This year’s TISA Accountability Report shows the Putnam County Schools on track toward two goals, but falling behind on ACT scores.
The goals set three years ago were to improve third-grade ELA and Math proficiency to 70 percent before 2035, and set a composite ACT score of 21 district-wide. Data and Testing Supervisor Jason Stickler said the school district has surpassed expectations on improving third-grade proficiency.
“We had a 27 percent gap from 42.9 percent to 70,” Stickler said. “So took that, and we closed 15 percent of that, actually, around the first year, and then surpassed our target last year, and so we are really on a good trajectory.”
Stickler said the school district will have to improve ELA proficiency by at least 2.1 percent every year to meet the goal by 2035. Stickler said the school district has also surpassed expected progress for third-grade math proficiency by reaching 61 percent this past year.
“We have already surpassed year one, year two, year three, 2026, and 2027 targets in our third-grade math,” Stickler said. “So that particular goal we had to totally revamp because we just surpassed it by so much. So we kind of reworded that a little bit just to kind of mirror our third-grade ELA goal.”
Stickler said the school district has yet to receive official ACT results, but preliminary results show that the school district has seen a dip in the ACT scores. Stickler said a dip is not unusual. Director of Schools Corby King said work is being done to focus on improving the ACT scores.
“The high schools have implemented during the Cav Time, U Time, Wildcat Time, that they have they have implemented some ACT prep strategies during that time as well, that they are focusing on every week, along with Shmoop and some of the other resources,” King said. “Students also have the opportunity to do an ACT bootcamp at Cookeville High School. This has proven very effective, you know, we had six students last year at Cookeville High School with a perfect 36, and they had attended the boot camp.”
Stickler said this year’s action plan consisted of the implementation of high-quality instructional materials, continuing funding for instructional coaches, maintaining a high dosage with a low ratio of tutoring, professional development, and helping students with behavioral needs.
The system will also use a program called Mastery Connect to project how students will perform at the end of the year. Online support for ACT preparation will continue and the system will purchase a new ACT tool.
Stickler said a survey will go out to allow the community to provide feedback on the goals and ideas on how the school district can better help its students. Stickler said the TISA Accountability report will be brought back in November to solidify the continuation of the goals.