The Arizona Department of Education released its grades for all public schools in the state based on its evaluations of the 2017-2018 school year. For many Verde Valley schools, it was not a great year.
All four of the schools in the Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District that were evaluated either stayed the same or fell from last year.
- Cottonwood Elementary School went from a C to a D
- Cottonwood Middle School held steady at a C
- Oak Creek School fell to C from last year’s B
- Mountain View Preparatory went from an A down to a C.
Dr. Daniel Bright Elementary School, which until this year was only a kindergarten to second-grade school, was not graded by the Department of Education, since only schools with grades higher than that were evaluated.
According to COCSD Superintendent Steve King, the school district is appealing all four grades, feeling that there were mistakes in how certain aspects of the evaluations were tabulated. According to King, all schools deserved more points for science test scores.
King also argued that grades for CMS and MVP were incom- plete, since they did not include acknowledgment of certain advanced students.
“The issue was, we sent a significant number of students last year from both Cottonwood Middle School and from MVP to Mingus Union High School for an Algebra 1 class,” King said. “There’s a section on the school report card called acceleration points. You get those points for sending students up to advanced classes.
“If the percentage of students that pass the end-of-course test on those classes is equal or previous to the previous year, then you receive bonus points.”
According to King, 100 percent of the students that were involved in the class passed the test. King said that the school district had passed along the data to the Department of Education, which had been missing it because of the classes happening at Mingus, not within the district. He expects that MVP’s grade will be raised up to a B, still below last year, but not as much of a fall.
Even if some of the scores are corrected to account for errors like these, COCSD schools still saw drops in some areas. CES, CMS, and OCS all saw significantly lower scores in the English Language and Literacy category, which grades schools on their English Language Learners instruction, for students studying English as a second language.
“We didn’t do a good enough job in our ELL is what it comes down to,” King said. “And that’s an area that we’re working on. We’re looking at how we address the needs of our English Language Learners, and how do a better job with them.”
King cited retirements of some veteran teachers as another cause of drops.
School district administrators see the recent realignment as a key to helping address some of the problems at its schools. They argue that by keeping kids in a consistent school from kindergarten through eighth grade, the school system will be able to more directly address the needs of students and help them improve from year to year. Since a significant portion of school grades depend on student growth, the district hopes that a more consistent approach, with students being evaluated as they move up within a single school, will improve that.
“The reason for the restructuring of the schools was for these sorts of reasons,” said Jess Vocca, who was principal of CES before moving to lead the newly kindergarten-to-eighth grade DDB. “You get points for longevity which we don’t receive points for because our kids move to a different school.”
“We are in the midst of getting whole new systems in place as far as how the school operates,” said Matthew Schumacher, principal of the newly realigned Cottonwood Community School.
Schumacher said he sees the changes as a way to improve test scores and all types of educational achievement in the long run, but also feels that the current transitions can mean that improvements might not be immediate.
“It’s tough to direct academic improvement with the school just getting up and running,” Schumacher said.
Clarkdale-Jerome School had a much more optimistic year than its counterparts in Cottonwood and Cornville, raising its grade from a C last year to a B this year.
Clarkdale-Jerome School District Superintendent Danny Brown actually feels that the school deserves an A, and hopes to achieve one with its own appeal, citing the same mistake involving Algebra 1 classes at Mingus that affected the COCSD schools.
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
