Schools

Go Ahead, Brag, Brandon, Your Oldest High School Got Its 1st State 'A'

Brandon principal Carl Green announced Jan. 4 that the town's oldest school earned its first "A" grade from the Florida Department of Education. Testing systems may have their faults, but "those are the bragging rights for the community," he said.

 

Word came early Jan. 4 that Brandon’s oldest high school earned its first “A” — and what followed was music to the ears of the school’s third-year principal, Carl Green.

Green made the announcement over the loudspeaker during the school day, and the sounds he heard from the hallways, he said, made it feel “like a pep rally.”

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“It’s very, very comforting to know our kids are recognized academically” he said. “That by helping them believe they can get it done, they did.”

The Hillsborough County School District announced Jan. 4 that more Hillsborough high schools earned an “A” or “B” grade from the state than ever before.

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The Florida Department of Education released its high school grades Jan. 3, which showed that 25 out of Hillsborough’s 27 public high schools earned an “A” or a “B” — a 93 percent showing, up from 79 percent the year before.

Statewide, 78 percent of high schools earned an “A” or a “B” grade this year.

Along with Brandon, Chamberlain, Plant City, Steinbrenner and Spoto earned their first “A” grades as well.

Chamberlain rose from a “D” to a “C” to an “A” over three years. Even more dramatic, Spoto jumped from a “D” last year to this year’s “A.”

For Green, though, the story at Brandon is what matters most, as he took his school from a “C” three years ago to the top grade this year.

“We always have to look at attendance” as a factor, Green said. “If the kids are not here, we can’t teach them. The parents, if they don’t work with us, we can’t succeed as well.”

Green extended his praise to the teachers and to non-instructional staff, including aides, custodians and clerical and cafeteria workers, who “worked together as a team” for student success.

Indeed, the school’s goal was, “One Team, One Goal,” Green said, and he reminded his school community of that in his loudspeaker announcement, just before he announced the mission accomplished.

“We are now an 'A' school,” he told his teammates — teachers and students included.

Green said he is cognizant of the fact that statewide testing programs have their faults, and their follies, according to critical observers, who say one grade is no way to capture the true essence of a school, let alone resorting to ranking one school against another without taking into account a myriad of factors, including socio-economic status.

Also, that “teaching to the test” can be overused and misused, which is why Green said he tells his teachers, “I can tell when you’re teaching to the test and when you’re teaching the curriculum the way it’s laid out.”

Green credits his school’s success in the state-scoring system in part to an observation process he started at Brandon a couple years ago.

“I go into every single classroom and I observe my teachers and I observe my students,” Green said. “And I look to see how students are receiving the information. I ask them questions, [such as] ‘Did you ask all the questions you had? Were they answered?’ ”

Green knows, too, that each year’s state grade is based on the work of student performance by grade level in the year before, so that consistency is key.

“We have to be consistently good every year," he said.

Student success is the overarching goal, he said, "and that's why we're here."

As an educator, Green knows that testing should be part of the overall academic program and not the end goal in and of itself.

But he’ll take the “A,” and make good on his promise to celebrate with his teachers, students and staff in the weeks ahead, after the end- of-the-grading-period tests.

In the meantime, Green said, the greater Brandon community should celebrate it's oldest school's "A."

As Green put it: "Those are the bragging rights for the community."

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ADDITIONAL NOTES:

School officials note that high school grades are released later than the grades for elementary and middle schools (they were released in June) because the high school grade calculations include graduation rates and other data.

School grades for all Florida schools are available online, posted by the Florida Department of Education.


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