Meriwether County School District Achieves Georgia Department of Education Success Designation
Greenville, GA, January 9, 2024– As required by Federal Law, The Georgia Department of Education released the 2023-2024 lists of schools identified for additional support today along with the list of 86 schools that made the improvements needed in one year to exit identified status.
Under the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states are required to identify schools in need of additional support. In Georgia, these designations are referred to as Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) and Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI). As part of the in need of additional support designation, states are federally required to identify the lowest-performing 5% of Title I schools.
The Georgia Department of Education has removed all schools within the Meriwether County School System from any school improvement lists for the first time since 2005 when lists were developed as part of The No Child Left Behind Act.
From 2005 until 2018, MCSS had at least one or more schools on the need of additional support lists indicating that the school(s) were not meeting adequate academic performance progress.
In 2018, Georgia moved to a more thorough system of analyzing school performance with the Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) designation detailing schools in the lowest 5% of performance and/or high schools with graduation rates averaging 67% or below; Targeted Additional Support (TSI) for schools that had been on the need of additional support list for multiple years without seeming to exit, and Promise Schools for the very lowest performing schools.
In the past five years, Unity Elementary School remained on the need of additional support lists fluctuating between TSI and Promise, while Greenville Middle School fluctuated between CSI and TSI.
The Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) released the needs improvement lists on January 9, 2024 and for the first time since academic accountability measurements began, all elementary, middle, and high schools within the Meriwether County School System have achieved the performance standards set by GaDOE and been removed from any need for additional support lists of schools in need intervention and improvement.
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If you would like more information, please contact Dr. Robert Griffin at robert.griffin@mcssga.org.