It’s a new day for education in Natchez-Adams County and Mississippi, said Natchez-Adams Superintendent Dr. Carl Davis.

&uot;Accountability is where we are right now in the State of Mississippi,&uot; he said. &uot;I believe we should be held responsible for every child’s growth — educationally speaking.&uot;

To aid in this process, the Natchez district is setting up stronger measures to evaluate teachers, administrators and students. &uot;Our goal is just maintaining that every child will get the proper skills and instruction,&uot;&160;Davis said.

These actions are in line with the 1999 Mississippi Student Achievement Improvement Act. The bill requires the State Board of Education and school districts to hold students and individual schools to higher standards.

&uot;No longer can we teach to the group; we have to teach each individual child,&uot; Davis said.

To help the district improve, officials have already started this year’s staff evaluations.

Evaluations are nothing new, but the district is taking it one step further. It wants to insure teachers with low evaluations get help. &uot;We will sometimes recommend a principal place that individual teacher on an improvement plan,&uot; Davis said.

If the teacher does not improve, the district may bring in an intensive assistance team to work with that teacher for 90 days.

&uot;Intensive assistance is to help them improve rather than pushing them out,&uot; Davis said. &uot;We want to keep our good teachers. We want to keep our teachers.&uot;

But if there is no improvement after 90 days, the teacher runs the risk of not being renewed, Davis said.