GLASGOW — Officials with two area high schools are working to improve students’ math scores in hopes their work will keep them from being identified as “persistently low-achieving schools.”

A school could be identified as such if it doesn’t improve math scores this spring when students take their annual assessment exams.

Caverna High School began using Carnegie Math, a research-based computerized math program, this school year.

“We’ve put it in place with all of the Algebra I classes, because it was an Algebra I curriculum we were given through this program,” said Debi Lindsey, high school principal.

With the program, students spend part of their time in the computer lab and the rest of their time in the classroom.

Paula Wood, who teaches math at Caverna High School, said her students like the Carnegie Math program.

“It’s a little bit different. It took a little bit to get them into the swing. When they are in the classroom they work in groups,” she said, adding she acts as a facilitator and tries to get the students to figure out the problems on their own.

The students also use the program when they are in the computer lab. The program won’t allow the students to move on to another problem without having solved the current one correctly, she said.

“I think it’s a really good program as far as making them work their programs and work at their own pace,” Wood said. 

In addition to Carnegie Math, the school’s math teachers have volunteered to tutor students on Fridays when the students are in their elective classes.

Lindsey has also worked with the school’s math teachers to realign the math curriculum.

“We wanted to sit down ... and look at who was going to teach what, where and when and in what area,” she said. “So, what we did is we took the curriculum and broke it down to where it fits in each class —  Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry and Senior Math.”

They also added in the college readiness standards and academic expectations.

Metcalfe County High School officials are building more reading into all subjects across the board, including math to help students who may have difficulty with reading math problems.

They are also using response to intervention to identify students’ needs and to address those needs, said David Nole, principal.

Much of the work the school’s faculty is doing was begun before the Metcalfe Board of Education agreed to hire Steve Schenck and Associates, an educational consulting firm, to help improve math and reading scores.

The consulting firm is working with the faculty to improve teaching strategies so there is “less teacher talk and more student engagement,” Nole said.

Recent inclement weather has limited both districts on what they have been able to do.

Both high schools were unofficially identified as “persistently low-achieving schools” when their names appeared on a list of schools as having low reading and math scores over a period of time.

The list of schools was inadvertently revealed during a State House Education Committee meeting without school and district officials first being notified. The list  was created as part of a grant application for federal stimulus dollars to be used to continue reforming the state’s education system.

The list of persistently low-achieving schools will be developed based on the results of this spring’s testing, said Lisa Gross, spokesperson for the Kentucky Department of Education.

Schools won’t know the results of those tests until late summer or early fall, she said.

As a result of appearing on the unofficial list, both schools will undergo academic audits. Metcalfe County High School’s audit is set for March 14-19. Caverna officials have yet to be notified of when their audit might occur.

Nole said his staff is looking forward to the audit and having a “fresh pair of eyes” looking at what they are doing and helping guide them through the improvement process.

An issue Caverna and Metcalfe officials see as attributing to low math scores is the amount of time that lapses between testing. Students are tested in math at the middle school level. They are not tested again in that subject area until they are high school juniors, Lindsey said.

 “There’s a lot of room in there to get behind,” Lindsey said.

Nole agrees the three year-lag between testing is an issue.

He believes if the state were to move to end-of-the-year exams, schools would have immediate feedback on student performance and would be able to address student weaknesses sooner.

Retaining math teachers is believed to be another contributing factor.

Caverna High has two math teachers and Metcalfe County High has four.

“We had a new teacher last year and we have a new teacher this year,” Lindsey said.

Nole has been principal at Metcalfe County High for four years and said every year there has been a turnover of at least half the department.