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After years of student struggles, Columbus, Hamilton and Rebecca Turner elementary schools have been awarded designation upgrades to “schools in good standing” after being designated as “focus schools’ by the New York State Education Department.
The NYSED defines a “school in good standing” as one “which has not been identified as a school in need of improvement, requiring corrective action, planning for restructuring, or requiring academic progress, or as a school under registration review.”
School officials attributed the three schools improvements to success in several areas, which resulted in a double-digit improvement in the school’s Math and English Language Arts scores.
“First, the schools’ upgrade to ‘schools in good standing’ was attributed to educational practices of goal setting, managing for results, providing data-driven instruction, utilizing findings from evaluation reviews conducted by the New York State Office of Bilingual Studies and the district's internal review using the Diagnostic Tool for School and District Effectiveness,” Waveline Bennett-Conroy, the school district’s Assistant Superintendent for School Improvement stated.
“We plan to continue these best practices and achieve further improvement during the current and forthcoming school years, I am inspired by how all the community and district stakeholders have come together to support (Schools Superintendent Kenneth) Hamilton’s initiatives and achieve success for all students.”
Since Hamilton took over in the summer of 2014, students’ proficiency rate on the ELA has risen from 12 percent to 28 percent, while math scores are up from 15 percent proficiency to this year’s total.
“Test scores and student outcomes have already begun to rise thanks to our commitment to providing opportunities that meet our diverse student body’s needs," he said. "But much work still needs to be done.”
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