County holds steady on school accountability

According to this year’s accountability scores, all of Crook County’s schools are at least partially meeting the state’s expectations and have not seen a significant drop in performance scores, despite the disruptions caused by COVID-19.

Accountability measures have not been determined since the 2018-19 school year, a two-year pause caused by the pandemic.

The Wyoming Department of Education reports that half of traditional schools in this state were able to maintain their level of school performance and 20% actually increased their rating.

In Crook County, two out of three high schools were able to maintain their rating, while one of the county’s three elementary schools saw a drop and another actually increased their score.

“All of our schools did well in the school performance report. There are always things we can revisit and tweak as we move forward,” says Superintendent Mark Broderson, Crook County School District.

“Some teams have already begun the process of making adjustments to improve our scores. We have a very dedicated staff that work hard to ensure every student finds success.”

High Schools

High school accountability is measured according to two benchmarks: the Wyoming Accountability in Education Act (WAEA) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The former is the state accountability measure, while the latter speaks to federal accountability.

For the state measurement, each school receives a performance rating on a four-point scale that ranges from “not meeting expectations” to “exceeding expectations”. This is measured using seven individual indicators: achievement, growth, equity, English Learner Progress (ELP), extended graduation rate, post-secondary readiness and grade nine credits.

For the federal measurement, schools are required to report annually on their progress towards long-term and short-term goals for English Language Arts, math, graduation rate and ELP, with the aim of identifying struggling schools for support.

None of Crook County’s high schools was determined to be in need of support.

Sundance High School (SHS) was determined to be “meeting expectations” this year, with an 88.9% four-year on-time graduation rate. The school exceeded targets in two categories: post-secondary readiness (an ESSA measurement) and grade nine credits (a WAEA target).

The former of these is the percentage of prior year graduates who demonstrated college or career readiness. The latter is the percentage of prior first-year grade nine students who earned a fourth of the credits needed to graduate.

SHS met the targets for all other categories, except for the ESSA norm category of “growth”, which was below average. This indicator is the mean student growth percentile in English Learner Progress and math for students between grades nine through 11 from prior year to the current year’s WY-TOPP and ACT state assessments.

SHS met its requirement for 95% participation rate on the WY-TOPP state assessments and ACCESS. The schools performance rating of meeting expectations has not changed from the last assessment in 2018-2019.

Hulett School was also found to be meeting expectations, with a 91.7% four-year graduation rate. All measures were found to be meeting the required targets, aside from two that exceeded them and one that fell below.

The school was above average on the ESSA measurement for on-time graduation and the WAEA target for grade nine credits. It was below the WAEA target for post-secondary readiness.

Hulett School also met its requirement for 95% participation rate on the WY-TOPP state assessments and ACCESS. The school’s rating of meeting expectations has not changed from the 2018-19 assessments.

Moorcroft High School (MHS) was determined to be “partially meeting expectations”, with an 84.2% four-year graduation rate. Again, the school was determined to be meeting targets on most indicators, both state and federal.

MHS was found to be above average in the ESSA measurements for growth and the WAEA target level for grade nine credits. The school fell below the state targets for extended graduation and post-secondary readiness.

MHS also met its requirement for 95% participation rate on the WY-TOPP state assessments and ACCESS. The school’s rating of partially meeting expectations has dropped two levels from 2018-19, when it was determined to be “exceeding expectations”.

Elementary and Middle Schools

Elementary and middle schools are also measured according to state and federal standards. In the former case, the measures include achievement and growth according to WY-TOPP scores, equity (the growth of students who scored the lowest on prior assessments) and ELP.

The federal measures are the same as for high schools.

Sundance Elementary achieved the highest level of WAEA school performance and is said to be “exceeding expectations”. This was an improvement from the school’s 2018-19 rating of meeting expectations.

Hulett school is meanwhile meeting expectations, the same rating it was given in 2018-19. Moorcroft K-8 is partially meeting expectations, a drop of one level from 2018-19, when it was reported to be meeting expectations.