City schools get high marks

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October 18, 2007

Anonymous The Cullman Times Thu Oct 18, 2007, 07:53 PM CDT

By David Lazenby

davidl@cullmantimes.com

Cullman City Schools administrators gave high marks to its students during a presentation Monday during the monthly Board of Education meeting.

Based on standardized test results, the reports said CCS students on average are outperforming students at schools across the state, the nation and former school system students.

“The majority of our students do achieve what their abilities are,” said Sharon Windham, school curriculum coordinator. “Their abilities are improving also,” she added.

Tricia Culpepper, Cullman City Primary School principal, spoke highly of the Cullman City Head Start program.

She reported it received accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children in 2005, making it the first county early childhood education program to receive the honor earned as recognition for maintaining a high quality-program.

She said students are assessed twice a year. Teachers then make instructional decisions based on these results.

Culpepper said this year students met or exceeded the national average in tests for English language and math skills.

“Even at that age group we are making our instructional decisions on that data,” Culpepper said.

Culpepper gave a Powerpoint presentation that showed improvements in how Cullman kindergarten students benefited from school improvements based on assessment findings. The most significant showing was in testing for letter naming fluency.

The average score for the 2006-2007 school year was 86 percent, up from 68 percent the year before.

In oral reading fluency testing during these time periods, students showed a jump from 78 percent to 88 percent.

Elton Bouldin, West Elementary School principal, said his school wants to focus this year on performance on the ARMT. “One hundred percent of our students need to be proficient on the Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test

However, he said, “Our total focus can’t be on meeting the basic competencies — not acceptable in our community.”

Bouldin said WES is balancing this by also focusing on SAT-10, a nationally-normed achievement test, which Bouldin said “challenges us to teach our kids to a higher level.”

“An analogy would be that the exit exam in high school is our ARMT; how the students did on the SAT test and on national merit exams would be more akin to what’s happening with the SAT assessments.”

Bouldin said WES students this year outperformed the average Alabama student in both the reading and math portions of the SAT exam.

“All of our subgroups exceeded the state average,” Bouldin said, adding the school received a financial reward from the Alabama State Department of Education as a result of Hispanic and poverty students exceeding the state average.

East Elementary School students also outperformed the average Alabama student in both the reading and math portions of the SAT test. Principal David Wiggins said.

“Overall, great gains — great improvements,” Wiggins said.

Jayne Barnett, Cullman Middle School principal lauded the improvements students in grades 7-8 have made on the SAT-10 test since 2004.

“We’re just gradually moving on up as far as our language, our reading and the math scores,” she said.

Cullman High School Principal Lane Hill said the CHS composite for the ACT exam was 23, almost three points higher than the state composite average and nearly two points higher than the national composite average.

He said the percent of seniors taking the exam last year, 83 percent, is a large portion.

“The higher that number is, generally the lower your average is going to be,” he said.

Hill added the composite score was the highest the school has seen in five to six years.

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