The Sunflower County Consolidated School District is less than 50 composite points away from being an A school district.
Check the ratings and the data from other Delta counties, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a district with as much sustained success as SCCSD.
There are no failing schools in Sunflower County, according to the official data released by the state this month. In fact, there has not been a failing school here since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gentry High School and Thomas Edwards Senior High are both B rated for the first time.
We sat down with the district staff this past Monday to discuss this continued growth.
District leaders say administrators, teachers and students are working harder than ever this fall to prepare for state testing in the spring. A good performance this school year may get them to that coveted A rating next fall.
It is clear this is a group that is not satisfied with the B.
They want more, and there are other ways they are trying to improve things academically within the district.
One we discussed at length is ACT preparedness.
Gentry and Thomas Edwards historically have not performed well on that assessment, but there’s a good reason for that, according to SCCSD Superintendent Dr. Miskia Davis.
“ACT is not aligned at all with any assessment the state gives,” Davis told The Enterprise-Tocsin during the interview. “To prepare for one, it’s going to mean pretty much not preparing as much for the other.”
That’s a tough spot for the district. The letter grade is almost entirely tied to growth in state test scores.
According to the latest data available from the Mississippi Department of Education, the county’s juniors scored just under a 12 on the English portion of ACT, just under 15 on the math section, just under 14 in reading and just under 15 in science for a composite of just under 14.
This is not lost at all on district leadership. They are visibly frustrated at the results, and there is a plan in place to fix it.
Davis said the state is now allowing districts to utilize ACT WorkKeys in order to shift the focus for many of the county’s students toward career readiness.
“It’s more beneficial to the children,” Davis said. “That is what we’re spending a lot of our energies on right now… Not to say that we’re throwing ACT out the window, but our children are really having a hard time overcoming that ACT obstacle, and they are not having as hard of a time with WorkKeys.”
Davis said the state offers the same credit to the district for WorkKeys as it does ACT.
Dylan Jones, who has been tracking data at the central office since 2017, said the district has restructured how high school courses are taught to better align them with the state test schedule from ninth until eleventh grade.
This, he said, should give students ample opportunity to absorb the knowledge needed for state assessments, while allowing them to shift later in high school to a career-readiness focus.
“Everyone who isn’t a state test teacher is a WorkKeys teacher,” Jones said.
Jones said a number of changes were made last year when the district scored a 4.7 out of 50 when it came to college and career readiness.
“This year, with just a little bit of focus, we’ve tripled that to 11,” Jones said. “We expect that indicator to get higher.”
Jones said that not only will the district’s numbers improve over time, but this also gives better opportunities for students leaving high school.
Instead of focusing so much on college preparedness, the equal WorkKeys credits allow students to have a better shot at landing decent jobs or even getting to the head of the line in trade programs at the community college level.
The district is accomplishing great things with limited resources.
Leadership has cracked the nut when it comes to state assessments. Now, they are chipping away at college and career readiness.
It’s only a matter of time before we should start to see an improvement in that data as well.
