PCSS TCAP Scores Decline But Still Above State Averages

Putnam County Schools TCAP scores saw a decline from last year in the majority of areas, but the district mostly remained above the state average.

Deputy Director of Schools Tim Martin said the takeaway was teachers and students worked hard and held their own.

“Looking at the individual things I feel very confident that our overall number would be two to three points a head of the state,” Martin said. “In individual areas, we are ahead of that state in 24 out of the 30 areas tested last year.”

Martin said the school anticipates pockets of learning loss throughout all grades, but the data will need to be further reviewed for specifics. Martin said the focus would likely be on English and math.

“Most of our loses were not huge,” Martin said. “I didn’t see one area that just jumped out and said that is one place we need to jump on. We really gonna have to look at individual students in our schools. Again because we were in school all year, we’re going to have learning loss with kids that were in quarantine. I think it will be individual students more than it is individual places.”

While learning loss is expected, Martin said Putnam feels better off than other systems with being in school all last year. Martin said most students probably knew that the year-end tests would not count for a grade.

“However, it was a required test,” Martin said. “We had to meet the state said if we didn’t have 80 percent of our kids taking it even with all of the students online, we would get penalized by the state. In Putnam County, we had 97 percent of our students take the tests.”

Martin said one point of growth was high school U.S. History. Martin said the largest gain was almost 20 points from the previous year.