When the state released its school grades last month, the news wasn’t good for numerous Pasco County schools, or for the district itself.
“The Friday that grades were released, it was not a good day for me. Nor the district,” Superintendent Kurt Browning said at a school board workshop on the issue on Aug. 2.
The state’s report showed a number of Pasco schools slipping a grade, and the district, itself, slipping from a B to a C.
(File Photo)
On one hand, Browning said, school grades don’t paint a complete picture of a school.
“There’s a lot more that goes into a school than just a single school grade,” he said.
On the other hand, he noted: “People judge the quality of a school based on the school grade, and I get that.”
There were changes in the way the grades were calculated this year, Browning said.
But he added: “You had 66 other districts that were operating under the same rules.”
The district is assessing where it is and why it saw changes, particularly in the increase of C and D schools, Browning said.
“We are really trying to assess why we are where we are,” Browning said.
“We were at 34 (34th in the state) when I took office. We went to 33. Now, we’re at 39,” he said. “Anyway you cut it, slice it or dice it, we’re 39th – and that is not something that appeals to me at all.
“I do think there are things that we can do, that will move the needle,” Browning said.
But he noted, there are no easy fixes.
“I learned a long time ago that the art of educating kids is not like building a widget. You don’t start out with a table full of parts, and at the end of the assembly line they all look the same and function the same,” he said.
At the same time, “we have got to think differently about the way we educate our kids. Apparently, something is not clicking. It’s not producing the results that we absolutely have to have, in order to be successful under the state’s accountability system.”
Whether the district likes the state’s system or not, the superintendent added, “it is, what it is.”
Vanessa Hilton, assistant superintendent for student achievement, provided a presentation explaining differences in the state’s calculations for this year’s grades, noting key areas needing attention and identifying strategies for tackling the issues.
School board member Allen Altman said he doesn’t want to overreact, but at the same time doesn’t want to underreact, either.
Board member Alison Crumbley said the district may want to take a look at what’s working in its A and B schools, too, to see if those practices can be used in other schools.
School board member Cynthia Armstrong said, “You’ve identified what you need to do. The what, but not really the how.”
Armstrong said she’d like another board workshop to get more detail on how the district plans to accomplish the strategies it has laid out.
Browning got the message: “We will schedule another workshop, to delve in, once we kind of put the meat on the bones,” he said.
Published August 10, 2016