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Parish schools see positive growth
Published Tuesday, March 18, 2008
VIDALIA — Concordia Parish schools ranked 10th of 61 school districts for academic growth during the 2006-2007 school year.
School district performance scores for the 2006-2007 academic year were released earlier this month, and the Concordia Parish School District moved up five spots in overall statewide ranking, from 35 in the 2005-2006 school year to 30.
“We are very excited to hear about how much we have improved,” Superintendent Loretta Blankenstein said. “That’s quite an improvement, and we are certainly working hard to maintain or surpass that improvement this year.”
Growth is measured by comparing previous district performance scores to the newest available, and during the 2006-2007 school year, the district grew by 2.4 points, from 80.7 to 83.1.
Factors that are considered when district rankings are calculated include standardized testing scores, the percentage of certified teachers in the district, drop-out rates and overall student attendance, among others.
District Director of Academics Paul Nelson said it would be hard to point to one particular area to account for the improvement.
“If there was one thing, it would be the hard work of the teachers and principals at the school level,” Nelson said.
The district’s scores may have improved because teachers are becoming more familiar with how testing works, Nelson said.
“Our teachers are getting more and more aware of the things on the tests, and they are modifying their lesson plans to get more in line with the format of the tests themselves,” he said.
Sticking with the programs in place is beginning to prove effective, Nelson said.
“So many times in education if you don’t have results right off the bat you drop it and move on to something else, but you really need time to see the benefits from some of these programs, he said.
The district has had the Reading First program for kindergarten through third grade students for four years now, and having the material presented to them in such a consistent manner has probably helped, Blankenstein said.
The district also uses the READ 180 program for the fifth through eighth grades.
“With programs like that, it takes several years to begin to see the results,” she said.
This year, the district has added some additional tutoring opportunities for students at some schools, and is trying some new things with a language program, Blankenstein said.
“We look forward to getting the results from this year’s tests,” Blankenstein said.
Teachers and principals are continuing to work hard, and results like the recent ones show that, Blankenstein said.
Individual school performance scores will be released later this year.
Comments
Posted by Lilsister (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 12:51 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Way to go Concordia! This is great news! You have Natchez Public School System to thank for some of this success. You have hired some of the best teachers from the Natchez area. Teachers like Mrs. Pat West, Mrs. Lynda Williams, Mrs. Thelma Newsome, Mr. Donnell Newsome, Mrs. Lucille Reese. Mrs. Doris Henry, Mrs. Mary Floyd, Mr. Buddy Givens, Mrs. Lee Ann Mason, Mrs. Mary Smith Le Blanc, Mrs. Laura Aucoin, and these are just a few of the wonderful teachers , who have retired or left our Natchez System. Seemingly, Natchez gave you some giants in the field of education.
Posted by SayItRight (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 6:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
When so many great teachers willingly leave a school system to go somewhere else, that should be a big indicator to the powers that be that they need to step up and address what's wrong.
You can't blame anyone for moving on to something better.
Posted by picture_music101 (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 6:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
For one lilsister, its not that the teachers are better its that the quality of the schools is better as well as the teachers.Im talking cleaner restrooms,cafaterias,classrooms,and hall ways. The sanitazion level is better.Other schools like natchez and everyone who borders ask for to much money to enroll a child or has low sanitazion. i know i would want my kids to go to a dirty school.
Posted by saywhat (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 7:47 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Could be all those Natchez kids coming over that improve the scores so much. Maybe that's the reason they don't do anything about it.
Posted by coastgirl00 (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 8:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The Natchez kids are not the reason the scores are going up! In fact, if we get rid of them the scores would probably show a higher growth. Smaller class sizes would increase the chances of more one on one assistance.
Posted by itsawounderfullife (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 9:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Thank you coastgirlOO, saywhat, I can almost a shure you that is not the case.
Posted by Lilsister (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 9:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Picture_Music 101,
The majority of the teachers mentioned in the above post have retired from the Natchez School District. They did not just leave, those who did not retire are Mr. Buddy Givens and Mrs. Lee Ann Mason. Both Mrs. Reese and Mrs. Henry were products of the Natchez District. Mrs. Pat West and Mrs. Thelma Newsome are retirees from Natchez, and they are also products of the Natchez Adams School District. I failed to mention Mrs. Vonzell Murphy.
