Canton ISD Earns Top TEA Rating

Canton ISD and three of its individual campuses earned "exemplary" ratings this year according to the Texas Education Agency Accountability Tables released Friday.

Canton High School, Canton Intermediate School and Canton Elementary School were individually rated as "exemplary."

Canton ISD Superintendent Dr. Jerome Stewart expressed his joy at the news.

"We are elated and very, very proud of our teachers and staff as well as everybody who contributed to this phenomenal success," he said.

Stewart also gave credit to the district’s school board members for their support of academics.

"We want to celebrate not only the faculty and staff who helped us achieve this, but the school board as well. The board members not only want that for us but support us in all we do to that endeavor," he said.

In Van Zandt County, Canton ISD and Fruitvale ISD were the only districts to receive the TEA’s topmost accountability rating.

On Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) passing percentages among all grade levels, Canton students achieved "exemplary" status in all sub-groups that counted for the district except one.

However, in that one sub-group — economically disadvantaged students in the TAKS Science section — the "recognized" rating was bumped up to "exemplary" thanks to a new element in the accountability ratings this year.

Known as the Texas Projection Measure (TPM), it gives campuses and districts passing credit for a student who failed a TAKS section if that student is predicted to pass the same section in the next testing year.

District-wide, economically disadvantaged students in Canton ISD recorded an 83 percent passing rate in TAKS Science, but the TPM raised that rate to 90 percent, good enough for the increase in rating.

Completion rates for the Class of 2008 and dropout data for seventh graders and eighth graders in the 2007-2008 school year were also factors in the accountability ratings.

Canton High School students earned the campus an "exemplary" rating in every sub-group except economically disadvantaged students in the TAKS Mathematics section, where, again, the TPM factor raised the passing percentage to the best level.

Canton Intermediate and Canton Elementary, paired together in the analysis, got the TPM boost for economically disadvantaged students in the TAKS Science and Writing sections.

Canton Junior High earned an "academically acceptable" rating, but was "exemplary" in all TAKS sections except Science. There, economically disadvantaged students rated "academically acceptable" (68 percent) and "recognized" among white students and all students (88 and 87 percent, respectively).

However, Stewart noted that in 12 of the 15 rated areas, Canton Junior High students passed TAKS sections at clips of 94 percent or greater.

"We are very proud of what the junior high school does and it is very difficult to explain how just a couple of students’ scores kept the campus from the "exemplary" rating…It really is a stellar campus, though," he said.