FLOYD COUNTY — Again scoring the highest in Clark and Floyd counties, as well as besting the state average for ISTEP+ scores, officials at New Albany-Floyd County Schools say they’re not going to put on the brakes.

Though their gains were modest — like the rest of the districts in Clark and Floyd counties — NA-FC’s score have either approached or surpassed 80 percent of students passing math, English/language arts and students passing both subjects.

Michelle Day, director of elementary education and Title I, said new programs took off without the negative effect on scores they can sometimes bring.

“Anytime you have new approaches and strategies, you can see a leveling off or going backward,” Day said. “I was a little nervous that we’ve implemented some pretty specific strategies... we really did not.”



MAKING THAT A

Several schools in the district hit the 90 percentile mark in their scores. Floyds Knobs Elementary averaged 94.5 percent in their math scores and 91.5 percent in ELA, Highland Hills Middle School averaged 95.4 percent in math, and two schools — Greenville Elementary and Georgetown Elementary — scored higher than 90 percent in all three subject areas.

But most notably, Greenville Elementary’s fourth-graders were as good as it gets — 100 percent of them passed the math portion of the assessment.

Though not at the highest tiers, most of the rest of the schools in the district scored higher than 70 percent in all subject areas, many of them exceeding scores in the 80 percentile.

In a written statement, Bruce Hibbard, superintendent, said the increase in the number of students passing the math portion of the test from 2009 to this year comes in at about 840 students — which Rhonda Mull, director of middle schools, said that equates to about one of NA-FC’s middle schools.

“Moving forward, the teachers and administrators of NAFCS will continue to be focused on learning, collaboration, and results,” Hibbard said in the statement. “I am truly indebted to our staff for all of their efforts and focused work.”

As a district, the scores in all three areas have increased substantially from 2009, rising by 18.73 percent in ELA, 29.59 percent in math and 32.38 percent in students passing both.



ACHIEVEMENT GAPS

For the most part, students of different ethnicities and economic statuses and other subgroups performed better overall, surpassing state averages across the board and showing big gains from 2009.

Sally Jensen, director of assessment and student information, said all students are exposed to the same instruction, which they’ve worked to strengthen.

“The stronger your core instruction is, when you’ve completed it to see where your kids are, the fewer the kids that will need extra time and support to master the learning,” Jensen said.

From there, she said they find out which students need extra help, figure out how to intervene with the issue and make progress.

However, Hispanic students showed slight declines in math and students passing both, dropping 7.09 percent and 2.66 percent, respectively.

English language learners also had one-year drops, but in all areas. Scores in ELA dropped 5.52 percent, scores in math declined by 1.19 percent and students passing both fell 13.05 percent.

But special education students showed the most significant gains of all the subgroups. Their scores more than doubled in every category from 2009, with gains ranging from 38.79 percent to 64.25 percent in just one year. They also had the highest scores above the state average.



FUTURE GOALS

Mull said some of the middle schools set high, but possibly attainable, goals for next year. Specifically, Highland Hills Middle School has set the bar for 2013 with 100 percent of their students passing the math portion of the test.

She said the rest of the schools expect to see more gains while sticking to the program that’s brought them this far.

“We’ve gotten very, very specific with timely, specific, rigorous acceleration,” Mull said. “So if a student is struggling... then I have almost 40 to 50 minutes every single day to have more instruction in that English or math area. So once the core is aligned and with the acceleration and interventions in place... they have more time to learn it. That’s why you’re seeing those gains.”

Jensen said current programs have garnered a lot of growth, teachers are working together more than ever with data on students and their hard work is paying off.

“As kids go through the years, their immediate needs, we know what they are,” Jensen said. “Everybody’s teaching was we all would teach based on our knowledge. You have to have that system in place in order for learning to be the strongest it can be, and our system is in place.”