Escambia Superintendent Malcolm Thomas says he is very concerned with the impact the new writing standard has had at the elementary school level.

Longleaf Elementary posted the highest writing scores with 68 percent proficiency; O.J. Semmes Elementary posted the lowest proficiency score at 6 (down from 53 percent the year before). Twenty schools posted writing scores below 50 percent proficiency.

“It was an expository prompt, which asks kids to explain something,” Thomas says. “Typically what fourth-graders were given was a narrative prompt, where you tell a story. We have our district crew working to provide staff development for teachers, to do more exercises where kids read text and write and defend their opinion in their own words.”

Next year, Thomas says, writing as a separate score will disappear. It will be folded into an overall language arts score.

“We’ve got to step up our leadership to help our schools,” Thomas says. “We’re going to focus on giving students specific feedback on how to improve, conferencing one on one, and making them go back and revise the writing, where you tell them what has to be fixed and they have to fix it.”

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