State of Schools Report

Nebraska Department of Education and the Sargent Public Schools AQuESTT Classification

On December 21^st the Nebraska Department of Education released the “Nebraska Education Profile” or NEP. The NEP replaces the State of the Schools report that has been used the past several years to share information about the State down to individual schools and districts. The Nebraska Education Profile (NEP) is a web tool designed and developed by the Nebraska Department of Education, presenting Nebraska education data in multiple ways for multiple audiences.

These reports cover many things including: State and School/District Snapshots, information from last year’s state assessments (NSCAS), performance indicators on some of the AQuESTT tenants, and the new AQuESTT Classification that replaces the former State of the School’s rating. The AQuESTT Classification combines performance on several indicators grouped by tenet to provide schools and districts with an overall descriptive classification of Excellent, Great, Good, or Needs Improvement. I admit that it is a little difficult to understand but the end goal is that schools can use the information to identify strengths and weaknesses in order to improve.

As a District – Sargent Public Schools was giving an AQuESTT rating of “Needs Improvement.” This is disappointing and difficult to understand, but if you look at the information you will see that our District scores on the Nebraska Student Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) from the spring of 2018 were lower and the percentage of proficient students was down from previous years. Some of the data is masked – you only see an asterisk – due to having less than ten students in the class. Those classes have the District data substituted for School data. In my opinion, this works against small schools because the group may score better than the district average. In my opinion, it is also hard to quantify some of the tenants that the state is using to rate districts.

In spite of a disappointing district rating, it should be noted that the Elementary and High School both received AQuESTT ratings of “GOOD.” While both can improve on some areas of the state assessments, they rated well on educational opportunities offered. The State test for the 11^th grade is the ACT - Sargent Public Schools has scored above the National and State Average for 4 of the past 5 years on the ACT. In the Elementary, different grades scored in the “on track” range and on December 21^st, we recognized several students who scored in the College and Career ready range. We have things that we are already working to improve, and we are also trying to identify what we are doing well.

If your child took the NSCAS assessment last year (all of last year’s students in 3^rd-8^th grade students did) their individual report was sent home before Christmas break. I encourage our parents and patrons look over the information in the reports, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Cory Grint

Sargent Public Schools K-12 Principal