Dear Parents and Community Members,

We are off to a great start for school year.  Georgia has taken a significant leap to improve the quality of education it has identified for its children with the Georgia Performance Standards; the work of the School Boards Association in concert with the Superintendents’ Association is nearing their completion of the first draft of The Vision for Public Education in Georgia; and we, as a school district, have worked hard to learn new skills in order to educate, inspire, challenge and support our students in order to obtain student success.

New benchmarks have been established to measure the academic improvement of all students in Georgia.  As a result of this change, many elementary and middle school students (grades 3 through 8) who previously scored at levels of met and exceed could now score differently. In addition, high school students will still have to master the new math by completing Math I, II and III.  Furthermore, the High School Graduation Test will finally have a passing score that is also equivalent to the scores needed for a school to make AYP.  This in itself will be a big leap for our students, as many have always passed this test, yet scored just a few points short of counting towards AYP.

The Georgia Performance Standards are designed to further ensure improved student learning, by requiring students to use more critical thinking skills than ever before.  These expectations are held for all of our students in grades K-12.

For Greene County, last school year was a good one, as four out of the five district schools achieved Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). It will be important for the community to understand that with these expectations and higher cut scores, the bar has been set much higher for our students and therefore, making AYP will be harder than before.

Our goal as a school district will be to use these new benchmarks as a baseline for future progress.  The data that we received from the last school year will serve as a new starting point for how we as a school community will move forward.  It will be all the more important for us to have a more intensive focus on academic improvement for college and/or work readiness.

Our Plan:
In an effort to ensure that we are successful in meeting the new standards for this academic year, our plan will be to implement the following strategies for growth that come from our Strategic Plan: 

  * Academic Coaches for mathematics have been placed in elementary and secondary schools. Math scores across the state have been low, even as we have worked to meet the state standard. These coaches will be able to support classroom teachers and work with them to develop strategies to improve mathematical instruction. We will also provide support to students who need to accelerate in their knowledge of basic math skills. (Goal I & IV)

  * Academic Coaches for literacy and Language Arts have been placed in elementary and a Reading Intervention Specialist will serve the secondary schools. While our Reading and Language Arts scores have been very good, we must continually work to 100 percent proficiency, and move more students into the exceeds category; with high expectations and support for teachers, this can happen! (Goal I & IV)

  * Continue to provide opportunities for talented, gifted and students with high potential to have opportunities for enhanced learning through our Renzulli program; increase the opportunities for increased rigor by providing dual enrollment programs through Georgia Military College; and continue the ongoing training of teachers in differentiated instruction. (Goal I & IV)

  * Continue to provide tutoring and extended learning time for those students who need to acquire new skills, re-learn the old skills and need more time to learn and understand. (Goal I)

  * Through our participation in the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI), we will continue to provide administrator leadership training designed to ensure that all administrators are effective change agents. While this leadership training program assists current leadership, as a district, we will have to continue to provide opportunities for new leadership to emerge. (Goal IV)

  * Providing training for a district wide Response to Intervention (RTI) model for students K-12, to provide early intervention and identification for students and avoid unnecessary special-education classifications. (Goal IV)

  * Ongoing training and implementation of the new and more effective data management systems (School Net) to track and continually assess student learning. (Goal III)

  * Implementing a norm referenced assessment (NWEA) that has the ability to measure the growth that students make within a school year. Using this assessment tool will allow us to compare our students to student progress on a national scale, while also informing us of what students still need for mastery. (Goal III)

  * Providing an alternative program and site for students to learn, when the traditional school does not meet their learning needs. (Goal I)

 

The bar is being raised for students in the entire State of Georgia.  However, it is even higher for us in Greene County, as our community expects even more of our students.  It is now more important than ever that parents and community members become a part of our team effort to achieve student success. 

As an educational team, staff members in our school district are committed to doing the work necessary to ensure that we meet our goals. We will need community support through increased school visitations at PTA meetings, with parents working as teachers in every home and communicating with their teachers in every school; we have the capacity to meet the new standards.  As always, parental support is essential to the progress of our children.  With your support, we will continue to achieve the goals that we have set for our children.  Together, we can make this another year “that’s all about the children.”

Sincerely,

Barbara Pulliam Davis
Superintendent, Greene County School System