Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By JOYANNA LOVE/ Managing Editor

Since the state of Alabama received a federal waiver for testing because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a traditional school system report card is not being released this year.

However, data about school system performance for the 2020-2021 school year based on those students that did participate in state testing has been released.

Chilton County Schools Superintendent Jason Griffin said the data is what he anticipated due to several absences and changes in the school system related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the data was better than he had expected.

“Chilton County Schools is diligently working to overcome the learning loss caused by the ongoing health crisis,” Griffin said. “Due to COVID, our school system, along with all other school systems, dealt with online learning and absences due to sickness and quarantine which contributed to significant reduction of in-person instruction.”

The school system had an overall ELA proficiency rate of 34.32% (with 47.59% reported as level 2 which is the level right below proficient). Math proficiency rate overall was 14.63% with 46.85% at level 2. The science proficiency rate overall was 23.42% with 49.51% at level 2.

Specific data for individual schools and other subgroups can be found by clicking on “proficiency” under school performance at alabamaachieves.org/reports-data/school-performance.

Students in grades 2-8 take the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program for testing, while students in 10th take the Pre-ACT and 11th grade students take the ACT.

“While there is always room for improvement, our system is focusing on the learning loss caused by the ongoing health crisis,” Griffin said. “The system provided summer learning camps for grades K-6 and a comprehensive after-school program for grades K-6 as well focusing on learning loss along with social/emotional supports. In addition, all schools have staff to serve as interventionists to assist with learning loss. A team effort with all stakeholders including students, parent/guardians and teachers/administrators is in place to assist our students to overcome the issues caused by COVID. On the high school level, our ACT scores for the students who took the Pre-ACT in 10th grade in the fall of 2019 and the ACT in the spring of 2021 as 11th graders showed an improvement in all areas including English, Math, Reading, Science and English/Language Arts. To assist those students to further improve, the system provided ACT boot camps and individual schools focused on intervention efforts for their students.”

He said he believed the positive impact of these programs would be seen in future year’s data.

“We are proud of the efforts of our students striving to overcome the challenges of this health crisis they are dealing with and our school system is working to help these students in those efforts,” Griffin said.

Updated information for the 2020-2021 school year was not released for graduation or career readiness indicators.