Accreditation ratings improve for Pulaski County Schools

Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane announced this week that 92 percent of Virginia’s public schools are meeting the state Board of Education’s expectations for achievement and improving student outcomes, and are accredited for the 2019-2020 school year.

Included in that 92 percent are all but one of Pulaski County’s schools.

The accreditation report comes less than a month after the State Department of Education released data on the performance of students on Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments in reading, writing, math, science and history during the 2018-19 school year.

Virginia schools earned one of the following three accreditation ratings based on performance on school quality indicators, as follows:

  • Accredited – Schools with all school quality indicators at either Level One or Level Two.
  • Accredited with Conditions – Schools with one or more school quality indicators at Level Three
  • Accreditation Denied – Schools that fail to adopt or fully implement required corrective actions to address Level Three school-quality indicators.

In Pulaski County, all schools were accredited except for Pulaski Middle School, which was accredited with conditions. That is an improvement over last year, however, when both PMS and Critzer Elementary were both accredited with conditions.

School Superintendent Dr. Kevin Siers was pleased with the accreditation news.

“We are very proud of the work that was done by the students and teachers at Critzer Elementary School last year to regain their accreditation status,” Dr. Siers said. “Each of our schools has a unique set of challenges to overcome in attaining and maintaining state accreditation, but the quality of instruction throughout Pulaski County is as good or better than anywhere in the state.”

On the SOL scores, Pulaski County was just below the state average in nearly every area.

The percentage of Pulaski County students passing each test compared to the state average:

Reading:

PC, 74 percent;

State avg., 78 percent.

Math:

PC, 79 percent;

State avg., 82 percent.

Science:

PC, 78 percent;

State avg., 81 percent.

History:

PC, 75 percent;

State avg., 80 percent.

Writing:

PC, 58 percent;

State avg., 76 percent.

Dr. Siers said this week there are reasons why the county’s scores lag behind the state averages, and local investment in education in the past leads the way.

“There are a number of reasons that Pulaski County student scores on standardized tests usually run a little below the state and regional averages, but one of the main reasons is a previous under-investment in education,” Siers said.

“Pulaski County has consistently been below average in local financial effort toward education, per pupil expenditures, employee salaries, and available technology in the classroom.  Fortunately, we are beginning to recognize good progress in all of these areas and therefore should begin to see some of our achievement data trend in a positive direction.”

“We have recently taken steps to adopt and implement new math and reading programs at the elementary level which gives us curricula and resources that are consistent throughout the county.  We have greatly increased our technology infrastructure at each school and adopted a one to one initiative that will make Chromebooks available to all students in grades 6-12 during the 2020-2021 school year.  Finally, we are making great progress with the construction of Pulaski County Middle School which will ensure that our students have a well maintained and positive educational environment at all three levels of education in Pulaski County.”

While Pulaski County lagged behind the state average in almost each test, it was way behind in writing.

Siers offered an explanation.

“Pulaski County Public Schools was one of several school divisions that adopted an alternative to the SOL writing assessment for high school students last year,” he said.   “The new assessment counts toward graduation requirements for writing, but the results do not get counted in with the other SOL tests for accreditation.  The new alternative assessment is performance based and we believe that it provides a better gauge than the SOL test on student mastery of skills that will be necessary when they enter the workforce.  Since the high school pass rates are usually higher than the middle school rates, we were expecting that our overall passing percentage as a county would drop this year.”

School-by-school school quality indicator data, accreditation ratings and SOL test scores are available on Department of Education website.