West Central School Board Discusses State Grade

West Central School Superintendent Charles Mellon

The West Central School Board dissected the preliminary grades given to the corporation by the state. Superintendent Charles Mellon said the way corporations are evaluated has changed. As part of the former Adequate Yearly Progress requirement, high performance schools were assessed as an Exemplary School where severe under-performing schools were classified as being placed on Academic Probation. Now, Mellon says, the corporations are given a letter grade based on certain statistics.

“And it’s based in the elementary with the ISTEP as well as IMASS and ICLASS. It measures each student’s growth. They plug in an equation and it shows the different scores,” explained Mellon.

The high school, on the other hand, is a little different.

“It takes into account your End of Course Assessment, Language Arts, Math, the graduation rate and College and Career Readiness,” said Mellon.

Mellon and the three building principals discussed the scores with the board.

“Our high school is at an A, our middle school is at a C and our elementary is at a D,” Mellon explained. “We’ve already put some emphasis on a plan that’s been approved by the state to improve our D score. As far as the high school, this is the second year in a row that we’ve gotten an A. Our task there, as the bar continues to be raised, we match the height of the bar.”