Posted by mskitty (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 11:03 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Some of these teachers have nothing to do with Concordia Parish scores this year. They have only been in Vidalia this school year. The test were taken last week and these grades will not be in until May. We should thank the whole staff for all of the hard work they have done over the past ten years.
Posted by saywhat (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 11:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I agree with the size of the class going down to improve the scores. My child had 26 in their class last year and I know almost half of them came from Natchez. It's got to have something to do with the money or scores. If they want to go to our schools they need to charge a fee to compensate.
Posted by ijohnson (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 11:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Vonzell Murphy -- now that's someone I was thinking about recently. If she is the former Vonzell Causey, her mother, Mrs. Causey, was my favorite teacher. It didn't start off that way, though. I gave that woman so much trouble when I was in her class. One day she told me she was going to spank me and I told her, "You ain't my Mama and you ain't going to touch me!" Well, she called my mother who drove down to her house (we lived in the same neighborhood) with me in tow. Mrs. Causey laughed to my mother about what I said, I apologized and all was well. Needless to say, I became one of her favorite students. All through my high school and college years when I would see her, she would laugh about what I said. She was so sweet and beautiful with the smoothest brown skin and that long black wavy hair she kept up in a bun!!
When they moved to the outskirts of Natchez to Washington, I would stop sometimes to say hello or pass her home and wonder how she was doing. I always think about her . . . always -- I was just thinking about her over the weekend. Good teachers are hard to find. And when you find them, the schools need to keep them because they make such positive impacts on children's lives. They are priceless!
Vonzell, you were always a very sweet, loveable and beautiful person, in and out, like your mother. I am so glad you have followed in her footsteps. You have BIG shoes to fill though, because your mother was one of the best teachers to ever step into the classroom.
Posted by hollywood (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 1:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Get the facts straight.... Ms. Mason and Mr. Givens just arrived this fall at VJHS - so they had nothing to do with school improvement last year, although my child says they both are great!!! Natchez can keep sending those wonderful teachers.... however, they can keep their students - most arrive not prepared academically for our parish standards. I have voiced my concerns several times about those students attending our schools from out of zone. When my child does not ride the bus and I take them to school; i see at least 3-5 cars in the drop-off line with Mississippi car tags.
Posted by itsawounderfullife (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 1:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)
saywhat, your first statement contradicts your second statement, im not being rude, im just woundering. You are right about a fee, I hope in the future they will figure out a way to do such. The schools are the main reason for us moveing from Natchez to Vidalia, my oldest will be starting pre-k in august. (hes growing up to fast)
Posted by saywhat (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 2:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I am just wondering why they keep letting kids from Natchez come over and take up space in the classroom. I even called the school board last year to find out what we could do about it. I was told there was nothing that could be done. I just wonder why. It has to be the scores or the money. I don't have a clue. My child took the LEAP last year and the kids from Natchez were taking up space in the LEAP tutoring. We pay outrageous money for our homes in Vidalia so our kids can go to school there. Maybe there is something going on that we need to know about .
Posted by Cheryl (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 5:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I think that most of you need to run spell-check on your handwriting before you submit your entry. I went to school at Monterey as a child and I can not understand people that send comments in with so many misspelled words in it especially when talking about schools. Go Monterey!
Posted by EnKiKur (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 10:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The title of this article is not 'Parish Sees Kids Suddenly Getting Smarter', the title is 'Parish Schools See Positive Growth' and then goes on to define this "academic growth" as having more students in school with fewer dropouts and more overall attendance, more certified teachers, and (possibly) higher standardized test scores.
The article then goes on to have the district experts explain that they don't really know what the cause for this "academic growth" is, though they are excited about it. The District Director of Academics thinks it might have something to do with the teachers having figured out what is on the standardized tests and altering their teaching plans to focus on the test questions. He doesn't say he is certain about this, only that maybe this change in focus has something to do with it.
