MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Thursday was report day for public schools in West Virginia, and Monongalia County brought home passing marks in reading and math.
The results were part of the inaugural “West Virginia Schools Balanced Scorecard” released by the state Department of Education.
Public schools here either met or “partially met” standards set by the scorecard.
Visit www.mywvschool.org to view more detailed results and for an overview of the study.
Standardized test scores, attendance records and graduation rates were melded together for the assessment — which Mon Schools’ chief Eddie Campbell Jr. said he “wasn’t surprised” by Thursday.
“This validates a lot of what we’re doing here,” said the veteran educator, who is in his first year as Mon’s superintendent.
It also shows what needs to be done, he said.
“Math is still a battle to us,” he said, but added that the county ordered a new series of textbooks for that subject this year.
“The first year [for the scorecard] creates a baseline for us,” he said. “You’re not gonna see a lot of ‘green’ right now.”
That’s in reference to the scorecard’s color chart, which runs as such: Green shows that school has exceeded standards. Blue and gold represent a meeting or partial meeting of standards, respectively.
Red denotes that a school did not meet the state standards of the assessment.
That hue dominant for the scorecard. Statewide, as shown by the assessment, 45 percent of
students netted at least “proficient” scores in English with about 37 percent doing the same in math.
There’s a reason for that, Campbell said. The standards keep changing.
Campbell was a teacher and administrator at schools in Virginia, China and Alaska before returning to his native West Virginia seven years ago to head the Tucker school district, a position he left in June when he was hired here.
“I’ve been a superintendent here for seven years, and this is the fourth assessment I’ve been through,” he said.
The fourth from-the-ground-up change, he said.
Standard testing in West Virginia since the time Campbell has been back has gone from the state’s Westest 2 to the federally mandated Common Core.
Mandated testing jumped from grade to grade over the years, the superintendent said.
“We have something in place where we can track kids from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade,” he said.
“We can always tweak it if we have to. The state of Virginia, where I used to work, has had the same assessments in place since the 1990s, and Virginia is a national leader. You can’t snap your fingers and change something overnight.”
West Virginia’s state superintendent told MetroNews Thursday he agrees.
The question, “Can we just stay with one system and one assessment for some time?” is one that has been oft-voiced, Steven Paine said.
“The answer is absolutely yes,” Paine said.
“Let’s figure out how to roll up our sleeves and improve the outcomes measured by this system,”
he said.
“And five years from now, we’d love to say we’re far ahead of where we began.”
Story by Jim Bissett
Tweet @DominionPostWV. Email [email protected].