The Sunflower County Consolidated School District has achieved a B rating for the third consecutive year.
“We’re the highest rated school district in the Mississippi Delta,” SCCSD Superintendent Miskia Davis told The Enterprise-Tocsin in an interview this week. “We’ve been a B-rated district for three consecutive years, unheard of.”
Some of the district’s schools dropped off, according to data released this month by the Mississippi Department of Education, but there are zero failing schools within the district. The district has not had a failing school since 2018, Davis’ first full year on the job.
“People don’t make a big
enough deal about that in my opinion,” Davis said. “When we came on, all of our schools were Fs or Ds. We had no Successful schools. Now, when we have two D schools, we’re about to lose our minds…That’s a testament to how hard we work and how we’ve changed the expectation that we have for our children here in this district.”
Davis said the goal of reaching an A drives the central office, principals, teachers and students to work harder each year.
“Last year was probably one of the most difficult years, because we were striving so hard to get that A. It was really, really tough. We didn’t get the A obviously, but we saw some things that we have to tweak this year,” Davis said.
Two of the big shockers were Carver Elementary in Indianola and Moorhead Central in Moorhead dropping from B and C ratings, respectively, to D schools this year.
“The two schools that we were most shocked about, that we didn’t see it coming, were Carver and Moorhead Central,” Davis said.
Davis said that she and district-level staff have been in meetings with those schools and are currently putting systems into place to try and recapture the points that were lost during the 2023-24 school year.
“Children we expected to grow didn’t,” Davis said. “We know who those children are, by name. We know the deficiencies, so we’re really honing in on those students who didn’t grow.”
Gentry High School dropped from a B to a C, while Thomas Edwards in Ruleville maintained its B rating for the second consecutive year.
Lockard Elementary and A.W. James Elementary in Drew have long been the district’s shining stars as A schools, but they dropped as well to B grades this year.
“A.W. James was one point away from an A,” Davis said.
Ruleville Middle and Robert Merritt Jr. High were also graded B schools.
Drew-Hunter Middle School jumped from a D to a C this year.
Rosser Early Learning Center and Ruleville Elementary were graded C schools as well.
Dylan Jones, who oversees data for the district, said that SCCSD was 58 points from being an A district this year.
“It sounds like a lot, but it’s very manageable,” Jones said.
There is the potential for 1,000 total points, Jones said.
“We know where we can find (the points),” Davis said. “We know we’re going to get more points, because we’re putting a heavy emphasis on our WorkKeys, making sure our children are prepared for the workforce.”
Jones said that the district historically has never scored well when it comes to college and career readiness, because it had always had an ACT test focus.
That is no longer the case since the state of Mississippi now counts the WorkKeys assessment on equal footing with ACT.
Last year, out of 50 points for college and career readiness, the district scored 11 points.
“Just this year, we’ve gone from 11 to 18.4,” Jones said. “Just a seven-point swing in a difficult indicator had a tremendous impact on our overall accountability.”
Davis said she expects that number to double in the upcoming year.
In the meantime, Davis and Jones said the district will continue with its motto to “just grow the children.”
It’s an accountability model with less focus on pushing proficiency and advanced-level scoring and more on just consistent growth each year for the individual student.
“That’s the beautiful thing about our accountability model, because it emphasizes, disproportionately, growing children,” Jones said. “If you do that, you’ll be successful.”
