Work begins on improvement plan

By Melinda L. Lucas

With just one week since the public disclosure of Texas school districts’ accountability performance, Albany ISD administrators and staff have already knuckled down and formulated plans to improve the local ratings – dissecting the reports and breaking down the subgroups so they can see exactly where to dig in.

The ratings rolled out last Wednesday, and although AISD’s overall score was an acceptable B, Albany educators are not happy with the D attached to the elementary campus. 

The secondary campus earned a B, with a high graduation rate and “outstanding” end-of-course scores making that possible.

But the aim of local teachers is higher than last week’s report card shows, according to superintendent Jonathan Scott and student services coordinator Leigh Lowe. 

“We may have been putting too much emphasis on getting our students to perform well in the ‘Approaches’ level, which is basically just passing the tests,” said Lowe. “What we really need to focus on is getting them into the ‘Meets Standards’ category and eventually to ‘Masters’.”

She noted that Albany ISD has compared well to area and state schools in the “Approaches” columns of the STAAR test report, scoring higher than many other districts.

“But when you put your hand over those first three columns and start looking at the numbers in the ‘Meets’ and ‘Masters’ columns, we’re seeing way too much red, which means we have some work to do,” said Lowe.

She and other local administrators have spent hours in the last week going over the details of the “report card,” formulating a plan to improve the district’s grade for next year.

“We’re not trying to hide; we want to meet this head on,” said Scott. “We also don’t want our staff to think their work is not appreciated or to cause panic from one campus to the other. We have a solid teaching staff that cares about our students. We just need to change the mind-set from trying to achieve 100 percent passing at the ‘Approaches’ level to making sure that our students are making forward progress, or if they’re already in the ‘Masters’ group, maintaining that level.”

Rating System

Albany ISD earned a composite score of 86 out of 100 in the state’s complex rating system, despite the “D” given to the elementary campus.

To calculate the ratings, the state takes the higher of either the student performances or student growth score and gives it a 70 percent weight. A 30 percent weight is put on the higher of either the graduation rate or the college, career, or military readiness score.

Grades in three different areas are combined to reach the overall rating.

According to the Texas Education Agency, the areas are defined as follows:

•Student Achievement tells how much students know and are able to do at the end of the school year.

•School Progress shows how students are performing over time and compares progress to similar schools.

•Closing the Gaps tells how well different populations of students in a district are performing.

The improvement plan being devised by local administrators includes adding more benchmark tests, continuing to emphasize the importance of “every test and every student,” searching for incentives in all areas, focusing on a “growth mind-set” instead of a passing mind-set, and constantly analyzing the data.

“First and foremost, we’re not going to make excuses,” said Scott. “The grade we received is not acceptable, and we’re not just going to live with it.”

He and Lowe have set the date for a public “State of the School” address on Sept. 9 at the Aztec Theater, with the intention of explaining the rating system, seeking input, and reviewing plans for improvement. 

More details will be available next week.