E.J. Blott Elementary to celebrate success

Officials hope the school will continue improving to
‘excellent’ status.

By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

LIBERTY — E.J. Blott Elementary is celebrating its status as an ‘effective’ school after spending two years fighting its way out of ‘academic watch’ and ‘continuous improvement’ categories for performance on standardized tests.

Kathie Carlile, school principal, said the school was placed on academic watch two years ago because of its overall performance on state standardized tests, then moved to continuous improvement last year. She said pupils passed five out of six parts of the tests last year, moving the school to an ‘effective school’ status.

Members of the school board Monday approved a proclamation declaring Aug. 27 as a “Celebration of Academic Success Week” at E.J. Blott Elementary. Carlile said the week will be for celebration, but also for preparing pupils to improve their tests scores even more.

“The theme for the year is up, up, and away because we came from watch to improvement and now are effective, but we want to be excellent. We want to go all the way,” she said.

Carlile said the celebration week will include a rally, coloring contest, maroon and gold day and other family oriented activities.

Extra effort

Jean Lamb, third-grade teacher, told school board members the move from watch to effective status can be attributed to teachers’ putting in extra time to make sure pupils were learning the material. She said teachers also took part in daily planning sessions to look at teaching strategies.

The school also set up an after-school program for third- and fourth-graders in March to meet two hours Mondays and Wednesdays to work on math skills and two hours Tuesdays and Thursdays to work on reading.

The school instituted Destination Reading and Destination Math programs in its computer lab where pupils can take a “pre-test” to help focus on areas of weakness, said Carlile.

The children also do packets of material in math and reading that are related to the state academic standards.

Superintendent Mark Lucas said school officials did not teach directly to the standardized test, but focused on a more broad spectrum of teaching.

“You can’t teach students what they really need to know if you are totally concerned with test results and scores,” he said. “Too often, educators are more concerned with their image in the public to the detriment of actual learning. We made a conscious choice to select effective curriculum and professional development strategies for long-term knowledge gain for our students. I am convinced we made the correct decisions.”

jgoodwin@vindy.com