Carroll County Schools administrators took one more opportunity to brag on students, teachers and principals for their good showing on the Kentucky Summative Assessment (KSA) testing when they met with the District Ambassadors.
The District Ambassadors are a group of parents and community leaders who meet regularly to discuss a topic within the school district. Jonica Ray, assistant superintendent and chief academic officer and Jeannie Rohrer, supervisor of instruction, spoke with the ambassadors last week.
The ambassadors learned about curriculum and how it’s selected, instruction and how teachers are coached, and how to read and understand the test scores released each year on the School Report Card. (Available at this link https://www.kyschoolreportcard.com/organization/5531?year=2023)
Rohrer said a new approach to choosing curriculum was taken this year. “We selected a curriculum that was aligned with K-12. Before that it was segmented and disjointed,” she said.
State law changed recently, moving the authority to choose curriculum from the Site-Based Decision Making Council to the superintendent.
Carroll County Schools Superintendent Casey Jaynes said he listened to recommendations from the principals, Ray, Rohrer and others involved in the vetting process before approving a curriculum. “These two do a lot to work on this piece,” Jaynes said. “I trust the process.”
To date, the English Language Arts and Math curriculum have been selected and implemented. Science and social studies are in the vetting and implementation phase over the next two years.
All of the curriculum meets the standard of a high quality instructional resource, which is a benefit to teachers and students because it ensures the best instruction is being delivered to Carroll County’s children.
“We’re already seeing a difference just from having that consistency,” Ray said. The district has made a significant financial investment in the curriculum and will continue to do so.
Transitioning to an aligned curriculum hasn’t been easy, but both Ray and Rohrer emphasized the positive results. “Our kids are going to be better for it and our teachers are going to be better as well,” Ray said.
A key target used to identify success is the annual KSA test. Students in grades third through eighth as well as 10th and 11th are tested each year on varying subjects. All school districts in Kentucky are measured on this scale.
This year, Carroll County saw great strides and improvement in its KSA results. Ray and Rohrer spent a significant amount of time explaining how scores are calculated and outlining the successes Carroll County has seen.
Ray specifically noted the following achievements:
*Cartmell improved significantly in every area and dropped economically disadvantaged as a Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) subgroup.
*The middle school improved significantly in its English Language indicator and it is no longer a Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) school. Last year CCMS was labeled as being in the bottom 5% of schools statewide. It has shed that label in less than one year. “The middle school is on the right track. It’s not the same place it was a year ago,” Ray said.
*The high school improved significantly in every area and is no longer a TSI school. The postecondary readiness indicator jumped from 68.8 to 107.4. Jaynes noted this particular indicator has an impact on local business and industry who want to employ our students after graduation.