Appalachian Educators Connection
September 6-9, 2016
Important Events This Week:
September 6
- Meet NC Teacher of the Year, Bobbie Cavnar (Gaston County) 5:30pm RCOE 124 B/C
September 7
- AppEd Meeting 5:30pm RCOE 124 B/C
- International Teaching Seminar with former students via Zoom 6:15pm RCOE 124 B/C
- Homecoming Working Banner Meeting after AppEd
- Transfer Educators Graduation Planning Session (Email Megan Kasper at kaspermm@appstate for additional information)
September 8
- Elementary Ed Majors Block Meeting RCOE 124
6:00pm-Block 1
7:00pm-Block 2
September 9
- Recruitment/Diversity Committee Chair Meeting about Open House 1:00pm RCOE James Center
- PD Seminar: Engaging Students to Maximize Student Learning 2:00pm RCOE 124
Presenter: Brian Bettis, Appstate Alum 2005, Assistant Principal, Cleveland County Schools
Homecoming Committee Reminders:
- The AppEd Homecoming Committees will start hosting "working" meetings after AppEd to start on the Banner.
- LipSync Practice will continue on Sunday 5-7.
Bobbie Cavnar, NC Teacher of the Year, visits RCOE!
International Student Teaching Seminar
Read below about our own Joy in the RCOE Community Matters September 2016 Edition:
A-F School Grades Continue to Have Strong Poverty Correlation (article taken from The Public School Forum's Friday Report)
The North Carolina State Board of Education released its annual A-F School Performance Grades yesterday. Continuing the trend from the last two years, the School Performance Grades are strongly tied to a schools' poverty level.
The school performance grades were the result of legislation passed in 2013 by the General Assembly, when North Carolina became one of fifteen states to adopt an A-F grading system. For the majority of schools, the grade is a combination of two factors:
- School Achievement Score (80 percent of overall grade) – the percentages of students proficient on end-of-grade and end-of-course tests, graduation rate, and college and workplace readiness measures.
- School Growth Score (20 percent of overall grade) – improvement on the school achievement score factors from one year to the next, using EVAAS, a tool developed by SAS Institute, Inc., that measures the impact schools and teachers have on students’ academic progress.
For the 2015-16 school year, 32.7% of public schools received an A or B, 44.1% received a C, and 23.2% received a D or F.
Source: NC DPI, 2015-16 Performance and Growth of North Carolina Public Schools
According to the NC Department of Public Instruction's news release, the school grades continue to correlate closely with the poverty levels of schools. Among all schools last year that received a D or F, 93 percent had enrollments with at least 50 percent of students from low-income families. Conversely, among schools that received at least a B, 75.7 percent had enrollments with less than 50 percent of students from low-income families.
Source: NC DPI, 2015-16 Performance and Growth of North Carolina Public Schools
The Public School Forum has been vocal on the state's A-F grades since the 2013-14 grades were released in February 2015. Analysis of the first two rounds of School Performance Grades revealed a strong correlation between the grades and poverty—a link discussed in detail in the Forum’s policy brief, A is for Affluent.
“We’ve maintained from the start the current A-F school grading system is too heavily dependent on standardized achievement tests and so strongly correlated to non-school based factors like poverty and family income that it has very little to teach us about what can be done at the school level to improve student outcomes,” said Keith Poston, Forum President and Executive Director. “What possible good can come from putting a big F on the school house doors of under-resourced schools serving the highest percentages of students living in poverty?"
The 2015–16 Performance and Growth of North Carolina Public Schools Executive Summary can be found here.
All School Performance Grades can be found here.