By By Georgia E. Frye / staff writer
Sept. 12, 2003
The Mississippi Department of Education plans to release report cards today that will show how individual public schools across the state are performing.
The report cards are required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act a law that forces states to compile the reports and include information on school accountability, teacher qualification and test data.
The release of the report cards comes about a week after the state Department of Education released school-by-school accreditation levels. The report cards are expected to be available at noon today on the agency's Web site www.mde.k12.ms.us.
Sylvia Autry, Meridian's interim school superintendent, said the city school district plans to release its own set of report cards in an easy-to-read format at the end of October.
The report cards will present results from the 2003 accountability models achievement, growth and adequate yearly progress, better known as AYP.
AYP assessments for each school were released last week.
While all schools in Lauderdale County met their goals in reading/language arts, Clarkdale Attendance Center, Northeast Elementary School and Southeast Middle School did not meet their AYP status in math.
In Meridian, Harris Upper Elementary and Meridian High School did not meet their AYP in reading/language arts. Parkview Elementary, Carver Middle and Kate Griffin Junior High did not meet their AYP in math.
The report cards will contain information about professional qualifications of teachers in core academic subject areas English, reading, language arts, science, math, foreign language, civics and government, arts, history and geography.
Highly qualified teachers are those who held full state certification during the 2002-2003 school year.
The report card also will contain data from several standardized tests students take each year including the Mississippi Curriculum Test, the Subject Area Testing program, the Writing Assessment and Norm-referenced Assessment.
The Mississippi Curriculum Test is given to students in the second through the eighth grades. Subject area testing is given to students in Algebra I, Biology, U.S. History and English II multiple choice and writing.
The Writing Assessment is given to students in the fourth- and seventh-grades and the Norm-referenced test is given to students in the third- and seventh-grades.
Data will be broken down into subgroups of race and gender and will report two-year trends as well as student participation rates.