We reported on the credentialing results of Guthrie Center Elementary students from the 2012-13 school year earlier this week, and we now have comment from Principal Diane Flanery about those results.

Testing data shows that 61% of last year’s Kindergarten through 6th-graders were deemed fully credentialed in all subject areas–which were reading, writing, math, science and employability. That 61% isn’t a bad number, but it certainly isn’t satisfactory for Flanery.

“You know, it could be a lot better… it could be worse (too).  We look at our data and we make decisions about how we can increase that number.  We’d like to have as many children proficient as possible–we’re over 50% but that’s not good enough.  We’d like to have that number much higher.  The government wants us to be at 100%, and a lot people think that is unrealistic, but we’d like to have a lot more than 61%.”

Flanery says last year’s credentialing number might be attributed to the gaps in student proficiency that still need to be filled as the school transitions more and more into Iowa Core Curriculum instruction.

Moving forward, Flanery says Guthrie Center Elementary will look at such things as instructing practices and technology use as ways they might improve on their credentialing number.

To hear about more activity happening in Guthrie Center Elementary, tune-in to today’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County for our full conversation with Flanery during the 9am, noon and 5 o’clock hours.