Mississippi State University and the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District hosted an event Monday in the Starkville High School library to brief stakeholders on the status of education in the state and to collect input to aid improvement efforts for Mississippi school systems.
According to Nathan Oakley, elementary education and reading executive director for the Mississippi Department of Education, the Mississippi Board of Education will consider the feedback from the session, one of 15 to be held throughout the state, in its efforts to align the state’s five-year strategic education plan with requirements of the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
As the successor to the No Child Left Behind Act, ESSA affords states authority to address specific educational goals. The legislation requires states to adopt standards and assessments for students grades 3-12, which Mississippi has done, Oakley said. However, ESSA also requires reporting of specific metrics to address equity gaps and measure college readiness of students, which the state is still developing.
“We’ve got to include other academic indicators beyond just the state tests for elementary and middle school, so that’s a place where we’ll get some feedback,” Oakley said.
Once Oakley spoke on the state of education in Mississippi, attendees separated for small group input led by several host representatives.
Ginger Tedder, Starkville High School assistant principal, acted as a discussion leader for one such group. Tedder asked questions that addressed resource needs for school improvement and methods for assuring the quality of teachers, administrators and schools. She said she believes the input session will have a tangible impact.
“Making sure we have the best teachers in the classroom, I think that’s important, as well as providing support for our families who need the extra socio-economic support.” Tedder said.
During the session, Carlen Henington, professor for the MSU College of Education psychology program, participated in discussions and offered considerations for evaluating educator and school functionality.
“Graduation rates, demographics, attendance, dropouts and test scores to me are for the most part really easy to quantify with data — they’re low-hanging fruit,” Henington said. “I monitor schools in the state. One of the things I look at is the number of suspensions and are there a certain subset of students receiving a lot of suspensions. That is an indication of some really troublesome practices by teachers and school leaders.”
After input from the session is submitted to the MDE, the department must satisfy ESSA’s federal requirements by the beginning of the 2017-18 school year.
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