By Jason C. Mattox

The North Panola School District will attempt to build on the few positives that have come as a result of the most recent MCT-2 and Subject Area Testing scores.

Conservator Dr. Oscar Love, in only his second month at the reins of the struggling school district, said there were positives in the test results to build on.

Fifth graders who took the test last year showed an improvement of 20 percent in students who tested proficient.

District Curriculum Coordinator Jennifer Mock said the school that showed the most improvement on the MCT-2 was Crenshaw Elementary.

“The students at Crenshaw made some great strides last year,” she said. “The teachers we have had in place really did make a big difference in the results.”

Mock and Love both stressed that the district will continue to strive to attain highly qualified teachers when a vacancy occurs.

“At the same time, we don’t want to see a lot of turnover, because we feel like we have some good teachers,” Love said. “We might just want to consider moving them around to find the best fit.”

“Last year we really made it a point to focus on remediation and additional instruction whenever it might be needed,” Mock said adding the district incorporated a remediation period during the school day.

In the Subject Area Testing, North Panola saw just 80.9 percent of high school students tested passing the U.S. History portion of the test. The statewide average is 93.0 percent.

“There is not anything that we can identify that would have caused this result,” Mock said.

Love said he has begun planning for the next school year, adding again that teacher quality will be a big way to improve the scores.

“We are going to be pushing intervention and coaching for students who are identified as being weak in any subject area and they will be moved into intervention,” he said. “We want to work as best we can to identify the students that might need intervention or remediation, so we can do what it takes to get them to where they need to be.”

“We are happy that we saw our proficient and advanced scores increased, but we are still not pleased with our pass rate,” Mock added.