Wolfe County Middle School Teacher Sally Hurt is a teacher leader in the district, helping align curriculum across the district’s schools. Photo courtesy of the Wolfe County school district
(CAMPTON, KY) – Kentucky’s Wolfe County school district ranked as the number one district in the nation in math growth on the 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard by Stanford and Harvard.
The Education Recovery Scorecard is a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Each year, they issue a report on district-level student growth in math and reading.
The 2024 edition measures education recovery efforts in nearly 7,500 districts post COVID-19. Eight states did not participate in the study, and not every district in participating states took part.
Wolfe County placed number one in math growth with 1.45 grade levels gained between 2022 to 2024. They placed as the number four district in reading scores with 1.03 grade levels gained between 2022 to 2024.
Wolfe County Assistant Superintendent Jeffrey Stamper said the district is thrilled by the results, but was surprised they placed so high as a small district.
“We’ve probably never been known as an academic leader in virtually anything,” Stamper said. “We may be one of the poorest counties not only in Kentucky, but also in the nation; but we can perform at a high level too, and our students continue to wow us and impress us.”
Many other Kentucky districts also saw significant growth. Between 2022-2024, Harlan County increased 1.34 grade levels in math and 0.81 in reading. Mean achievement for students in districts including Jessamine, Laurel and Christian counties nearly recovered to 2019 levels in math. Districts including Boone, McCracken and Madison have surpassed 2019 levels in math. Boone, McCracken, Madison, Pulaski, Pike, Henderson, Laurel and Christian have reached or surpassed 2019 levels in reading.
Between 2022-2024, Kentucky ranked eighth among states in terms of recovery in math and sixth in reading. Between 2019 and 2024, Kentucky ranked 13th in math recovery and 11th in reading recovery.
Stamper said Wolfe County has made improvements in almost every academic area due to implementing simple, but effective strategies surrounding instruction over the last few years.
He said part of what contributed to the district’s success is its job-embedded professional learning communities (PLCs). Professional learning communities are groups of educators who meet regularly, share expertise and work collaboratively to improve teaching skills and student academic performance.
“We believe that PLCs are part of the workday, not something we do after school or before school,” Stamper said. “We’re going to carve out time during the day for people to collaborate, and we’ve discovered that that’s the key way to do it.”
The district also took on a project to align its curriculum from K-12th grade, which Stamper said was a major contributing factor to increased math and reading scores.
“We really saw that our alignment was off in certain places, especially math and reading,” Stamper said. “So we created a vertically-aligned curriculum where the 1st-grade teacher could meet with the kindergarten teacher and talk about the expectations going forward as a student progresses through our school system.”
Curriculum alignment efforts started when they used Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to buy new reading books for each school in the district. The middle and high school adopted the same math and language arts textbook series that the elementary schools were using.
The district also bought new social studies books for the high school and science materials district-wide. Stamper said they would not have been able to make those purchases without ESSER funds.
Teachers and administrators ended up working for a year and a half to align the curriculum for reading and math. Now they are working on aligning science and social studies and hope to have them aligned by the end of this year.
Teacher Leaders
The district continued the curriculum alignment process by creating nine new teacher leader positions starting about three years ago.
The positions include a teacher leader each to oversee the elementary schools, primary schools, middle school and high school, and interdisciplinary leaders in English, math, science, social studies and related arts such as band, shop and agriculture.
Teacher leaders are permanent positions funded through district-level general funds. They receive a stipend and they work in addition to their regular teaching time.
In the district of about 1,100 students, the teacher leaders’ main duties are to make sure instructional content is aligned with all other grade levels, work with teachers as a resource, help principals with the instructional lead in their building and mentor some first-year teachers.
Stamper and other administrators meet with teacher leaders monthly to learn how things are going and make necessary changes in strategic planning. They also send surveys to teachers throughout the year.
“I think part of having the teacher leaders in the building to bring that information to the district’s attention has been very helpful for them as well as collecting this survey data; asking different questions and the culmination of all that together has been really beneficial for our schools,” Stamper said.
As a small district with limited resources, Stamper said Wolfe County reached out to several organizations to see how they could help align the curriculum and train teacher leaders.
The district utilized help from the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative and the Kentucky Educational Development Corporation. Staff also worked with consultants from the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Continuous Improvement and Support on some of the curriculum alignment processes.
“We have to give credit to those folks as well because a lot of them were here partnering with teachers, especially working with our teacher leaders, working with our principals by dealing with some master calendar work, bell schedule work and leading PLCs,” Stamper said.
The district also revamped walk-through instruments, where they have now administrators go through walk throughs, then teacher leaders collect that data and talk about what’s working and what’s not.
“For example, teacher-student engagement has been something we’ve really had conversations about, so they’re aware of increasing that engagement and having more student-centered, versus teacher-centered, activities,” Stamper said.
Teacher Leader In Action
Teacher Leader Sally Hurt said curriculum alignment efforts have helped students across the board. She teaches 8th-grade math and Algebra 1 at Wolfe County Middle School and has had the same role at the same school for 26 years.
As a teacher leader, she represents the middle school and the high school math department. Her daily responsibilities include staying in contact with other teachers about any issues regarding specific math content or general class problems. They talk about what’s working in the classroom and if they need to make improvements.
Hurt helped implement curriculum alignment at the middle and high school, adopting the same math textbook series that the elementary schools were using.
Part of that alignment involves teachers staying in close contact with teachers in other grade levels. Hurt stays in touch with elementary teachers to make sure they’re on track to prepare students for middle school.
“We always taught what our standards said but now, especially in our elementary schools, they’re all teaching chapter two during the month of September,” Hurt said. “They may not be on the same page, but at least if we have students, and we do have several, that move from school to school within our district, they’re getting the same content at the same time. That’s been a big issue in the elementary schools.”
Hurt said she does daily check-ins on student progress and administers pre-tests and post-tests.
“We have a pretty strict schedule and it follows along with what the high school teachers do as far as when we’re teaching content,” Hurt said. “Most of us math teachers will do a notes day where the teachers introduce the lesson, and then we do a workday for the kids where they’re working on those assignments, individually or in small groups, and then they do quiz day. So, I’m always monitoring that progress.”
Teachers also started doing more common assessments over every topic for every grade level. They compare the results of different grade levels to see where each student is at, and Hurt said it’s made a big improvement in scores.
Hurt said that she and other teachers have always taught their standardized content, but after implementing vertical alignment, they’re much more intentional about making sure students get what they need.
While teachers collaborated before the pandemic, now they are collaborating much more, with, for example, 3rd-grade teachers talking to 4th-grade teachers about where they’re stopping and picking up in the lessons.
Stamper said there’s no “silver bullet” to their success, rather every teacher must buy into a new method and care about helping students improve.
“The easy part was developing the approach of caring, but then implementing all these other pieces at regular intervals without overwhelming teachers,” Stamper said. “It’s a slow process and a lot of conversations with a lot of key stakeholders and a lot of teachers as we collect the materials.”
Hurt and Stamper said they would welcome anyone to come learn what they are doing at the schools.
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