percentages.
Closing the Gaps measures differences in racial/ ethnic groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, special education or English learner status and continuous or non-continuous enrollment. This domain is tricky because subpopulation counts have to meet a specific minimum percentage to “receive credit,” and non-continuously enrolled students are more difficult to track since they are more mobile between districts. Continuously enrolled students are defined as having been enrolled in the district for three years.
At one of the local primary campuses, students of a specific sub-population group performed well on the test; however, the number of students in that sub-population was too small (by one student) to figure into the campus’s accountability ratings. To compound the situation, there was one student in that sub-population whose score did not count toward the campus’s rating because they were enrolled after the official snapshot date.
“I’m encouraged and excited,” Lamb said Monday. “We’ve found some areas where we can hit some big home runs and make some great improvements in a year’s time. I can argue that this is a goofy system—and it is—but in a sense, when we play the game as it’s presented, we try to figure out the ways to do that the best we can so we don’t have to have to hold public meetings to discuss why we got Fs and Ds.”
“I think it’s safe to say our district’s goals and expectations are higher tomorrow than what they are today, but at the same time, our district is a very strong district academically,” said trustee Robert Cody.
Lamb agreed.