By JOYANNA LOVE/Senior Staff Writer

Chilton County Schools was graded as a 76 (corresponding letter grade of a C) on Alabama’s first A-F state report card issued Feb. 1 for the 2016-2017 school year.

All local schools received passing grades.

“A C for us means we know there are areas we can still improve on,” Ashlie Harrison, Chilton County director of teaching and learning, said. ” We are thankful for teachers in our district willing to do what our students need moving forward.”

The final score for each system is a combination of five indicators: academic achievement, academic growth, graduation rate, college and career readiness and chronic absenteeism. Harrison said the scores were “not as high as we would like to see.”

However, she said the school system was excited about the 83.57 score on the academic growth indicator.

Academic growth was based on students who demonstrated improvement in reading and math when different years were compared. It accounted for 30 percent of the overall score.

“I think we have really good teachers who are doing what’s best for the students and to me that’s what’s important,” Harrison said.

The graduation rate was 84.40, which was slightly lower than the overall state rate of 87.

The graduation rate was defined as students who graduated within four or five years of their freshman high school year and accounted for 30 percent of the overall.

Academic achievement accounted for 20 percent of the overall score. Chilton County received a 55.24 based on students ACT ASPIRE scores.

“I think the biggest disappointment is that we are getting scores based on something that we don’t have confidence in,” CCS Superintendent Tommy Glasscock said.

Since the 2016-2017 school year, ACT ASPIRE has been abandoned as the state testing measure because it did not align with the Alabama State Standards.

Harrison said since the test does not align with the education standards being used, then it is not an accurate measurement of student achievement.

Chilton County Schools scored 60 in college and career readiness, compared to the overall state score of 66.

Students were defined as college and career ready if they had received college/AP credit, benchmarked on Work Keys or the ACT, received career tech credentials or been accepted into the military.

School systems had initially been told that a local indicator, a goal chosen by each school based on a parent and student survey, would be the final indicator. Instead, chronic absenteeism, missing 15 or more days of school, was used. Chilton County was given a score of 18.47 for Chronic Absenteeism.

Harrison said this was a concern for the school system and could be again next year because of the number of days students have missed this school year already due to the flu. Glasscock also expressed concerns.

The report card also listed whether subpopulations had met the state average for at least one indicator. None of the subpopulations in Chilton County had.

“We are looking at different types of intervention that would bring them up to at least the state average,” Harrison said.

The data had been expected to be released in December of 2017, but the State Department of Education had delays for this first use of the A-F grading system.

Visit http://ap.alsde.edu/accountability/EducationReportCard/selectschool for individual school report cards.