UNION COUNTY —A graduate rate higher than that of the state and improvements in elementary math and ELA scores are among the signs of the progress the Union County School District has made toward meeting the goals of its Strategic Plan Director of Secondary Education Cindy Langley says.
Langley presented the Union County Board of School Trustees this week with an update on the plan. The board voted to approve the plan with trustees Buck Peay and Manning Jeter opposed.
“The strategic plan is a required document from the state in which we develop goals in three areas,” Langley said in an interview Wednesday afternoon. “Those areas include school climate, teacher quality, and student achievement. The five-year plan was written during the 2010-2011 school year and we also used this plan for our Advanced Ed accreditation.
“As part of the plan we conduct a needs assessment in those three designated areas,” she said. “In needs assessment we get input from all stakeholder groups including students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community leaders. From that needs assessment we develop specific goals and strategies to meet those goals.”
Langley said that each year the district is required to update its plan and she said this was done by reviewing the progress the district had made toward meeting its goals based on the data from the 2011-2012 school year. She said in a number of areas the district has made progress toward the meeting the goals set to be achieved by the 2015-2016 school year.
“One of the goals is the student graduation rate and it has risen from 72.5 percent to 79 percent which exceeds the state measure of 75 percent,” Langley said. “At the elementary level in both math and ELA we increased the percentage of students scoring met or exemplary on PASS. ELA rose from 65.3 percent to 71 percent and math rose from 67.5 to 72.2 percent.
“Those are examples of where we met or exceeded our goals,” she said. “Other area where we met or exceeded our goals were SAT, ACT, and end of course test scores.”
Langley said there were areas where the district did not meet its goals including primary math achievement, the passage of the exit exams at the high school. In both those areas, Langley said the district saw a decrease.
Despite this, Langley said the district’s performance has been a positive one overall since the strategic plan was developed.
“Overall we are very pleased with our performance,” Langley said. “We have four elementary schools that were recognized as performance reward schools based on academic achievement. Four elementary schools scored an A on the federal report card. The graduation rate exceeds that of the state and our middle schools were recognized for making significant growth in student achievement. We will continue to monitor our annual program and adjust our strategy based on the data.”
Editor Charles Warner can be reached at 864-427-1234, ext. 14, or by email at cwarner@civitasmedia.com.
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