COASTAL OBSERVER

 During the last school year, Waccamaw Middle School students were tested quarterly on their writing skills to prepare them for state testing.

That strategy worked as 90 percent of eighth-graders and 71 percent of seventh-graders met or exceeded expectations in the English/language arts (ELA) portion of the state’s standardized tests, known as SC READY.

“We are so, so proud. This is a testament to the high caliber teachers that we have and our faculty as a whole in supporting each other,” principal Ginny Haynes said. “Our entire school took on a plan and really worked collaboratively and it really did prove to be successful.”

In the Georgetown County School District, 43 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders met or exceeded expectations in ELA.

At Waccamaw Middle, 50 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders met or exceeded expectations in math, more than double the percentage of their peers in the district.

Haynes and her staff are now looking to translate the excellent ELA scores into better math scores.

“Word problems and computation go hand in hand,” she said. “They have to understand what the question is asking. They have to understand what the math vocabulary is asking.”

ELA numbers at Waccamaw Middle have continued to climb since 2020. The math numbers have increased, but are still below their pre-pandemic levels.

“Reaching something is awesome but it’s also about staying there,” Haynes said. “We have to make sure that we’re maintaining the high expectations that we have all of our students but also addressing the rigor now. We were able to identify the steps that we needed to address the gap, the deficit and that growth.”

The percentage of district students who at least met expectations on the math test declined by grade level, from 45 percent of third-graders to 20 percent of eighth-graders.

School Board Member Scott DuBose believes the district’s poor numbers in math are directly related to students’ struggles with reading at all levels.

“I still believe a lot of it is: the higher up they go, the more complicated a problem gets and the more you have to rely on critical thinking and reading,” DuBose said. “These kids can’t read. They’re not skilled enough in reading to really understand the problem. Nothing else can explain these results.”

He called the Waccamaw Middle math numbers “shocking.”

Travis Klatka, principal at Waccamaw Intermediate, was also pleased with his students’ results.

In ELA, 77 percent of fourth-graders, 65 percent of fifth-graders and 70 percent of sixth-graders met or exceeded expectations.

In math, 87 percent of fourth-graders, 86 percent of fifth-graders and 60 percent of sixth-graders at least met expectations.

“Our students did an amazing job and of course our teachers did an amazing job preparing them,” Klatka said. “The teachers looked at the data from the previous year and they had goals in mind and they were doing whatever they could to help our students achieve academic success.”

The fourth-grade ELA scores were the highest since 2016 and the math scores were at or above pre-pandemic numbers.

“Everyone talks about how we kind of fell behind with COVID,” Klatka said. “I think with the things we’ve got in place here, our students are doing the same, if not better, than they were pre-COVID.”

Even with the high scores, Klatka said there is always work to do.

“We want to have a big focus on math this year because they weren’t as high as our ELA scores,” he said. “That’s the district and statewide. I think math is a challenge across the board anywhere you go.”