In Georgia’s College and Career Ready Performance Index, or CCRPI, the Bulloch County Schools district has eight schools recognized as Literacy Leader Award or Math Leader schools, but also two schools that remain listed as needing help to improve.

Ironically, the one local school that is simultaneously both a Literacy Leader and a Math Leader for its 2024 CCRPI scores, Stilson Elementary, remains an Additional Targeted Support and Improvement school for a specific kind of shortfall in its 2023 performance. This can happen because scores for “Progress” and “Closing Gaps” are two of the major categories in the CCRPI report card and also because schools on the Targeted Support list remain there for three years before being evaluated for possible removal.

Stilson was “placed on the Additional Targeted Support and Improvement Schools based on their 2023 scores,” said Hayley Greene, the Bulloch County Schools public relations director. “They have shown remarkable improvement on their 2024 scores.”

The other local school on the Additional Targeted Support list is Langston Chapel Elementary School. Both LCES and Stilson were identified for the list, announced by the Georgia Department of Education, for the lagging scores of their third- through fifth-grade students with disabilities on the 2023 Georgia Milestones Assessments, Greene reported in a news release. Both schools will remain on the list through 2026, when they will be re-evaluated, she said.

Math & Literacy Leaders

But this year five elementary schools in Bulloch County were recognized by the state for a Literacy Leader Award or a Math Leader Award, or both, “based on their students’ exceptional achievement or growth in either mathematics or English language arts on the Georgia Milestones’ tests,” Greene reported.

Julia P. Bryant Elementary, Mattie Lively Elementary and Stilson Elementary were recognized as Literacy Leaders for either their percentage of students reading at or above grade level or significant growth in that percentage. Statewide, 324 schools were identified as Literacy Leaders.

Similarly, Nevils Elementary, Brooklet Elementary and again Stilson Elementary were recognized as Math Leader schools for achievement or growth in the percentage of students scoring at the “proficient learner” level or above in math. A total of 624 schools in the state qualified at Math Leader schools.

The other two main CCRPI score categories for all schools, “Content Mastery” and “Readiness,” are based on the most recent Georgia Milestones standardized test scores and current factors related to students’ readiness to move on to the next level in school or after graduation, rather than rates of change.

Langston Chapel Elementary School, although not qualifying as a “leader” school, made progress in Content Mastery in English language arts, adding 2.85% to its score, and math, with an added 6.14% from 2023 to 2024. LCES also improved in Closing Gaps for English language arts with subgroups exceeding their targets, she reported.

Of Bulloch County’s four middle schools, two, Langston Chapel Middle and Southeast Bulloch Middle, were recognized by the state as Math Leader Schools, also for either achievement or growth in the percentage of students scoring at the “proficient learner” level or above.

Southeast Bulloch High School also qualified as a Math Leader School.

Bulloch County Schools elementary grades performed slightly lower than the state elementary school scores in Content Mastery, Closing Gaps, and Readiness. However, in all four components, Bulloch County Schools’ elementary school scores increased from 2023 to 2024.

Overall, Bulloch County’s middle schools performed lower than the state middle school score in Content Mastery and Readiness. Bulloch County Schools outperformed the state middle school scores for Progress and Closing Gaps and made gains in Content Mastery, Progress and Readiness. All four middle schools individually increased Content Mastery scores, while two of four schools showed increases in each of the other component areas: Progress (Langston and William James), Readiness (Langston and Southeast Bulloch), and Closing Gaps (Langston and William James), Greene reported.

Graduation rate 90%

Graduation rates are a fifth CCRPI component, but only for high schools and their school districts. This is one of a few score categories where the Bulloch County Schools as a district are outperforming the state average. Bulloch County’s graduation rate, as an aggregate of the four-year and five-year graduate rates of the three high schools, rose to 90%, which is 4.3 percentage points higher than the statewide rate of 85.7%.

Bulloch’s four-year high school graduation rate was 89.68%, an increase of 0.51 percentage point over the previous year, and its five-year rate (meaning that this adds students who needed a fifth year in high school to graduate) reached 90.49%, an increase of 1.48 points.

Besides graduation rate, the one CCRPI component on which the three Bulloch County Schools high schools, as a group, outperformed the state was “Readiness.” The county’s high schools, as a group, performed lower than the state average for “Content Mastery” and “Progress” and significantly lower in “Closing Gaps.”

Progress vs. Gaps

The Bulloch school district’s Assistant Superintendent for School Improvement Teresa Phillips explained in an interview how the “Progress” measurement differs from “Closing Gaps.”

For “Progress,” students are compared with “like peers” in the same grades.

“So let’s say you and I were both fourth-graders,” Phillips said. “On our math scores, they’d look at where we scored last year as third-graders on math, and they look to see if we scored within this range. Now, of all of the students across the state that score within a certain range, how did I do compared to that group, and how did you do compared to that group? Did we grow as much as our like peers?”

But “Closing Gaps” looks only at subgroups of students, for which three must be considered in the CCRPI: students with disabilities, English language learners and economically disadvantaged students. The state Department of Education sets targets for the subgroups.

“So our students with disabilities, for example, they want them to increase,” Phillips said. “Just those students with disabilities, they need to show some growth and increase a certain amount, and so they’ve set a target, and ‘Closing the Gap’ shows did you meet that target for that subgroup, or not.”

“Readiness,” includes literacy scores, student attendance and a “Beyond the Core” consideration of the percentage of students passing courses such as art, foreign languages and other non-core subjects. For high schools it also takes into account the number of students in accelerated college enrollment, completing career pathways and passing related tests.

Again, Langston Chapel Elementary School and Stilson Elementary were placed on the state’s Additional Targeted Support and Improvement list only for their students with disabilities subgroup scores from 2023. That was the case for a majority of schools on the list statewide, Phillips said.

But the school district had identified both LCES and Stilson as schools needing additional local support before they were placed on the ATSI list by the state.

While those schools receive some special support efforts – such as the work of a “district instructional coach” who plans with teachers – all schools in the 15-campus system benefit from a Multi-Tiered System of Supports, according to Phillips.

“Our system of supports means our interventions,” she said. “Whenever we see that students aren’t performing on grade level, we try to make sure there are some interventions during the school day to meet students where they are to help them grow as fast as they can … to catch them up where they will be at grade level in their academic performance as quickly as possible.”

For this, the district employs intervention teachers, sometimes retired teachers who return in a part-time capacity, to meet students in small groups for individualized instruction.

The school district’s full public release about the CCRPI, including a chart, can be found at www.bulloch.k12.ga.us/news-feed-data/state-releases-annual-report-card-for-schools

For the full statewide report and its scrollable list of district scores, see https://ccrpi.gadoe.org/Reports/Views/Shared/_Layout.html