Lowest-performing Georgia schools: More in MCSD eligible for state intervention

The number of schools in the Muscogee County School District at risk of intervention or even takeover by the state has increased.

Six MCSD schools, out of 54 in the district, are among the 104 lowest-performing from 33 districts in Georgia this year, according to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, which released the 2018 Turnaround Eligible Schools list Wednesday.

The six MCSD schools on the 2018 list are Baker Middle School, Rothschild Leadership Academy (a middle school) and Brewer, Davis, Dorothy Height and Martin Luther King Jr. elementary schools.

All except Davis were on the 2017 list, when MCSD had five Turnaround Eligible Schools during the inaugural year of this accountability system, mandated by the Georgia Legislature in House Bill 338.

Chattahoochee County Middle School was on the 2017 list but improved enough to be off the 2018 list.

Comparing MCSD to the school districts in Georgia’s other second-tier cities, the number of schools on the list: increased in Bibb County (Macon) from eight in 2017 to nine in 2018 out of 38 schools; decreased in Chatham County (Savannah) from nine in 2017 to six in 2018 out of 55 schools; and decreased in Richmond County (Augusta) from 13 in 2017 to 11 in 2018 out of 56 schools.

HB 338, also called the First Priority Act, authorizes the Chief Turnaround Officer, in conjunction with GOSA and the Georgia Department of Education, to identify the state’s lowest-performing schools, defined as those with a three-year average College and Career Ready Performance Index scores in the state’s bottom 5 percent. The Ledger-Enquirer reported the 2018 CCRPI scores earlier this week.

The Georgia Board of Education hired Eric Thomas as the CTO last year. Thomas, a Georgia native who grew up in Savannah, was chief support officer in the School Turnaround Program at the University of Virginia since June 2012. From 2010-12, he was chief innovation officer for Cincinnati Public Schools, where he was a teacher, principal and turnaround principal coach for 17 years, according to his LinkedIn page.

In December 2017, Thomas selected the following 11 schools as the first cohort of Turnaround Schools to receive state intervention:

• Bibb County: Appling Middle School, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and Veterans Elementary School.
  
  
• Clay County: Clay County Middle School.
  
  
• Dooly County: Dooly County High, Dooly County Middle and Dooly County Elementary School.
• Dougherty County: Alice Coachman Elementary School, Morningside Elementary School and Northside Elementary.
  
  
• Randolph County: Randolph Clay Middle School.
  
  

If the CTO, after consulting with the GaDOE, determines resources aren’t available to serve all the schools on the list, a subset may be selected instead. Regardless, the schools on the final list must develop “an intensive school improvement plan,” the law says. After three years, schools on this list that fail to meet the terms of improvement, as stated in their contract, could have personnel removed, operation of the school turned over to a private nonprofit organization selected by the local school board, or parents allowed to transfer their children to another school.

When GOSA announced the original list of chronically failing schools in February 2015, MCSD had 10 of the 141 schools in that ignominious group. MCSD reduced that number to eight out of the state’s 127 chronically failing schools the next year and again reduced that number, to seven, in January 2017, while the state’s number increased to 153.

Eddy Middle School and Davis, Forrest Road and South Columbus elementary schools improved enough on the 2017 CCRPI to get off the list, but Rothschild and Brewer performed poorly enough to be added to the list, joining Baker, Dorothy Height and MLK. Now, Davis has been added to the list.

MCSD superintendent David Lewis told the Ledger-Enquirer via email, “Beyond the leadership changes made at these schools within the last two years that we believe will ultimately positively impact their respective school’s performance, three of them (MLK, Brewer and Dorothy Height) are currently participating in the Technology Tools for Teachers grant program, which focuses on personalized student learning, in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.

“Additionally, our improvement efforts are focusing on those key challenges that are common among all of these schools: student attendance and attracting and retaining high quality staff. Going forward, we are confident in the new leadership, as well as the instructional practices and processes that we have in place, which have proven to be effective in reducing the number of schools earning a CCRPI score below 60 across the district over the past several years.”

Chattahoochee County

Chattahoochee County Middle School’s CCRPI scores have increased from an all-time low of 41 in 2015 to an all-time high of 75.3 in 2018, raising the school’s three-year average above this year’s Turnaround Eligible Schools cut score of 55.3.

“These results are a direct reflection of our school system’s cohesive efforts to examine and monitor the continuous improvement process,” ChattCo superintendent David McCurry told the Ledger-Enquirer via email. “Our special-education director and school-level administrators led a focused effort to create a systematic Response to Intervention program, in which research-based interventions were implemented and monitored at every level. This consistency resulted in tremendous academic growth in our students.”

McCurry added, “Our amazing teachers and staff have worked each day to establish a positive culture that is conducive to learning. Our students have worked incredibly hard and have risen to the expectations set forth by the teachers. Our parents, community and school board have supported this school throughout our turnaround efforts. We have partnered with many different community stakeholders to provide needed wraparound services that have resulted in positive support for our students. All of these components together have led to Chattahoochee County Middle School’s removal from the Turnaround Eligible list, as well a shift for the entire school system.”

Mark Rice, 706-576-6272, @MarkRiceLE.

This story was originally published October 31, 2018 at 4:07 PM.