Thursday, May 12, 2016

Third grade reading scores improve.

The Mississippi Department of Education issued the following press release posted below.  Third grade reading scores improved from last year as more students passed the "reading-gate" tests.

  JJ will review the local scores tomorrow. See the improvements for yourself.  Here are the the schools that saw 40% or more of their third-graders fail the test:

>40% fail the test 2016
Geo H. Oliver Visual/Perf. Arts: 50% (Clarksdale)
Webb Elementary: 48% (Greenville)
Goodman Pickens: 39.7% (Close enough. Holmes County)
William Dean: 42% (Holmes County)
Finch Elementary: 44.4% (Wilkinson County)
Durant Public School 44% (Durant) 

However, compare these schools to last year's list on this website:

>40% fail the test 2015
 Boyd ( Greenville ): 42%  /B, B
Trigg ( Greenville ): 41% /B, D
Webb ( Greenville ): 53% /F, F
WC Williams ( Greenwood): 47%  /C, F
Goodman Pickens (Holmes CSD ): 59% /C, F
William Dean (Holmes CSD ): 46%
Williams-Sullivan (Holmes CSD ): 52% /D,D
Dawson (JPS): 48%  /C, C
 Raines (JPS): 47% /F,F
Sykes (JPS): 48% /C,D
Woodville (JPS): 40% /F,F
Finch (Wilkinson CSD):45%
Wilkinson County (Wilkinson CSD): 42% /B,B
McCoy (Yazoo City MSD): 47% /D,D

13 schools to 6 schools. Not bad at all.  Goodman Pickens dropped 20 points from 59% to 39%.  Four JPS schools made the list last year. No JPS schools are on the 2016.

These schools saw a third of their students fail the test (Include the list posted above.):

>33% fail the test 2016
Booker T. Washington 37% (Clarksdale)
Myrtle Hall IV Lang.: 38.8% (Clarksdale)
Friar's Point: 33.3% (Coahoma)
Arkin: 34% (Greenville)
Trigg: 34.2% (Greenville)
 Lee: 33.3% (JPS)
Sykes: 37.7% (JPS)
Timberlawn: 34.9% (JPS)
Watkins: 34.9% (JPS)
Byhalia: 33.6% (Marshall County)
Summit: 39.1% (McComb)
Parkview: 38.1% (Meridian)
Tunica: 38.7% (Tunica County)
Robinsonville: 35.1% (Tunica County)
McEvans: 34.2% (West Bolivar)
Ray Brooks: 38.5% (West Bolivar)
Hazelhurst: 37.4% (Hazelhurst)

 34 schools saw a third or more of their third-graders fail the test last year.  Numerous schools got cracking on teaching their third graders to read because only 22 elementary schools in Mississippi saw had at least a third of their students fail the test this year.  There is no way around it: the kids are learning to read.


2016 Worst School Districts
Claiborne County: 37.2%
Clarksdale Municipal: 35.1%
Durant: 44%
Greenville: 33.4%
Hazelhurst: 37.4%
Holmes County: 33.8%

2015 Worst School Districts (Notice the improvement)
 Greenville: 37% /D
Hazelhurst: 39% /D
Holmes County: 41% /D
Humphreys County: 35% /D
Okalona: 38% /D
Wilkinson County: 43% /C
Yazoo City: 47% /D

It appears the reading-gate is working and more students are actually learning to read.  What will the bellyachers from last year say? 











16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any improvement is positive! JPS appears to have worked hard on this, among others.
Of course, there are those that will argue that had I42 passed all the numbers would be at 0% failing (+/- 30%) - "this survey is not scientific and 100 out of every 82 statistics are made-up.

Party in The Lounge at 3:30 said...

With all the teachers who've lost their license in the news, I just can't get real excited about claims of test result improvement. There's too much pressure on districts and staff to show improvement to believe it when it's claimed. 'Scuse me for being a skeptic.

Anonymous said...

If Mississippi could draw a line from Memphis down along the east side of the Delta but head a little more east to include Holmes County and then down just east of highway 61 to the Louisiana and give these counties to Arkansas and Louisiana, we would probably have one of the best education states in the country along with a big improvement in per capita income. Just sayin.

