Fishburn Park's success on the SOLs was the result of hard work and a positive attitude among teachers and pupils - not a secret formula or plan, Dunleavy said. The school didn't use a lot of special programs, spend a lot of additional money or take unusual steps, he said. It was a multitude of things. It begins with teachers and teamwork - concentration on what needs to be done. Fishburn Park came close to the 70 percent pass rate during the first two years of the SOL tests.
Test data is the key.
We have a team of teachers who worked over the summer, reviewing the test results and determining where we needed to improve. The school had a sock hop for the pupils after the tests to reward them for their attitude and effort. Fishburn Park used some of the same techniques that have been successful in raising test scores in other schools across the country with large numbers of students from low-income families, according to Asa Hilliard, a teacher, psychologist and historian at Georgia State University.