At their regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, September 11, the Granville County Board of Education received a special report on the student achievement results from the 2016-2017 school year. During this presentation, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Michael Myrick presented a series of graphs and charts providing comprehensive data on how the students performed on state tests. The presentation focused on GCPS test score averages over the past three years compared to state and surrounding district averages. Dr. Myrick also shared information about academic growth measures for each school, and school letter grades as assigned by the state.
Data from his presentation revealed an increase in proficiency in 14 of 18 tested areas, with 18 of 19 schools having met or exceeded academic growth. These significant gains in growth and proficiency across grade levels and content areas contribute to a multi-year positive trend for student achievement.
The scores for our district were generally higher than those of Vance, Warren and Person counties, and slightly lower or comparable to those for Franklin County. All five districts in our region were at or below the overall state average in all areas.
In the second set of data, Dr. Myrick displayed the following chart showing how GCPS schools letter grades compared to those of local charter schools:
Letter grades for schools in our district improved compared to the previous year, with no schools reporting an F, fewer schools reporting as a D, and more schools reporting as a B.
School Board Chairman Dr. Thomas Houlihan commented on this set of data, saying, “Three year trends sho tremendous growth over time. It’s very exciting to see this type of progress. We do want to celebrate, but we don’t want to forget the work that remains. We also don’t want to forget the hard work and dedication of all of our talented teachers.”
School letter grades are determined by a state-mandated formula that uses proficiency and growth on a variety of test scores to assign a letter grade. More information about how school letter grades are calculated can be found here:
https://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/accountability/reporting/spgbckgrndpack15.pdf
Vice Chairman Leonard Peace, Sr. offered his remarks, saying “We are definitely headed in the right direction. The teachers certainly deserve all of the credit for their hard work.”
Superintendent Dr. McLean thanked Dr. Myrick for his work in this area, and summarized the presentation with these remarks, “While I can take no credit for these remarkable gains, I am excited that there is established, consistent momentum for our district. If we are to achieve our goals of double digit improvements and 90 percent across the board, then we must use these fine results to help launch us forward. ”