One-hundred percent reading proficiency six years early. Last spring, all 184 students in the third and fourth grades at Ocean City Elementary School passed the Maryland School Assessment, or MSA, a battery of tests given by the state every year since 2003 to satisfy the law. “The school was the first in the state, apart from a few tiny special-education centers, to meet the goal that has defined public education this decade,” reports the Washington Post.
While not a disadvantaged school, neither Ocean City Elementary an affluent suburban school. The Post notes the student population, nearly 600 in total, is 89 percent white, 5 percent Hispanic, 3 percent black, 2 percent Asian and 1 percent American Indian. Twenty-nine students have limited English proficiency, and 134 qualify for subsidized meals because of low family income.
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Such positive stories are, unfortunately, few and far between. It seems we are far more interested in failing schools and reasons for why a school CANNOT perform than in success stories and how schools in non-idealic situations are meeting the “unmeetable” demands of AYP.
Luckily, Ocean City is not alone at the head of the class. Check out the Souderton Collaborative Charter School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The leadership of this school comes of out of the Philadelphia Public Schools, and they realized the value in investing in efforts that would get every student reading at grade level. The result — 100% proficiency for every fifth grader in the school. Like Ocean City, Souderton is also meeting the NCLB requirements years before the date. Check it out at http://www.scsc4kids.org.
Please detail what is happening to achieve such results! Congratulations!