6 – Trenton Arnold

Growth and Achievement
Index – 2014 Summer Leadership Conference

Trenton Arnold – Regional Superintendent
We’re going to talk about growth and student achievement during the 2013-2014 school year. More often than not, when we think of growth and achievement, we think of test scores and that is a huge piece of it. But, growth and achievement is more than that in many different ways.
For example, think of how a school system is portrayed in the media. There was a time, five or ten years ago, when putting DeKalb and the media together was an oxymoron often followed by the phrase, “Uh Oh.”
I’m here to tell you, thanks to growth and achievement, the days of fearing media coverage are over. As soon as we get the power point up, we’ll celebrate growth and achievement and brag about our accomplishments. As we celebrate growth and achievement using media as a metric, we can brag about our accomplishments.
Whether it’s having the best start to any school year, promoting greater parental engagement, celebrating accomplishments over AdvancED, improving partnerships with our community and other governmental agencies, supporting transparent communications to all stakeholders, acknowledging outstanding student performance on state assessments, it’s time to brag about DeKalb.
Ladies and gentlemen, … say it with me … It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true. Returning to growth and achievement … At the end of the day, the corp business of any school system is teaching and learning as measured by student performance and growth. Now that being said, I’m going to turn the stage over to Mr. Clark who is going to go over our academic achievements and our growth and achievement seen during the 2013-2014 school year.