SCS addresses reasons, solutions, for mediocre testing scores

Faced with unfavorable state testing data placing eight county schools at low-performing status and over 40 percent not meeting expected academic growth, Sampson County Schools officials are putting measures in place to raise performance across the system.

Those plans were discussed last week by the executive directors for elementary, middle and high schools at Sampson County Schools, along with Susan Warren, the director of accountability and student services for the system. All came together to share that plan with the Board of Education on the heels of discussing data that showed eight schools with low-performing subgroups and over 40 percent of schools not meeting the expected academic performance and growth set by the state.

Dr. Edie Sohigiah, the executive director of elementary schools, talked about how the administration team created a plan to help support teachers through core instruction.

“We’re utilizing the PLC (Professional Learning Community) classes to support data analysis with teachers and action plan development,” Sohigiah said. “That conversation about data will result in action by the teacher and their support team.”

She noted that all the schools would be streamlining the Multi-Tiered System of Support (NC MTSS) system to create district-wide expectation from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Exemplary instruction within the county schools will also be identified and shared with other teachers throughout all of the elementary schools, and a new plan to utilize academic coaches they have hired is being put into place. Sohigiah explained that the executive directors and administrators will work with the coaches to not only identify exemplary instruction but wo show where support will be necessary.

“Our theme right now is that every teacher deserves a coach. I don’t care if you are a novice or if you have been doing this forever. You deserve someone to shoot ideas back and forth with, to have those conversations about the standards and what that instruction implies,” Sohigiah said.

A consultant has also been hired to make sure the support for the teacher stays once the executive director is no longer in the building to help the academic coaches.

“So, we feel that in order for our coaches to be successful, which means our teachers are successful and students will be successful, we thought that they needed a little bit more support,” Sohigiah told the board. “Because this is a new process, we’re building what the coaching model is going to look like for Sampson County.”

Along with the coaching model for all the teachers, Dr. James Parker, executive director of middle schools, spoke about how coaching strength will also be added to the Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) Schools.

A TSI designation is a federal designation for schools which have had continually underperforming student subgroups for the past two out of three years. For seven out of the eight TSI schools, this designation comes from underperforming students with disabilities.

Parker explained that they will go by Sohigiah’s coaching model to add strength to those schools and especially for those subgroups. They will have another consultant, Dr. Ray Jones, to walk through the classrooms — both general and special education — with the principals to help with the coaching program.

Superintendent Dr. Jamie King further explained further that Jones will do a walkthrough with the “school leaders” to see what’s happening in the classrooms and where instruction might be missing.

“We go into classrooms with everyone. We come back out in the hall. We leave this in a debrief, but he helps us look at what we’re missing in the instruction,” Dr. King said.

The school system will also be partnering with the 95 Percent Group, a reading intervention program.

“It’s a very direct instruction program that has yielded great results across the school districts,” Parker said about the group.

According to the group’s website, the 95 Percent Group has been around for almost 20 years and “helps put the science of reading in classrooms across the country.”

With math scores declining in almost every grade, the county school system has also partnered with Hill Center in Durham to strengthen the co-teaching model.

“We will do some professional development with the math teachers and with the exceptional children’s teachers to hopefully improve that model,” Parker said.

Three middle schools are also in a “restart process.” This process, according to Parker, allows for flexibility on compliance plans and some legality. Four middle schools and two elementary schools are also going through the Next Education Workforce through the AASA.

Jennifer Daughtry, executive director of high schools, talked about the grant the high schools was given through the Integrated Project (TIP), and how that grant has been used to get more training for leadership.

“We’ve had two days of training last week with our Instructional Leadership team, which consists of teachers, principals, assistant principals and instructional coaches from our schools,” Daughtry explained.

With this grant, the school system was also able to partner with the Teaching Channel. With the Teaching Channel, the system will be able to video its master teachers and enable other teachers to be able to learn from those teachers.

“The Teaching Channel creates a way for teachers to upload videos and then reflect on that video,” King explained.

He also assured the board that putting videos on the Teaching Channel is strictly voluntary and they would never force a teacher to put a video there. Whatever quota they have to meet per month will mostly be done by the coaches.

“The (teachers) that we have selected have been very open to it because they are our master teachers,” he told the board

“Master teachers that are selected at our school level will also be coaching teachers within their building to be able to support them in areas that they need support in,” Daughtry said.

Along with the plans that were brought forward on how to proceed, Daughtry and King both brought up the circumstances that the school system, and the county as a whole, deals with, and how those impact the scores.

Testing data showed that math performance scores had slightly fallen over the course of the last year, and Daughtry pointed out the lack of math teachers and the shortage the county schools have faced.

“We’ve got math teachers in our schools that are teaching like 40-44 students in class at one time. We have teachers teaching four periods a day in several high schools. So, therefore, we’re using various scenarios within our schools to make sure that our students have a teacher in front of them to be able to teach them instead of learning through a computer,” Daughtry pointed out.

King, instead, focused on what the people in the county face as a whole, stating “I think it’s important to know what’s happening in our communities as well.”

He talked about information that was released after some health studies in Sampson County.

“I think when you layer it along with our test scores, it says what amazing things some of our schools are doing given what’s happening with kids that are walking into those buildings,” King stressed.

These health studies showed that Sampson County is higher than the state average in every physical health category with adults with asthma, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, kidney disease, sufferers of stroke, being obese, poor mental health, people who say they have poor health, cancer incidents, emergency room visits, cardiovascular disease hospitalizations and stroke hospitalizations.

“We have lower than average access to substance abuse (help), mental health, primary care and dental care. Over 50 percent of the student population in Sampson County is receiving Medicaid,” King told the board. “We have higher than average teen births, almost double the state average. We have higher than average HIV/AIDS rates in Sampson County. Higher than average alcohol-involved crash deaths, higher than average population-limited fitness deficiency.”

King also noted that there were higher than average rates of food insecurity, the median income was $19,000 less than the state average and the life expectancy in the county is 2.3 years less than average.

“This is not just a school problem. This is a community issue. We’ve got to wrap our arms around the schools. We’ve got to figure out the way to fix it, but it’s not just a school thing,” he said.

King did stressed that these health study results were not an excuse for the scores though.

“Our scores are not appropriate; they are not acceptable, and we will do better,” he promised. “But I also think it’s important to know what our schools are facing every single day.”