Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

PES off and running

Prescott Elementary School hit the ground running after the Christmas break.

This is what PES Principal Janet Gordon told the Prescott School Board at its January meeting. The school, she said, is working on building its faculty collaboration meetings by studying Classroom Instruction that Works, a book by Robert Marzano. In addition, the faculty is having bi-weekly grade level meetings, working together to help all students learn.

Assistant Principal Kathie Janes and Gordon are involved in the Principals Leadership Institute at the Southwest Educational Cooperative in Hope. The topics they will be studying include Marzanos Classroom Instruction that Works, along with a refresher in Classroom Walk Through Training, Instructional Leadership Training and Literacy Leadership Training.

On top of this tutoring is being done on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for grades three and four. The tutoring will continue through the beginning of the Benchmark exams.

Gordon said the faculty is working hard on the writing part of the Benchmark test, which will be given Feb. 22-23, while the math and reading parts will be given on March 7-10.

The testing continues after students return from Spring Break in March with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). The first round of ITBS tests will be given to kindergarten students the week of March 27-31, while the ITBS for grades three and four will be March 10-14.

Parents were entertained before the holiday break with projects by their fourth grade students on Christmas Around the World. Gordon said there was an overflow of parents and grandparents who came to see their children present their projects in full costume.

PES students in grades K-4 are also taking Benchmark chunk test each quarter to see where they are doing well and where the weak areas are. The Cooperative is also in the process of making chunk tests for all schools in the cooperative area to use.

Gordon had good news for the Board. She said the University of Arkansass Department of Education Reform recently did a study showing PES ranking 94th among 1,116 schools in the state.

The study, she said, ranks how well schools are doing based on things like household incomes, parent education, the number of Black children attending the school, the number of Hispanic students, those on free and reduced lunch, parents with a high school diploma, parents with at least a Bachelors degree and the net expenditure per pupil in the district.

PES, she said, ranks among the best elementary schools in this part of the state.