He also mentions Reading First and Read 180, two programs that meet the criteria for obtaining federal funds for such "scientifically based" teaching programs; the article makes it seem that district wide Reading First and Read 180 are the programs used to teach students up to eigth grade level to read. These programs are advertised as reading intervention programs, so I wonder if at some point it was determined the whole district needed reading intervention.
Read 180 is the educational product of Scholastic, Inc. which is one of a handful of companies in the education cartel that feeds off the government created monopoly of public education. It is a fairly pricey program and as one of it's innovations features teaching reading in 90 minute blocks of time; back in the days when the school day was split up into 45 o4 50 minute segments parents in New York rioted because they felt these small segments of class time would be detrimental to the education of their kids; history proved this to be a correct assumption. Now the wheel comes full circle, thanks to "scientifically based" educational research that has somehow figured out that breaking one's concentration to go to a different class makes it take longer to learn what was being learned in the class the student just left. Public education is very good at re-creating the wheel, and spinning it too.
Posted by EnKiKur (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 10:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The reading content of Read 180 is peppered with a sort of different view of history, society, and science that anyone who graduated before about 1980 would be familiar with. The content is aimed at creating the "interdependent" child of the "global village". In essence what this means it that children are being taught to be accepting that woman as a whole sins against nature and self, and that Americans sin more than the rest of womankind, except possbily those white Europeans not of Spanish descent who live in the other industrialized nations.
Read 180 further promulgates the point of view that nationalism should be eschewed for globalism, a viewpoint I find ironic since the guardians of public education are the ones who were responsible for creating nationalistic fervor in the first place by accepting the recommendations of national socialists Edward and Francis Bellamy to construct schools along military lines; in furtherance of this policy students were forced to begin the day by reverently standing before the battle flag of the United States, mounted on a pole thrusting from the earth or floor, and swearing allegiance to it. These students were to become, in Francis Bellamy's words, an industrial army "marcing as one" "rallying around the schoolhouse", off to a future in the army or factories.
The horrors of WWII genocide had at their root this nationalistic vision of using education as a tool to teach students to unquestioningly worship the state and to serve the needs and desires of the state with their very lives, if need be. This vision of the Bellamy's was influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who felt that the proper placement of religious sentiment should be in the dictates of the state; because Rousseau was a philosopher many people at that time figured he was pretty smart so they should think like he did.
I don't know whether globalism is a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that when those students stood and swore allegiance to that flag mounted on that pole they were doing something earlier generations of Americans would not have done. America was born out of the recognition of the people that one need not swear allegiance to a feudal Lord; what the Bellamy's did was to convince Americans to kneel, swear, and kiss the ring of the Lord of State, depicted in the pole thrusting up from the grassy swards or barren wood floors of public schools and identified by the military flag solemnly draped from the top or gloriously snapping in the breeze.
Posted by EnKiKur (anonymous) on March 18, 2008 at 10:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Read 180 now wants the students to forget that Liege Lord of the state and replace it with another, the Liege Lord of the Global Village. It will do so by enticing many District Directors of Academics and many District Superintendents to be so focused on the "scientific" minutae of testing various parameters on orders handed down from high to do so many senseless things without thinking, as every good American or Global Villager should whenever the collective, progressive need of Nation or Global Village calls her to serve, that they will not have time to look at the overall picture of what they are involved in and to judge for themselves the morality or lack contained within their endeavor.
I believe the reason improvements in academic growth can't be said to have a particular cause by Concordia Parish officials is because at heart these people didn't see a lack to begin with, so they are as surprised as anyone else that the situation they were unaware of has improved. They "are very excited to hear about how much we have improved" even if the perception of improvement is imposed by an outside body and can't be clearly defined in meaningful terms.
Posted by silly_willy_24_7 (anonymous) on March 19, 2008 at 5:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)
i know of several people who went to vidalia and got the equivalent of a post office box. the process is fairly simple: find a friend or relative who lives there and get them to make out a rent receipt each month, then mail it to their own address, but adressed to you. this way, you can establish that you are a resident of la, and your kids can go to vidalia schools.
for those of you who are tired of natchez kids going to vidalia, feel free to establish ms residency in a similar way described above so you can send your kids to natchez schools. this may help natchez schools achieve higher than a level two rating. go for it!!
just a thought!!!
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