Jackson’s school improvement plan under question from board member
When district leadership presented school improvement plans to the Jackson County Board of Education during its October meeting, one school board member had serious questions about the efficacy of the academic products the school system is employing.
“I would like us as a school board to look a little deeper,” said Board Member Gayle Woody. “We need to ask ourselves, is this program working for us now?”
At the school board’s Oct. 22 meeting, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Angie Dills presented the district’s school improvement plan, as well as plans for each individual school to the board for informational purposes. The school board is set to vote on approving the plans at its November board meeting.
School systems in North Carolina are required by state regulations to submit school improvement plans to the local board of education for review and approval. The plans function as a way of identifying needs and setting goals for school systems and individual schools.
School improvement plans for the county are available to the public via the JCPS website under the “academics” section.
“This year, the overall district plan strives to increase our EOG and EOC proficiency rates to 60% and our graduation rate to above 94%,” Dills told the board of education in October. “We will continue to focus on data at the district, school and classroom level to guide all of our instruction. We will continue our professional development around LETRS, Science of Reading, Wit & Wisdom, Foundations of Math, Reading Research to Classroom Practice, Fundations and more.”
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Testing data from the 2023-24 school year showed six out of nine Jackson County schools met growth standards during the last school year, with 50% of schools in the district designated as low performing. The district’s four-year graduation rate was 84% while the state average was 86.4%. JCPS had 47.6% of students score at or above grade level on end of grade and end of course tests, below the state average of 54.2%.
Woody questioned whether the academic programs that JCPS uses are contributing to “declining test scores.”
“I know we have amazing teachers here in Jackson County, and we have amazing administrators,” said Woody. “So my questions is, if it’s not the teachers, it must be the programs. Are we putting too much on them at once? This is a question, I don’t have an answer, but I think as a school system we need to look into it and say how can we best support our teachers to teach and do the job that they started their careers to do?”
Dills explained that state standards are rigorous and that the research-based programs the school system uses helps to maintain pace with what is expected of students at each grade level.
“I see what you’re saying, but there is a lot of pressure on teachers to maintain that state standard of instruction,” said Dills.
Part of the push to use academic programs for reading and math in the district arose from the need to create consistency within the curriculum across the district, which in turn allows for more collaboration among teachers working on the same grade level challenges at different schools. Administration also noted that learning disruptions due to the COVID-19 Pandemic are still impacting students.
“Every district has had COVID,” said Woody. “We can use excuses Mrs. Dills, but I think we also have to be very hard on ourselves and ask the hard questions, is what we’re doing working? When we see test scores going down, I have to say something’s not working, and I’m totally convinced it’s not our teachers.”
Dills invited school board members to tour schools and observe lessons in action before making any moves to remove academic programs from the classroom. Chairman Wes Jamison said the board should dig a little bit deeper into the data to help understand where things may be lacking on a grade-by-grade basis. The board is set to vote on school improvement plans at its November meeting.
