Superintendents at most area schools expressed excitementtempered with hope in response to statewide school accountabilityresults released last week.

Area schools generally fared well in complete, but unofficial,state accreditation and federal adequate yearly progress resultsapproved Thursday by the state Commission on School Accreditation.The official results will be released next week after approval bythe state Board of Education. They are not expected to change inmost areas.

Each Mississippi public school is rated under two differentaccountability systems – the Mississippi Accountability System andthe federal No Child Left Behind system. It is the second year ofboth programs.

The ratings are based primarily on the Mississippi CurriculumTests for grades 2-8 in reading, language arts and mathematics andfour high school subject area tests, in Algebra I, Biology I,English II and U.S. history.

Schools are rated on a five-point scale with one being thelowest and five the highest when determining state accreditationlevels

The federal system uses the same tests to determine whether theschools meet adequate yearly progress, or AYP. To do so, schoolsmust increase the percentage of students at the proficient level innine subgroups based on ethnic heritage, poverty levels or specialcircumstances. A school missing AYP in any of the nine subgroupsautomatically fails to meet AYP goals in that category.

@Subhead:Lincoln County Schools

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A misstep by the testing company has Loyd Star AttendanceCenter’s results on hold, Lincoln County School DistrictSuperintendent Terry Brister said.

If less than 95 percent of students are tested, a school failsto meet AYP, and a stack of Loyd Star tests was overlooked and notcounted.

“When I first saw the results I panicked, but after checkinginto the details I’m tickled with our results,” Brister said. “Thetesting company in California did not check all of oursubgroups.”

The missing tests “have since been counted and run through,”Brister said. “We will be fine. It was just a miscue by the testingcompany.”

Loyd Star received a Level 4 (exemplary) school accreditationlast year. Bogue Chitto and Enterprise are also Level 4 schools.West Lincoln and North Pike High are the only Level 5 (superior)schools in the area.

“Hopefully, the new results will show improvement in ouraccreditation level at Loyd Star, but the results that are pendingwill determine whether there is change there or not.”

Bogue Chitto and Enterprise earned a “not met” classification inthe state grown assessment. Because the county posts respectableaccreditation levels, it is more difficult to show growth, Bristersaid.

“It doesn’t mean that they didn’t grow. They did,” he said.”They may not have reached the projected levels, but we did showgrowth.”

In the federal assessment, schools throughout the districtachieved their federal AYP goals for 2004.

@Subhead:Brookhaven Schools

@Normal:In Brookhaven, school officials were more than pleasedwith the results.

“We’re thrilled Lipsey (Middle School) is still a Level 4, andwe’re overjoyed that Alexander (Junior High) is now a Level 4,”Superintendent Lea Barrett said.

Alexander also exceeded state growth projections. The highschool met those projections, but the elementary school and Lipseydid not.

On a district level, Brookhaven failed to meet federal AYP inreading/language arts and mathematics, although each school postedresults that showed they met their individual goals inreading/language arts.

This happened, Barrett said, because although no individualschool met the 40-student minimum required to be held accountableunder AYP, the combined numbers were high enough to hold thedistrict accountable for failing to meet the federal benchmark.Some children in special-education classes failed to show adequategrowth, she said.

Brookhaven High School was the only school not to meet AYPexpectations, but those results are being reviewed, Barrettsaid.

“Although the preliminary results showed the district had madeAYP in all areas, the final results showed we did not,” she said.”We think that’s an error, and we have initiated a dialogue toclear this up.”

BHS met AYP for reading/language arts but not for math.

“It’s not because of the scores,” she said. “They’re saying wedid not test enough children, but they previously told us wehad.”

Although Mamie Martin Elementary is evaluated for federal AYPprogress, which it passed in all areas, it is not given anaccreditation status because the state requires two grades to betested for an accreditation level to be assigned to a school. Statetesting begins at grade 2, and Mamie Martin teaches kindergartenthrough second grade.

“There no way to judge growth for a second-grader because theywere not tested in the first grade,” Barrett said.

@Subhead:Lawrence County Schools

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In Lawrence County, the results prompted Superintendent RussellCaudill to create a theme for the 2004 year: “5/5/5,” short for”Five schools at Level 5 in ’05.”

New Hebron Attendance Center advanced to a Level 4 designationthis year to join Monticello Elementary, Rod Paige Middle Schooland Topeka-Tilton Attendance Center.

Lawrence County High School, however, slipped from Level 4 toLevel 3.

“We haven’t really pinpointed why yet, but it appears that whilewe had more students pass the test, they did not score as well,”said Sharon Dungan, federal programs and testing coordinator forthe district. “We’ll give that area immediate attention, and weshould see those scores back up where they should be nextyear.”

It becomes exponentially more difficult to improve your scoresand growth at higher accreditation levels, Dungan said,

“We really have to do more than push our students to pass. Theyhave to excel,” she said.

Lawrence County schools met all the federal AYP goals but failedto meet state projections for growth at the high school and middleschool. New Hebron excelled in its growth.

“I’m very pleased and very excited,” Caudill said. “Everyone hasworked hard to get us here. Now we have to focus on all schoolsreaching Level 5.”

@Subhead:Wesson Attendance Center

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Wesson Attendance Center, a Level 4 school, also is experiencinggrowing pains of sorts in trying to make “already strong studentsbecome stronger.”

“We’re striving to become a Level 5 school with our secondarygoal to be a Level 4 with growth,” said Principal Billy Britt.”That was our disappointment this year – that we didn’t have thegrowth we wanted.”

Wesson is, however, the strongest school in the Copiah CountySchool District.

Within the district, two schools, Crystal Springs High andCrystal Springs Middle School, were rated Level 2(under-performing) and failed to meet state growth projections.

The high school did meet federal AYP requirements, but themiddle school also failed to meet the federal AYP inreading/language arts and mathematics.

The district’s only other school, Crystal Springs Elementary,earned a Level 3 (successful) rating and met federal AYP but didnot meet state growth projections.