Anonymous said...

4:16 I saw data last year that showed that if Mississippi could delete the Delta counties, the state would be 23rd to 26th in the US in most every the economic and educational category.

Anonymous said...

Eliminate Jackson, Canton and the Delta counties, Mississippi jumps to Top 10!

Anonymous said...

I don't believe that for a second 4:42. Only 1 county in the state is over the avg. US median income line.

Anonymous said...

Eliminate the entire state and the US jumps 12 spots on PISA!!! Average white scores IN MS on ACT lower than black scores in CT and NJ. Not that there's any racial animus in any of the previous posts.

Anonymous said...

7:49, so far your post is the only one mentioning race. your ACT statistics comparing MS to NJ and CT are also crap. You're comparing Mississippi, which requires that 100% of it students take the ACT to states where it is optional. Only about 30% of students in NJ and CT chose to take the test.

Anonymous said...

...and the cycle continues to yet another generation enslaved by the Democrat Party. Can't read, cant better themselves, parents dont care enough to reinforce what education they are getting or to instill any sense of morality or civil structure. Since there is no structure or discipline, the next generation will be made the same way until the Democrats have imported enough foreigner voters to replace them.

Fish Fries and Junkets said...

Don't eliminate counties, real people and rooftops. Eliminate Bennie Thompson. Of course the latter would be a helluva lot more difficult than the former.

Anonymous said...

9:49 pm The SAT focuses on comprehension and analytical ability in the verbal sections while the ACT focuses grammar and syntax.
In the math sections , the SAT focuses reasoning and problem solving while the ACT focuses on knowledge ( have you learned basic math and memorized some formulas and can you recognize the difference in a square and a triangle?).
There was a time when only colleges and universities in the Deep South and Midwest accepted the ACT.
There is a reason that the campaign to put the ACT on equal footing with the SAT began in the late '70's. The reasons are much the same as the reasons the SAT is now less difficult than it used to be.
But, the good news is that lots more parents can think they and their children are really smart and have a good education! The bad news is in an information age, we give equal weight to irrelevant information and our standing internationally in every category save things like obesity is dropping yearly and we seem to the rest of the world, particularly in our continuous political cycle to have lost our minds!

Anonymous said...

... we seem to the rest of the world, particularly in our continuous political cycle to have lost our minds!

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Every frigging day you are here with the same spew.

Accidental Conclusions said...

7:11...You were doing fairly well until you got off into obesity and politics. If you had continued, you might have accidentally come around to the conclusion that obesity is a result of democrat politics. Keep trying.

Anonymous said...

Food Stamp Recipients More Likely To Be Obese, Study Finds
05/05/2015 10:34 am ET | Updated May 05, 2015

Anonymous said...

Girlfriend is at TFA working in Yazoo City. They really are doing some big things to turn that district around. Problems of course, but I am glad people are trying to change things.

I wonder if there also needs to be another reading gate-- 7th grade maybe.

Delta State is also starting a really cool fellowship funding top 10 TFA alumni each year incentivizing them to stay for Grad School and start non-profits.

We all get down on our Mississippi but if we really get together, Black, White, Democrat, Republican, Redneck, City-boy, yellow, brown, I really think we slowly turn things around. I am hopeful. I don't think most of us inherently hate each other, I think most of us feel a little uncomfortable with those different than us, and mostly, haha, we are lazy and complacent and are hoping someone else does the hard work of making things better. But we really have to all get involved. Take pride in our State which we know is great.

Anonymous said...

8:21am There are many reasons for any problem we have in this country,
The position of any politician or political party at any moment is based entirely on political self-interest and money. Both parties are to blame for the mess we find ourselves . And, both parties have contributed to the problems in education.

Obesity was used only as one example of many of the rather sad areas we rank at the top. I did not blame a party but again, think both have contributed.

But, thank you for a wonderful example of the difference in comprehension versus syntax.

8:10 am Thank you for letting me know others on this site share that view but it's really not a surprise to me.

Can either of you dispute the differences in the ACT and SAT or that we have continue through both GOP and Democrat controlled administrations to fall in far too many categories in rankings compared to the other industrialized countries? Tell you what, just find the ones in which we've improved.



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