Jefferson School Looks to Duplicate Success
All around the Huntington School District principals and teachers are looking to build upon the successes they realized last year and drive student performance levels even higher in the current school year.
The faculty and staff at Jefferson Primary School on Oakwood Road is still bursting with pride over the 24 percentage point increase in the number of third graders meeting the state English Language Arts standard on last year’s test. The jump, from 68 percent in 2008 to 92 percent in the past school year, was “eye-popping,” according to Principal Margaret H. Evers.
Across the district, principals in all eight school buildings, along with teaching and para-professional staff members are pursuing wide-ranging strategies to address the learning needs of students and help them achieve academically.
“Greatness can only be achieved when we form a union where each of our talents and strengths unites with the talents and strengths of our colleagues and creates something only achieved together,” Mrs. Evers told her staff after being notified last spring of the state ELA assessment results.
The state breaks down test results in sometimes excruciating detail. All too often what the numbers show across New York is that students living in poverty frequently fall short of the state standards. Mrs. Evers and her staff targeted this group with special vigor and it worked as 81 percent of the Jefferson third graders found to be in poverty met the state ELA requirement.
The district’s professional staff has been working tirelessly, collaborating closely with each other, participating in professional development classes and devising new instructional strategies. Principals routinely hold grade level meetings with teachers and carefully track educational activities in their respective buildings. Gains in ELA proficiency results have been made in all buildings.
Ever since the scores were released Jefferson faculty members have been working “to figure out how we repeat this tremendous success,” Mrs. Evers said. Nothing would suit the fourth year principal more than to “produce these results time and time and time again with new and different groups of third graders.” She credited a variety of educational programs, as well as teachers and classroom aides, who she called “the finest, hardest working group of people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.”
All members of the Jefferson School community were able to share in the accomplishment. Students put in sustained effort and parents pitched in at home, working with their children on reading and writing assignments. For high test scores to become a perennial event “it will take each of us giving everything we’ve got, every day we are here to get that job done,” Mrs. Evers said. The Jefferson educational team appears to be ready for the challenge.
Mrs. Evers said her staff shares in the belief that they collectively “have only one job and that job is to not let even one child fail, no matter what it takes.”
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