During the height of the pandemic, Dwight Arnold drove his daughters Ivy, Jade and Sage daily to Franklin Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Williamson County.

Without a stable internet connection at their home in the rural Maury County community of Theta, the church was their best option to stay up to date on their missions. .

“We just put academics above everything,” said Dwight Arnold. “It was difficult, but they did well. It gave them something to occupy their minds. I think it gave them something to do instead of just being depressed about the situation or depressed. It forced them to do so. to get the job done to keep their minds active and sharp. “

Hard work paid off.

Despite the pandemic and weeks of wasted classroom time, students like the Arnolds at Maury County public schools are showing they have achieved significant academic growth in the past year. Despite the improvement in the school district’s year-over-year growth, based on Tennessee’s Value-Added Assessment System, TNReady proficiency scores in reading and math continue to lag behind.

Student improvements at a glance:

• Students increase their average ACT score by 2.5%, from 18.7 to 19.2.
• They competently increased the topic by 10%
• Student performance gaps decreased by 20%
• The neighborhood went from “In need of improvement” to “Satisfactory”.
• Highland Park Elementary School, Mt. Pleasant Middle School, and Spring Hill Middle School are no longer the poorest 5% of schools in the state.

The most significant indication of improving student academic performance comes from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System. Commonly referred to as TVAAS, the state measure records student growth from year to year, whether or not the student is proficient in state assessment.

In Maury County, students have gone from being rated “Needs Improvement” to “Satisfactory,” skipping a state level of progress.

School leaders say the results, released by the state earlier this month, mark a significant improvement for the school district, which has repeatedly remained stagnant in academic progress in recent years.

Public schools in Maury County have remained “in need of improvement” since 2015.

When calculating a TVAAS score, a student’s performance is compared to the performance of their peers, who have achieved similar results in previous assessments.

“We have a lot to celebrate in Maury County with the public school system,” said Maury County Superintendent Michael Hickman.

MCPS is now considered a level five district in student growth, indicating that students achieved two years of academic progress in the middle of the pandemic year.

Additionally, students and educators at three of the school district’s five lowest performing campuses were able to move their campuses out of the state’s 5% lowest performing schools.

These schools were Columbia Highland Park Elementary School, Mt. Pleasant Middle School, and Spring Hill Middle School.

Cox Middle School and Whitthorne Middle School remain among the worst performing schools in the state.

Referred to as ASI or ATSI (Additional Targeted Support and Improvement), schools are categorized as those in which the pass rate of a group of students is less than or equal to the highest pass rate of any priority school in their pool. school.

Maury County public school math scores also rose two-tenths of a point, Hickman said.

Student ACT scores also improved, especially among economically disadvantaged students and people with disabilities.

The standardized testing came at a time when internal data shared by the school district revealed that 78% of public school students in Maury County were at some point quarantined and 10% isolated during the school year. 2020 due to COVID-19.

About 63% of the school district’s 1,400 school employees have been affected by COVID-19, through infection or quarantine.

“There has been a lot of disrupted learning,” Hickman said. “Was there a loss of learning? Absolutely. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, our teachers still helped the students.”

In March 2020, the US Department of Education waived assessment and accountability requirements following the COVID-19 pandemic.

An opportunity to flourish

With district-wide improvement in mind, the Arnold sisters explain why they and their peers across the county have made significant progress. Their verdict: Students are more adaptive, determined and flexible to changing conditions than ever before.

“We had to sort out a lot on our own without a teacher there, so now that we’re back in class it’s a lot easier for us,” said Sage Arnold, a freshman at the Hampshire Unit School, as she reviewed her homework on the family’s dinner table.

“Whenever we need to understand something, we don’t need the teacher’s help as much as we did before,” she said.

Her older sister, Jade, a sophomore at the same rural school, said the return to classroom learning in fall 2020 also re-energized her and her classmates after months of learning and interaction via a computer screen.

“We get more in the classroom than at home,” she said. “I think that makes sense. The students have become so used to working on their own that they have become more determined to do it, independently.”

Pedagogically, the exact reason for the improvement in their scores is not yet well understood by neighborhood educators.

Jessica Vasquez, Title One Facilitator academic coach and STEM coach at Randolph Howell Elementary School in Columbia, said the pandemic presented a unique opportunity.

“From what I understand about adolescent development, I’m not surprised that they did really well last year,” Vasquez said. “I imagine they thrived on the flexibility of distance learning. Teens need extra sleep (studies show school starts too early for this age group), and this has given them the opportunity to show great ownership of their learning.

The school district and its educators continue to deal with a shortage of teachers and staff, following the resignation of more than 50 staff earlier this year.

“If we knew what the magic was, we would repeat it all the time,” said Stephanie Sparks-Newland, a teacher at Spring Hill Middle School. “As a teacher, I think we work just as hard. We will take whatever positive signs we can get. We continue to swim and do our best with what we have. We want to celebrate, but we don’t really know what we are celebrating. “

She is also a representative of the Maury County Education Association, a local teachers’ union.

Since educators do not have access to the tests used to assess student performance, Sparks-Newland said it is difficult for teachers to assess how that growth is measured.

“I don’t think any teacher understands the formulas,” she said. “It’s a tangle of formulas that we don’t have access to either. The scores go from low to high, and we keep doing our best. Even so, we have amazing children who are learning every year. This human factor is never taken into account. “

Sparks-Newland said educators are focusing more on what they can do to make improvements for students.

“We have a long way to go before we pass the big tests this year,” she said.

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Educators congratulated on their progress

Hickman said the progress forward is the result of the continued hard work of the teacher and the school district moving forward with a unified vision.

“It’s huge,” Hickman said. “It shows how great the teachers we have here in Maury County. The dedication and hard work they did last year – it’s not just the resilience of the children, but also the resilience of the teacher. It all goes back to the determination of Maury County teachers to ensure that students receive the education they deserve. They have proven to be among the best in the state.

The superintendent said the improvement in academic performance shows the district is working towards a single unified goal.

“It’s not just a cliché phrase that we put on the wall, but something that we actually do and it proves that Maury County teachers are some of the best in the state,” Hickman said.

The results were praised by school board members, who have consistently expressed concern about the district’s academic performance.

“I want to congratulate all the staff and teachers for the progress we have made,” said Michael Fulbright, chairman of the Maury County School Board. “Let’s keep our foot on the accelerator pedal. Let’s go on. As a school board, we are proud of and appreciate the hard work.

Editor’s Note: For Part 2 of this story, analyzing the district’s recent test results and plans for improvement, check back with The Daily Herald.

Contact Mike Christen at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter at @MikeChristenCDH and on Instagram @michaelmarco. Please consider supporting his work and that of other Daily Herald journalists by subscribing to the publication.