Sixteen students in the Columbus Municipal School District are repeating third grade this year after failing the 2015-16 state-mandated reading assessment, CMSD Superintendent Philip Hickman confirmed in an email Wednesday.
Another 11 students had failing scores but were promoted based on good cause exemption, which includes students with disabilities or students for whom English is a second language.
The Dispatch previously reported the retention rates of the Lowndes County and the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated school districts. LCSD did not have any students repeat third grade, while SOCSD retained 12 third graders.
Hickman released the numbers to The Dispatch more than three weeks after receiving a written open records request and only after the newspaper expressed to the superintendent its intent to file an Open Records Act complaint against him and CMSD with the Mississippi Ethics Commission.
The two other districts released their retention rates on the same day they received requests for the information.
Hickman, who initially denied the open records request because he believed the Mississippi Department of Education had “embargoed” the information until later this year, cited confusion in an email exchange with The Dispatch as to whether the request was for the retention rate or the assessment scores.
Patrice Guilfoyle, a spokesperson for MDE, told The Dispatch the state has embargoed the assessment scores for each district, but no such embargo exists for the retention rates.
Both The Dispatch’s initial letter and subsequent email exchange specifically requested number of students retained and the number promoted by good cause exemption. The newspaper did not request the scores.
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