Logan County Schools has been chosen by the Kentucky Department of Education to help develop new ways schools can be held accountable for providing top-notch education and opportunities for our students. LCS has partnered with Cognia, a school-accrediting organization, to create a local accountability system.
A “local accountability system” means a way to explain to our LCS families and community how well Logan County Schools is doing to support our students across the district. This system will be a combination of data from state testing, survey results, classroom observations, and more. In all, LCS is measuring 43 different pieces of information (“standards”) to score our district on student success.
"We all know that our district and our students cannot be defined by one test score,” said Dr. Josh Matthews, Chief Academic Officer. “The end-of-the-year test is important, but there are other components that make our district successful. This system takes everything into account and allows us to celebrate the positive and grow those areas that need growing."
Student success at the district level is defined by our new LCS Pillars of Success. The Pillars of Success are focus areas for the district to measure how well we support our students in four areas: Student Performance, Student Readiness, Student Growth, and Student Wellbeing. These Pillars were identified by LCS teacher leaders and administrators, known as the LC Innovators, as the four most important aspects of a child’s education.
Student Performance: How well are students performing on state testing/ACT?
Why we measure: State funding for Logan County Schools (and all KY schools) is affected by how well we do on these assessments. Better scores lead to more funding that can be used to improve education and opportunities for our students.
Student Readiness: How prepared are our students for life beyond high school?
Why we measure: Students need to have experience with “real world” skills like collaboration, communication, citizenship, innovation, empowered learning, and more to be ready for success after high school.
Student Growth: How much are our students growing throughout the school year?
Why we measure: COVID-19 caused quite the disruption to our normal lives and education. Our goal is to help students grow by teaching the normal school-year’s worth of content while also making up for learning loss and getting students ahead of the curve.
Student Wellbeing: How are our students, staff, and families feeling about our students’ learning and school environment?
Why we measure: Students need to feel safe and welcome before they are comfortable enough to learn. The happiness and wellbeing of staff and families also impacts how well our students learn and grow.
Four times during the school year, Logan County Schools will send out a “report card” scoring how well the district is doing to meet our new Pillars of Success. Each datapoint will be rated on a 4-point scale by Cognia and LCS administrators. The scores for each datapoint will be averaged into one score for each LCS Pillar of Success. The first report from our local accountability system will be sent out the week after fall break. Each report will go out over social media and will also be on the district website.
The goal of the Pillars of Success and our local accountability system is to be transparent with our families and communities about what we are doing at Logan County Schools. LCS is proud of our many supports we have in place for students and their learning, and we want to make sure these supports are working as effectively as possible.
"There are so many people to thank for making this happen,” said Dr. Matthews. “To be the second district in the state to figure this out and implement it is something to be proud of. I want to thank our curriculum team, the teacher leaders on the LC Innovators cadre, our building administrators, and our partners at Cognia. I will have the honor to share our work at the state and national levels in the coming months. This is important work and it truly shows that Logan County is an educational leader in the state."