Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

413 enrolled at PES, public told

There are 413 students enrolled at Prescott Elementary School in grades K-4.

PES Principal Janet Gordon gave the Prescott School Board a breakdown of how many are in which grade at the Board's annual public meeting in September. There are 90 children in kindergarten, 93 in the first grade, 79 in the second grade, 70 in grade three and the fourth grade has 81 students.

Additionally, Gordon said, there are 16 in the pre-school program at PES and 54 in the Head Start program.

PES, she said, has an activity block schedule including the library, computer lab, music and physical education, with the addition of art this year.

In all, there are 35 certified teachers, 16 paraprofessionals and a parent center coordinator at PES.

PES's Arkansas Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (ACSIP) for 2004-2005 was submitted to the Arkansas Department of Education on Sept. 15 for approval. The two targeted goals this year, Gordon said, are, to improve mathematic skills for all students with a special emphasis on algebra, measurement, data analysis and constructed response questions on primary benchmark exams. The other goal is to improve literacy skills for all students with an emphasis on constructed response questioning and comprehension.

According to Gordon, the curriculum is driven by test data from the SAT 9, which has been given to students in grades K-3 until now, and the Benchmark exam for fourth grade students. This year, students in grades 1-3 will be given the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, while third and fourth graders will take the Benchmark exam the first week in March.

The 2004 kindergarten students recently completed the Iowa Early Learning Inventory, with norm-referenced results expected in a few weeks.

Students who don't score proficient in the state mandated tests in K-4 will be remediated through the Academic Improvement Plan (AIP), which includes one-on-one instruction and small group teaching.

The faculty and staff at PES, Gordon said, have received 60 hours of professional development from the first of July through Sept. 10. This includes training in the new school-wide math initiative, Everyday Math. The staff will have two more follow-up days of training in November by an Everyday Math consultant.

The staff has also completed professional development in curriculum alignment, test analysis, ESL training, using Marco Polo and United States web sites and writing AIPs.

The fourth grade Benchmark results from Spring 2004 testing showed 74 students tested with 33 percent being advanced, 26 percent proficient, 20 percent scored basic and 15 percent were below basic. For the subgroups, Caucasian children increased their benchmark scores 13 percentage points, while African-American student's scores rose 10 percentage points. The Limited English students rose from 0 percent to 75 percent. However, the Limited English students didn't count as a subgroup because there were only four children to test.

In literacy, 14 percent were advanced, 73 percent were proficient, 7 percent basic and 7 percent were below basic. In the subgroups, Caucasian student's scores rose from 82 percent to 95 percent as proficient or above, African-American scores went from 75 percent to 80 percent proficient. All four LEP students scored on the proficient level.

Kindergarten students scored in the 91st percentile and 81 percent in Total Math on the SAT-9 test. First grade scored in the 75th percentile in reading and 77 percent in Total Math, with second graders 65 percent in reading and 81 percent in Math.

The school's goals are to:

Continue to provide relevant professional development for all teachers and staff members to enable them to improve instructional strategies;

Develop interventions for all students to demonstrate increased respect for themselves and others;

To develop interventions for all students to improve in math with emphasis on algebra, measurement, data analysis and constructed response questions;

To develop interventions for literacy emphasizing comprehension and constructed response questions; and

To continue improving scores through the use of technology instruction.