Video: Mississippi Department Of Education Listening Tour

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)-The Mississippi Department of Education made a stop in Starkville during its statewide Listening Tour.

Members of the department met with residents and community members to try and gather input about student achievement.

The purpose of MDE stopping in Starkville was to discuss a strategic plan for the federal mandate Every Student Succeeds Act, also known as ESSA.

ESSA has replaced the No Child Left Behind Act.

The department of education, along with everyone who was present during Monday’s meeting, want nothing but success and high achievement from students.

As a result, they all brought their ideas to the table come up with a response for ESSA.

The MDE will make a total of seven stops on its tour.

They will receive feed back from all of their listening sessions, compile that information, and search for common themes from all of the responses.

Those responses will then go towards the state board strategic plan for ESSA.

“As we talk with parents, a lot of the things we hear about are the students success skills they want students to have when they think about a student being successful,” said Dr. Nathan Oakley, Executive Director of Elementary Education and Reading  with the MDE.  “The academic skills and the other kind of soft skills they want them to have. The application of the things they learned in a real world setting. We talked about school accountability and what kinds of things will be useful to communities to have a sense of how well their school is doing beyond just test grades.”

Members of the department of education plan to have their response for ESSA submitted in early 2017.