STATEWIDE – The Kentucky Department of Education release the 2025-2026 test scores on Thursday last week, with Magoffin County Schools going over the numbers in last week’s Magoffin County Board of Education meeting.
In the October 15 meeting, Jennifer Howard, the instructional supervisor for Magoffin County Schools, summed up the results of the accountability data report for the school board.
The schools are ranked as red to blue (worst to best scores). This year, the school district had two yellow schools (Salyersville Grade School and Herald Whitaker Middle School) and three orange schools (North Magoffin Elementary, South Magoffin Elementary and Magoffin County High School).
Howard noted that South Magoffin’s score was only 0.4 points away from a yellow rating and HWMS was only 1.7 points from green. She said a couple of the elementary schools would have been green if they had not dropped a couple of points, explaining they had pretty good scores, but any decrease will lower the color rating by a level.
“Overall in the news, we are finding that there are fewer schools that are in the blue and green this year statewide,” Howard said. “So, when you look at this and you’re thinking that our district doesn’t have as many blue and green as we’ve had in the past, just know it is a trend we are seeing statewide.”
She also highlighted the wins at each school as follows:
– Salyersville Grade School rated in the green (high performance) category for all students in three different categories – reading and mathematics, science, social studies and writing and in school climate and safety
– South Magoffin Elementary was green in the school climate and safety category
– North Magoffin Elementary ranked blue (very high performance) in school climate and safety
– Herald Whitaker Middle School was green in science, social studies and writing for all students
– Magoffin County High School was green in postsecondary readiness and the graduation rate, and blue in school climate and safety
Howard said the school climate and safety will not be weighted into the test results next year, replaced by rate of chronic absenteeism.
She said that SGS ranked green in all categories, but since there was an overall drop in the score, they were not a green school, which does not make any sense, but the changes being made to how the scores are analyzed for next year should offset those kinds of drops in ratings when the scores are still good.
“In our community, preparing our kids for the workforce, kind of fits where we are and it’s something that we value,” Howard said of the high school’s results. “As we develop our next local accountability system, you’ll hear a lot about that this next year, we will see a balance that we are delivering some of the things in our schools that our community would want us to do – that we are training our kids in our career and tech center to go out and be ready for a job – so we do have some good news there.”
She noted that English /language arts showed up as a bright spot at each of the schools in the district, which just reiterates the $1.3 million investment from the federal government from KYCO grant, providing resources and professionally learning for teachers to help continue to boost those scores.
She also explained that anytime a district makes a big change, there is always an implementation dip, so scores dipping as they make these changes is expected and where she believes the district is currently.
With the scores, she said math is definitely the next subject to tackle and she is currently writing an application for grant funding to help in that subject.
Howard said they will be focusing on strengthening science scores, especially at the high school level, targeting decreasing the novice rate there.
She said they will be looking at ways to “shift the curve,” bringing up proficient and distinguished scores while lowering the novice rate.
The full data from the Kentucky School Report Card from the Kentucky Department of Education can be found by going to https://reportcard.kyschools.us/kysrc?organization=20252026:371:371000&sid=8239C8A6-5566-F9F0-D4C8-3A1EB0F2FA72.
