BCSS reports good news
Butler County School System Superintendent Joe Eiland reported last week of receiving outstanding news for the school system.
Every five years, the school system undergoes a performance accreditation and engagement review.
The current review and accreditation process began in 2017 and was performed by Cognia, a non-profit, non-governmental organization that accredits primary and secondary schools throughout the United States and internationally.
Cognia’s diagnostic consists of three components built around three domains: leadership capacity, learning capacity, and resource capacity.
An independent review team is selected for each system and they perform the diagnostic through personnel interviews.
Results are reported by one of four categories: impacting, improving, initiating, and insufficient.
For leadership capacity, BCSS earned 11 impacting reviews out of 11 categories.
For learning capacity, BCSS earned nine impacting reviews out of 12 categories. Three were noted as improving.
Eiland noted the three categories had been identified in studies and town hall meetings in 2019 and had been a major focus of school system resources.
For resource capacity standards, BCSS earned eight impacting reviews out of eight categories.
Cognia’s review also included an index of education quality.
The BCSS score was 366.71, which was significantly higher than the Cognia Improvement Network institutions evaluated for accreditation in the last five years. That range of scores was from 278.34-283.33.
Major findings noted by Cognia in the report included:
“Butler County School System’s culture embraces collaboration, share communication, and collegiality through commitment to the mission of the system, the demonstrable actions of stakeholders, and collective participation in continuous improvement.”
“The Board of Education, superintendent, leadership team, and administrative leaders have established an environment that is visionary, progressive, inclusive, and transparent.”
“Even though the BCSS has a plethora of academic and behavioral data available and detailed procedures for implementing Multi-Tiered System of Support interventions, students struggle in many areas of academic performance, and gaps in learning exist within the system schools.”
System-wide monitoring and adjusting of classroom instruction which includes the consistent use of best practices, innovative, creative, and problem-solving activities, connections of content to real-life experiences, and student collaboration in projects/tasks to increase student engagement and academic growth are inconsistent.”
“In conclusion, Butler County School System is to be commended for its commitment to the mission and vision, visionary and transparent leadership, and unwavering focus on students.”
