{"id":2377,"date":"2012-01-20T08:50:34","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T13:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2012-01-20T08:50:35","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T13:50:35","slug":"kcsd-earns-high-marks-on-district-report-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=2377","title":{"rendered":"KCSD earns high marks on district report card"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kennett Consolidated School District continues to show improvement in across the board tests show<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By P.J. D\u2019Annunzio<\/strong>, Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>KENNETT SQUARE \u2014 Parents of Kennett Consolidated School District students should not only be proud of the high marks their children are earning, but also of the grades that the district is bringing home, as evidenced in the 2010-2011 District Report Card issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.<\/p>\n

Last year KCSD surpassed state-wide averages in the four major subject areas. The numbers below represent the percentage of students classified in the state\u2019s Proficient and Advanced PSSA performance categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
SUBJECT<\/strong><\/td>\n\n

DISTRICT<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

STATE<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Mathematics<\/td>\n\n

81.2<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

77.1<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Reading<\/td>\n\n

76.1<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

73.5<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Science<\/td>\n\n

71.1<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

60.8<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Writing<\/td>\n\n

86.3<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

75.0<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The continual increase in academic performance reflects all demographics in the district, including students who traditionally have difficulty in English Language comprehension.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Hispanic population achieves very highly,\u201d District Superintendent Barry Tomasetti said. \u201cThe first achievement for many of these students is not having to take English as a Second Language classes anymore. They have to take a specific test given to us by the state\u2026they\u2019ve been achieving; we have 25-30% percent of these students exiting ESL classes every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennett\u2019s graduation rate continues to maintain its high percentage as well, despite recent changes in state-wide student designations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur graduation rate is much more stringent,\u201d Tomasetti said. \u201cIt\u2019s in the high 80s, before it was in the high 90s. If you look previously at a student\u2014say it may have taken him five years to graduate\u2014he still graduated. Now it\u2019s a cohort group, so they measure the freshman class. If you have a kid that comes from another county that needs more time to graduate, they count them as dropouts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the cohort group everybody\u2019s [graduation rate] is going to go down,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt\u2019s like apples and oranges; you can\u2019t compare the past to the present; we just made this switch about two years ago. But the high 80s is still very high\u201d<\/p>\n

Tomasetti attributes the district\u2019s high achievement level partly to the administration\u2019s adaptive strategy toward education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the administrators meet, the beginning of our conversation revolves around our educational goals, and we talk about what evidence we have that the principals are meeting that effort,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce the school year starts the job is to articulate the goals, then to make sure that they\u2019re being carried out, and then possibly altering the strategies we have to accomplish these goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor instance,\u201d he continued, \u201cWe monitor how many kids are failing classes. From that point we have to take a look and say \u2018what can we do?\u2019 We certainly have after school opportunities for them, and then we have to take a look at alternatives. Online education? Maybe that gives teachers opportunities to work with students in small groups while the majority of kids are working online\u2014we\u2019re talking about these kinds of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Tomasetti is a believer in the old adage \u201cit takes a village to raise a child,\u201d stating that the entire Kennett Square community helps to shape the future of the students enrolled in KCSD.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur diversity works here in Kennett,\u201d he said. \u201cIt works not only because of what we do here in the schools\u2014and we do a lot\u2014but in the community, it\u2019s a real community effort. We\u2019ve got Chatham Financial that supports The Garage which works with underprivileged students. We have \u2018After the Bell\u2019 at the middle school. Exelon works with Big Brothers and Big Sisters and they take about 30 of our elementary\/middle school age students and work with those kids, Communities That Care, Chester County Futures; the list goes on. In a nutshell, the whole community has wrapped their arms around the young people in our school district.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a look at the complete District Report Card, visit http:\/\/www.kcsd.org\/pdf\/District-Report-Card-10-11.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kennett Consolidated School District continues to show improvement in across the board tests show By P.J. D\u2019Annunzio, Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com KENNETT SQUARE \u2014 Parents of Kennett Consolidated School District students should not only be proud of the high marks their children are earning, but also of the grades that the district is bringing home, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[55,396,230,395],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-kennett","tag-pssa","tag-schools-2","tag-tests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}