Dept. of Ed rates CCS ‘excellent’ in latest profile

    The Nebraska Department of Education has released Nebraska Education Profiles for public school districts for the 2021-2022 school year, and the Chase County Schools District received a rating of excellent.
    Out of four categories, an excellent rating is the highest  the state department gives, followed by great, good and needs improvement.
    CCS Supt. Adam Lambert said school ratings are determined by a variety of metrics, including state testing results, graduation rates, absenteeism and student growth and achievement.
    For the previous three school years, the CCS district received a rating of good, two levels below its latest rating.
    Lambert said the CCS elementary grades, K-4, have been individually in the “excellent” category for several years, but the latest rating includes all K-12 grades.
    “We will certainly celebrate this achievement now,” he said.
    “But, we still have three-year  internal goals we’re working on. We hope to improve year after year,” he said.
    He believes CCS student performance on test scores was the biggest factor in the entire school, K-12, earning the excellent rating.
    In the 2021-2022 school year, 57% of CCS grade 3-8 students were proficient in English Language Arts, above the state average of 47% and above its peer schools with 53%.
    Numbers were similar in both math and science, according to Lambert, where 67% and 84% of CCS students, respectively, were proficient. Statewide, students were 46% and 66% proficient in these subjects, while CCS’s  peer schools were 53% and 74% proficient.
    In addition, approximately 61% of Chase County students were proficient on the state ACT given in spring 2022 to 11th grade students.
    Lambert said the 61% ACT figure is an average of three of the multiple-choice test components—English, mathematics and science.
    Statewide the past year, around 45% were proficient in the ACT with 55% proficient among CCS’s peer schools.
    Lambert said, “Our staff works extremely hard for our district. I came in two years ago and challenged them with some ambitious, but reachable academic goals, and they have surpassed all of my expectations up to this point.”
    In the past two years, Chase County Schools’ English/Language Arts proficiency scores increased from 42% to 57% for a growth of 35%. Math proficiency was up from 54% to 67% for a 24% growth, while science maintained high scores in the 80% range, he added.