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Most West Virginia county school systems not meeting efficiency standards, benchmarks

According to a new report from the Department of Education, 49 county school systems are on watch for not meeting one or more indicators on the state Balanced Scorecard. (Graphic courtesy of the W.Va. Department of Education)

CHARLESTON — More than half of West Virginia’s county school systems are struggling to meet specific program requirements, and 49 counties are on watch for multiple issues including chronic absenteeism according to a report given to the state Board of Education during its regular monthly meeting Wednesday.

According to report issued by the West Virginia Department of Education, 25 counties met all requirements for county operational effectiveness indicators of efficiency, leaving 30 counties that either didn’t meet one or more requirements.

Alexandra Criner, director of the Office of Accountability, told board members Wednesday that out of the 25 counties who met requirements, 16 had done so for two years in a row.

The state’s accountability system has two parts: the county operational effectiveness indicators of efficiency, and indicators of student performance and success based on the annual West Virginia Balanced Scorecard.

County operational effectiveness looks at 11 indicators in a county, including career and technical education, child nutrition, the effectiveness of county boards of education, facilities, federal programs, finance, personnel, special education, state-required data collections, transportation, and universal pre-Kindergarten readiness.

Counties receive one of two ratings for each of the 11 indicators: counties can be rated as “meets requirements” or “needs assistance.” Counties that need assistance are required to work with the Department of Education to develop an action plan with monitoring of the county’s progress in making improvements. If counties are unable to make progress, other actions can be taken, including directives by the state Board of Education for the department to take over a county school system.

Counties needing assistance was broken down by indicator: 14 counties needed assistance for special education, seven counties needed assistance for career and technical education, five needed assistance for finance issues, and two counties needed assistance for federal program compliance.

“It’s all about proactivity. We want to be able to find problems and address them before they become part of the problem and require intervention,” Criner said. “We started that conversation with each of the offices that manage those county operational effectiveness indicators. We started the conversation about how to make those more rigorous, how to find best practices, and we are moving to look at what are key performance indicators for each one of those offices. What do we need to know that districts are doing or are not doing in order to meet quality for our students?”

Balanced Scorecard indicators include: English Language Arts (ELA) achievement and progress, math achievement and progress, attendance, discipline, English Learner (EL) progress, graduation rates for four-year and five-year cohorts, the number of students on track to graduate, and post-secondary achievement.

Beginning in 2022, counties not meeting the set Balanced Scorecard indicators are considered “on watch,” requiring counties to implement plans and monitor their progress towards improvements. Counties not showing improvement for two consecutive years receive a “support” designation, while counties showing some improvement will remain on watch.

According to Criner, only Kanawha, Pocahontas, Pleasants, Tyler, Ohio, and Brooke counties are not on watch for specific Balanced Scorecard indicators, while 18 counties received one on watch indicator, 15 counties received two on watch indicators, and 10 counties received three on watch indicators. Mingo, Logan, Fayette, Summers, Upshur, and Morgan counties were labeled red for receiving four on watch indicators.

Two of the counties in red – Logan and Upshur – are already under the control of the Department of Education due to mismanagement by their county boards of education and county superintendent. State Board of Education President Paul Hardesty said the Department needs to be more proactive with counties to ensure they don’t get to a point where the board must approve an intervention.

“We’ve got five counties that’s got academic and other problem areas,” said state Board of Education President Paul Hardesty. “We can’t do interventions in 55 counties, nor do we want to. But if we have a county with four indicators that are way messed up, we need to go in there.

“If I had my way, I’d say put an asterisk at the bottom of the page and if you are on here red, guess what? We’re coming to your town,” Hardesty continued. “We have to find out what is going on and we have to peel back the layers of the onion, because by the time we find out, it’s intervention time and guess what? The wheels are off the bus.”

For counties not making improvements in Balanced Scorecard indicators for two years straight, 26 counties were placed on support for having no improvement in at least one indicator, while nine counties were placed on support for not making improvements in two indicators. There were 20 counties that were not on the support list.

“The districts that have been identified with support indicators are required to create a plan to address identified deficiencies and submit that to the West Virginia Department of Education,” said Margaret Williamson, director of district and school improvement.

The biggest problem for counties on watch was attendance, with 35 counties on watch and 17 counties on support. Williamson said her office is working with counties with low attendance numbers. The department has created the West Virginia Attendance Collaborative, made up of five attendance directors from across the state and work with other attendance directors regionally, providing guidance and mentorship.

“As the most frequently identified support indicator, we are adding some additional measures to what we already have in place for that,” Williamson said. “We know that regular attendance or in the reverse, chronic absenteeism, can have a significant impact on student academic achievement really on all the other Balanced Scorecard indicators. If students are not in school, they do not receive the same instruction or intervention that they would with regular attendance.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com

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