John G. Riley Elementary School are celebrating a “B” grade from the Florida Department of Education.
This is the first time for the school since 2011. Teachers said the achievement boils down to hard work and rolling out intentional strategies in the classroom. Watch the video to find out why this grade means so much to this community.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
School grades are out and Riley Elementary has earned a “B” grade for the first time in 14 years. ABC 27 has been tracking the progress of the school, improving from a “C” to now a “B”.
John G. Riley Elementary is now a B grade school from the Florida Department of Education, for the first time since 2011.
“I broke down and cried because I was just so proud of them and their success and like how much work we’ve put in throughout the school year,” said Taylor Atherton, a 3rd grade Math teacher at Riley, describing how she reacted to the news.
Some of those strategies to achieve this grade have included collaborative planning sessions between teachers and digging into progress monitoring data to identify hurdles.
“My co-teacher, Ms. Showers, and I, we love creating songs to help get them engaged and help them connect with the material,” said Atherton. “That definitely helped them out a lot. Even like while they’re testing, we kind of like see them like saying the songs in their head.”
Principal Maurice Stokes said students have improved in every subject.
“Every area, math, reading, science, lowest quartile, learning gains, proficiency in every area, and that’s exciting,” said Stokes.
He said these learning gains mean even more when you consider the context in which the grade was achieved.
“One thing that school grades don’t measure is resilience. It doesn’t measure all of the barriers that they’ve had to overcome in order for them to reach this level of success,” said Stokes. “But we know.”
As for what’s next for Riley, now they’re even more determined for that “A” grade. Atherton said this success is shaping her plans for next year.
“I plan to kind of do the same thing, but of course, dive deeper into seeing exactly what I could have done better last year to help us like even more and using more of the data to help us drive our instruction,” said Atherton.
Some key dates for Leon County Schools now the next school year is looming:
July 31: Teachers return
August 7: LCS Elementary Orientation
August 11: Students return
Want to see more local news? Visit the WTXL ABC 27 Website.
Stay in touch with us anywhere, anytime.