While district-wide benchmark testing scores have dropped about 100 points in the past year, Attala County School District Superintendent Kyle Hammond told the school board Monday night that there are some encouraging signs. There are also tentative plans to focus expected new ESSER funds toward helping students restore and improve their prior performance levels.The Mississippi Department of Education will not penalize districts by lowering school grades as a result of lower test scores this year because they believe it is a direct result of school closures and the transition to virtual learning that has caused the severe dip statewide.But that is no reason to ignore the data, according to Hammond.“There is no (state) accountability this year, but what we're still wanting to track our data for is to look at individual students and try to get them to a point where we are closing that gap that was created from the closures that occurred last spring,” said Hammond. “We’re going to hold ourselves accountable for closing these achievement gaps that were caused by this pandemic, and get them to a point where, when we start the school year in the fall, our students are back on track and ready for new learning coming in,” he said. “That's our whole point that we're really working towards now.”While the overall scores are not positive, said the superintendent, there are some bright spots in certain schools, subjects and grade levels. And some students have actually continued on an upward trend in test performance.“As you start to get down into your student level, you get more encouraged by looking at some of them that are really starting to close back into the point where they were prior to the closure,” he said. “We’re hoping that we will continue tracking student numbers, just like we are holding ourselves accountable.One effort that seems to be helping already, according to Hammond and district school principals, is the return of many virtual students to the classroom, where teachers are more able to monitor and work with individual students.Another plus has a change to having virtual students log in to the live classroom rather than at their convenience to view recorded lessons. Teachers are better able to interact with students and ensure all of them are receiving the same lesson, and they no longer have to divide their attention between preparing and delivering live teaching and recorded sessions.With an expected ESSER fund distribution that is significantly larger than the first, Hammond said there are a number of planned programs to help get students — many of whom are six to 12 months behind where they would normally be academically — back on track and caught up.The superintendent said that while specific plans will have to wait until the district learns how much it will receive in ESSER funds, there are key initiatives they expect to fund to reduce the achievement gaps that have resulted from the pandemic’s impact on education.First, Hammond said funds would likely be allocated to bring in a consulting group to tutor struggling students during school hours for the Spring semester. The plan would be to provide 20 hours each of ELA and math tutoring at each school, as well as 20 hours of Science tutoring at the high schools. For the next year, the district would look to have interventionists on staff in the schools to provide similar services to avoid the greater expense of contracting that to an outside firm on a long-term basis.For those students needing internet hotspots at home for virtual learning, Hammond said money would be allocated to fund the expense of those services for a two-year period, and the district will again fund summer school in the month of June this year.As for other staffing needs, the superintendent wants to fund two school nurses, one located at each end of the district. He also said he would seek to fund the recently-created IT Director position for at least the next couple of years to maintain equipment and service to families within the district.Whether all of these priorities and/or others will be implemented, however, depends entirely on the ESSER funds the district receives.To view the entire report of district and school-by-school benchmark data, click on the file link below:
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