Board of Education hears about standards updates
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
During a worksession July 23, Darlington County Board of Education members learned about new state and federal accountability standards that students and districts will be held to. Giving the update was Dr. Rainey Knight, who is no stranger to Darlington County or to the new standards put into place by the Education Oversight Committee (EOC).
For the past three years, standardized testing in South Carolina has been on a continual path of revision and change. Many administrations across the state found it hard to see exactly what progress was being made.
Superintendent Dr. Tim Newman said that the presentation came on the heels of a board retreat because boardmembers expressed an interest in understanding more about the new standards.
“We were talking about how we can gauge how well as school is doing and the information that we’re all going to look at together to see if we’re making progress or not,” Newman said. “What came up at the retreat, of course, was the new accountability system and how well we all understood it. Based on that meeting, I called Dr. Knight. She is part of the Education Oversight Committee who put this together. She also happens to be a former superintendent in Darlington County so if anybody knows how this is going to impact the district, Dr. Knight is going to.”
Knight said that the new standards combine federal and state law to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
“It is a merged system, meaning it took Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB)and then the state,” Knight said. “No Child Left Behind, if you remember, was all or nothing; you either got it or you didn’t. The state system was Excellent, Good, Average, etc. These systems have merged, which is great.”
Knight said that although the new system was approved this year, it had actually been put into practice last year.
“South Carolina now has the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which was approved by the federal Department of Education,” Knight said.
“This was approved in May 2018 but the accountability started in August 2017. It was all approved a year after it started to be used; there is a lot of history to that. ESSA could have been approved by the state early but the Department of Education said to wait because they wanted to get the state and the federal on the same page.”
Knight said that the new standards set goals that go beyond just doing well on the current year’s standardized tests.
“ESSA sets long-term goals for 2035,” Knight said. “It is good to have the long-range but to be realistic you are going to have to start chopping that up. That will be so that every year you know what kind of gain you need to make.”
Those goals include having 90 percent of South Carolina students college, career and citizenship ready and having 90 percent of students graduate high school in four years. Currently, according to Knight, only 3 percent of schools are producing students who are college, career and citizenship ready; only 25 percent of schools meet the graduation standard.
While in years past the district was able to compare itself to other districts in the state based on a rating given by the state, the rating system has also changed.
“With the new standards, there will be no district report cards with a rating,” Knight said. “Darlington County will not get an Excellent, Good, Average…rating. You will get a report card and it will have all of your district data but you will not get a rating; only the schools will get a rating. You can create your own because you will have your district data.”
On the report cards there will be several indicators, which vary slightly for elementary, middle and high school.
Those indicators are academic achievement, growth, English Language proficiency, preparing for success, Effective Learning Environments and graduation rates.
For elementary and middle schools, the academic portion of the standards will weigh heavier on the overall report card (80 percent). In high schools, the academic indicators are more evenly weighed with school quality and student success (60 percent and 40 percent respectively).
