Today the state released report cards for all districts and schools in the state. We are pleased to present to you an overview of the 2008 report card for Jackson Madison County Schools.

Achievement

Looking at the achievement of our students in grades 3-8, our 2008 scores have improved substantively from those in 2006 and 2007. This year, we received a B in math and reading, and a C in science and social studies. These grades are better than in 2006 when we received two Cs and two D’s in the same subject areas. These results indicate that the negative trend that appeared in 2006 for our students in grades 3-8 has been reversed and the trend is now positive for the district in 2008. Additionally, on the writing exam, our 8th grade students received an A for 2008 while our 5th and 11th grade students received a B.

Congratulations to our students for their hard work, and also to our teachers and administrators for their tireless efforts in behalf of our students.

AYP Results

As you may remember from this year’s AYP results, we reported that the district is now in corrective action. How do those AYP results differ from the positive trend we just reported? If the negative trend has been reversed and the trend is now positive, how did the district end up in corrective action?

The answer to that question has to do with the federal benchmarks. Under the current No Child Left Behind legislation, 100% of all students in the nation must score proficient or advanced in reading and math by 2014. In order to reach that goal, periodically the federal benchmarks move up closer to 100%. 2008 was one of the years when the federal benchmarks moved up. Although our students have made positive strides, those strides were not quite large enough for some categories of our students to attain the new benchmarks. Those categories of students included students with disabilities in grades 3-8. In our high schools, we did not meet the new Reading/Language Arts benchmarks with our economically disadvantaged students, our students with disabilities, our African American students, and the all students combined category.

We have much more work to do as a district. Our teachers and administrators are focused on areas that are strategically important. This includes an emphasis on writing, differentiated instruction, and the use of formative assessments. Right now, the overall AYP status for the district is 20 schools in good standing (11 of these have maintained good standing since the monitoring began) , 5 are targeted (the first year on the list), one school in school improvement, and one school in restructuring 1. We expect to see positive changes in the AYP status for the district next year.

ACT

At the high school level, one way to evaluate the performance of our students is to examine the scores of students who took the ACT exam. The ACT exam is taken by many students across the nation and provides us with a way to compare the results of our students with those from other students who took the same exam. On the ACT, our 3 year average scores for the district ranged between 19.1 and 19.7. In 2008, our composite ACT score for the district was 19.4, compared to 20.7 for students across Tennessee. In English, our students scored 19.5, in math, 19.1, in reading, 19.5, and in science/reasoning 19.2. These results are just slightly below that of the state for the same subject areas.

Academic Gains

Another way to view academic achievement is to see how much our students gained during the past year. The Tennessee Value Added Assessment System (TVAAS) provides us with a measure of student gains in achievement. While AYP results are based on the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced, TVAAS tells us how much our students gained this year relative to the rest of the students in the state.

In grades 3-8, our three year average gain netted an A in Reading, a B in Science, and a C in both social studies and Math. In High School, we outscored the state’s predictions in Math, Science, Math Foundations, and Physical Science. The only subjects in which we scored below what was predicted were English I and Writing (11th grade). For English II and U.S. History, we scored what the state predicted us to score.

On the ACT, we scored above the state’s predications in all areas (English, Math and Science Reasoning), with the exception of reading where we scored what we were predicted to score.

The 2008 report card for Jackson Madison County Schools also includes some non-academic items. Two of those items include discipline and teacher quality. We are happy to report that the number of suspensions district-wide decreased from the 2007 rates. In 2007, there were 2,409 suspensions, but in 2008, there were only 2,014 suspensions, over 400 fewer suspensions than the prior year. Our teachers have been working hard on classroom management, and together with help from parents and the community, we hope to see these numbers decrease even more in 2009.

We also want to brag on our teachers in the district. Using the state’s definition of highly qualified teachers, 99.8% of our core classes are taught by highly qualified teachers. This is higher than the average for the state.

These results are encouraging and are the result of hard work by our students, teachers, and administrators. We have all put in long hours and worked hard to make these results possible. Those efforts on the behalf of our students are deeply appreciated. We have more work to do in the future, and our efforts this year are focused on areas that are of strategic importance. We look forward to presenting even more encouraging results to the public in 2009.

Nancy S. Zambito
Jackson Madison County School System
November 11, 2008
 

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