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Health & Fitness

Cobb County Board of Education failing us

Nickajack school and Kings Springs have similar demographics, yet one is being shafted by the Board of Ed. Call the Board of Ed and request accountability.

In Cobb County, you should expect a consistent education between two schools with similar demographics. Yet, Nickajack school scored 78% on the new state report card, below state average, King Springs scored 97%. Nickajack and King Springs have very similar demographics, and Nickajack is actually has mostly newer luxury homes like Vinings Estates. What is the Board of Ed doing wrong to cause such a discrepency? Why, in such a situation, would Cobb County be shifting more students to Nickajack to save a few bucks? (They are actually redistricting MORE students for Nickajack). When they are combining schools to save money, and a tiny school like King Springs is doing so much better, perhaps they didn't think about how to still spur high student/teacher ratio and parental involvement? I talked wit the principal for one hour and can't find anything she's doing wrong, and I probed pretty deep. She didn't say anything about the board of ed, but I'm suspecting the Board of Ed is mostly to blame, due to things like redistricting. So, now I'm trying to get in contact with the board of ed to figure out what their explanation is.

All I know is we have a Kindergartner there, and she's doing great. She went in ahead after dropping a lot of money on a private preschool, and she's still ahead. But the test scores for the CCRT aren't reflecting students doing well in specific areas. Information on that here: http://ccrpi.gadoe.org/2012/

This is what I see for areas Nickajack isn't doing well in:

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* Percent of students in grade 5 achieving a Lexile measure equal to or greater than 850

* Percent of students in grade 3 achieving a Lexile measure equal to or greater than 650

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* Percent of students scoring at Meets or Exceeds on the Grade Five Writing Assessment (required participation rate >= 95%)

* Percent of CRCT assessments scoring at the Exceeds level (Mathematics was weakest)

* ED/EW/SWD Performance Points

* Economically disadvantaged students and students with disability are typically not meeting state or subgroup performance targets. No group met both state and subgroup mathematics targets. For comparison, the only group at Kings Springs that didn't pass was hispanics and English learners, on English Arts (which is expected)

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This isn't an isolated thing. I'm looking into Teasley, and it also did better than Nickajack, but not as good as King Springs, which makes no sense because Teasley is more affluent.

I think there should be some heat on the Board of Ed to make decisions partially based on performance and not just off line items on a spreadsheet. Why shift more students to schools performing not as well from schools performing better? That makes no sense. Also, as far as parental involvement, why shift more students to a school that already has a parking issue, like Nickajack?

I'll update when I have more info.

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