Central area schools increase scores overall

Schools that perform poorly on a consistent basis can be placed into school improvement, where they must develop a plan to improve performance until they can make Adequate Yearly Progress, a set of state benchmarks that measures proficiency in math and reading two years in a row. Once a school makes AYP for two years straight, it exits school improvement status.

Out of 32 elementary schools, including Landover’s Thomas G. Pullen School, a K-8 arts focus school, 78 percent had half or more of its students in third- through sixth-grade who were proficient or better in both math and reading, compared to 59 percent last year. Out of that 78 percent, about one-quarter of those schools had two-thirds or more of its students in the same grades that are proficient or better in both math and reading. Eighteen of the 32 schools are in school improvement.

Landover’s John Carroll and Oakcrest elementary schools and Capitol Heights’ William W. Hall and Doswell E. Brooks elementary schools posted gains, mostly double digits, in reading and math in all grades. For example, with the exception of third and fourth grade reading, John Carroll Elementary had double digits increases—some as high as 20 percent—in all grades and categories.

John Carroll Elementary Principal Peter Thompson attributed the success to programs such as ‘‘Write Traits,” which helps students develop their writing skills and the ‘‘Lab School Project,” which gives students strategies for reading and comprehension and developing ideas. He said creating practice tests for students and breaking up classes of 23 students into groups of 11 and 12 made test-taking seem less daunting.

‘‘We did that a couple of times with some practice tests and it showed us the students were more focused and less distracted than they would be in a larger testing group situation,” Thompson said.

Thompson said he is confident the school made AYP this year, which means it can exit the list if it makes it again for the 2008-2009 school year.

At the middle school level, Charles Carroll, Kenmoor, Walker Mill, G. James Gholson and Thomas G. Pullen schools are improving. Out of the five middle schools, only G. James Gholson and Walker Mill Middle Schools posted gains in both subjects and all grades.

With only 31.6 percent of its seventh-graders and 22.6 percent of its eighth-graders proficient or better in math, and 39.6 percent of its eighth-graders proficient or better in reading, Gholson still has a long way to go in continuing to raise scores. But Walker Mill Middle Principal Gorman Brown said based off preliminary AYP results given to him, this year’s scores should help his school make AYP for the first time in four years.

Brown said though he is proud of his students’ accomplishments, such as making double digit gains two years in a row in eighth grade math and reading, he still wants to boost scores, such as the 44.7 percent of seventh-graders and the 46.1 percent of eighth-graders who are not proficient in math. He plans on continuing after-school and Saturday tutoring and praised the results of staff collaborative planning, where teachers created lesson plans together and met to analyze student progress.

‘‘The best thing that I can do is make sure that there’s quality instructional staff sitting in front of the students every day and we’ve gotten incrementally better every day because of the staff,” Brown said.

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net