JORDAN BROOKS

jordan.brooks@middlesboronews.com

The Kentucky Department of Education recently released the annual School Report Card data from the 2021-22 academic year. As evidenced from the report card data, Bell County schools have felt the impact of Covid-19 on both enrollment and quality of instruction, school officials said.

After two years on hold due to the Covid pandemic, the results of Kentucky Department of Education Summative Assessments for Kentucky Schools, known as the School Report Card, are in, and clearly there is work to be done around the state and locally.

Schools are graded on students’ grade level reading, writing and math skills and are assigned a color-coded grade different from numerical scores of past years, with blue being the highest level of achievement, followed in descending order by green, yellow, orange and finally red, which is the worst.

“Bell County’s state results just got back for our school district, and our teachers and principals and administrators worked as hard as I think we possibly could to do online learning,” Bell County School Board member Chris Warren said. “We just got our results from our end of the year state testing, and we are pleased with how they did in comparison to a lot of other schools in southeastern Kentucky.”

Bell County elementary schools earned an orange rating for reading and math and yellow for science, social studies and writing.

Middle school was yellow for reading and math, as well as science, social studies and writing.

The high school scored the best overall, with a yellow rating for reading and math and blue for science, social studies and writing.

Warren recognized that comparatively, students are behind from where they were pre-Covid.

Among fourth graders, results of where students of Bell County are pre-Covid and today show a downward trend in their assessment results. For instance, in reading proficiency scores among 4th graders dropped 14% from the 2018-2019 school year, in Math dropped 16%, and in social studies dropped 23%. While for both the 2018-2019 and the 2021-2022 school year end of year testing scores in science remain leveled.

While these results do not represent the entire school district as a whole or accurately summarize an entire school, these numbers do show trends that shed light on just how far children have fallen behind because of the pandemic.

“There are two groups, one group where the teachers worked very close with their students and they stayed on track, and another group who fell behind [in the midst of Covid.]”

Angela Allen, instructional supervisor, says one way they have been keeping up with students is doing MAP benchmark assessments 3 times throughout the year, to keep track of student progress throughout the year.

“One group Covid has affected really bad is elementary school kids, especially in third and fourth graders,” Allen said.

”One thing we’re doing to help all our students out is after school tutoring programs and Success for All.”

SFA is a whole-school reform model that includes a reading, writing, and oral language development program for students in prekindergarten through eighth grade.

According to Warren, Bell County schools has been experiencing declining enrollment every year since he has been involved in the school system.

“It [enrollment] declines every year, it’s nothing particularly new,” said Warren. “Bell County used to have 13 elementary schools.”

There are a host of things Warren attributes to declining enrollment in the school system. Since mining, logging and other industries left the area, the population of Bell County has been on a steady decline.

“Lack of employment, no skilled employment and no above-minimum-wage jobs makes it more than difficult for people to settle here and raise a family,” Warren said.

The effects of these things, leads to Warren’s second reason he believes enrollment is declining.

“I think most people seem to be moving away from Bell County, and no one is choosing to move here, mostly because there are no jobs,” said Warren.

Lastly, Warren believes people choosing to homeschool and private school their children is also hurting enrollment for Bell County schools.

“We’ve had more people choose to homeschool and private school their children than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

“Although there is officially only one private school in the county, the number of parents that are choosing to homeschool their children has increased.”

He attributes this influx of homeschooled children largely to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“With the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more people got used to homeschooling their kids, and in most cases grandparents, or foster parents, or someone other than the biological parent has let the kids make the decision, unfortunately,” said Warren.

“However, a few more (students) are starting to come back as they realize they are falling behind, and on the other hand there are parents seeing the option of online learning.

While Warren could not speak to the specific differences between homeschooled students in Bell County and the quality of education Bell County schools were provided, he said faculty and staff are focused on students first.

“Bell County’s state results just got back for our school district, and our teachers and principals and administrators worked as hard as I think we possibly could to do online learning,” Warren said. “We just got our results from our end of the year state testing, and we are pleased with how they did in comparison to a lot of other schools in southeastern Kentucky.”

Warren does recognize that comparatively, students are behind from where they were pre-Covid.

Among fourth graders, results of where students of Bell County are pre-Covid and today show a downward trend in their assessment results. For instance, in reading proficiency scores among 4th graders dropped 14% from the 2018-2019 school year, in Math dropped 16%, and in social studies dropped 23%. While for both the 2018-2019 and the 2021-2022 school year end of year testing scores in science remain leveled.

While these results do not represent the entire school district as a whole or accurately summarize an entire school, these numbers do show trends that shed light on just how far children have fallen behind because of the pandemic.

“There are two groups, one group where the teachers worked very close with their students and they stayed on track, and another group who fell behind [in the midst of Covid.]”

Angela Allen, instructional supervisor, says one way they have been keeping up with students is doing MAP benchmark assessments 3 times throughout the year, to keep track of student progress throughout the year.

“One group Covid has affected really bad is elementary school kids, especially in third and fourth graders,” Allen said.

”One thing we’re doing to help all our students out is after school tutoring programs and Success for All.”

SFA is a whole-school reform model that includes a reading, writing, and oral language development program for students in prekindergarten through eighth grade.

To learn more about your local school district, visit www.kyschoolreportcard.com.