The year continued with an exciting array of teaching units adapted from Core Knowledge presentations and teacher training courses. We are particularly excited about the news we received last week that showed across the board improvements in our elementary schools, according to national testing. What is especially exciting are the tremendous gains each of our probationary elementary schools made with respect to Terra Nova testing. A percentage score is a determination of the percentage of work that was correct, not how well the student did compared to 100 other students in the same grade. We see this tremendous improvement as a tribute to the teachers, staff, parents and students at each of these schools.
Success is always a group effort.
We also feel strongly that these positive gains are attributed to teacher training, an emphasis on Core Knowledge and other curriculum, and a lot of hard work. At the junior high level, initial figures show that Pre-AP enrollment is continuing to gain as students see the value in taking at least one of these tougher courses. Testing results show gains at Houston and Highland, with a slight decline at Heizer. Our accomplishments at Hobbs High School includes our 409 graduates - the largest number in recent years. We feel that we are graduating better prepared students while at the same time holding our dropout rate to below 2 percent.