Schools Superintendent Jason Wood believes the state’s new accreditation system that will go into effect for the 2024-25 school year will not have an impact on how students are taught in the Patrick County school division.
It won’t change anything “as far as making sure kids are well-educated, our teachers are trained and doing the best they are every day,” he said, but the new system may change how the schools are perceived and publicized, especially as the state estimates that 60 percent of schools will be either in the ‘off track’ or ‘needs intensive support’ categories.
“That is definitely going to be a public relations issue that those communities have to face,” he said.
Assistant Superintendent of Administration Shannon Brown said the new system is completely changing the way schools are accredited. Under the current system, she said schools are either accredited or not accredited.
Under the current system, Brown said SOL scores are also the main thing school systems looked at for accreditation.
“Now, they’re a fraction of a fraction if you’ve seen those pie charts. The SOL scores are just a small part of a chuck of a pie, not even the whole piece of the pie,” she said.
“Now the accreditation system’s going to be based on your student’s SOL (Standards of Learning) scores and growth, and schools will either be classified as distinguished, on track, off track, or needs intensive support,” she said.
Wood said this new system means “your accreditation in the future will be more factors that you’re checking off to make sure that SOQs (Standards of Quality) are correct, that your staffing is high quality,” he said.
In October, Brown said school systems are supposed to get an example of where they would fall on the new system using the 2023-2024 SOL scores from the state.
Wood said the division is hoping it will achieve the distinguished category, or at least meet the benchmarks, in the October mock-up.
“We are anxiously anticipating that mock-up of what the new accountability system would have looked like if it was in place based on the spring 2023-2024 scores. We are very fortunate to be in the top 10 for our third consecutive year. I think that we would be an exemplary school division, because I really feel that we are one, how it’s actually measured out in this new system we’re waiting to see,” he said.
Brown added the categories will be awarded school by school, and not for the division overall.
“So, one school may be distinguished, and another might be on track. It’s not just the division,” she said.
School divisions that are deemed off track, Brown said, will be required by the state to create improvement plans to help get them back on track. She added the lowest five percent of schools will receive intensive federal support monies to support their school improvement efforts.
Personally, Wood said he likes the fact that the new accreditation system separates things out when factoring scores.
“Currently your chronic absenteeism can definitely put you in the ‘needs improvement’ category. Now with this new system, it’s actually a different percentage than yes either you made it, or you didn’t. It factors into a performance score for your school and so that percentage isn’t just yes or no you made it. It is factored in because you could have a great school division and you have a high chronic absentee rate, then you’re not accredited under the current system,” he said.
Wood believes the new system also provides more transparency as people can look at different aspects of students’ education.
“Change is difficult for anybody, and until you actually see how it’s going to affect your performance and how you’ll be rated, you just have a little anxiety waiting to see what that’s going to look like,” he said.
