Burlington – Burlington Elementary School students will not be the only ones who will get some extra cash for a good performance on their report cards this year.

Monday, March 13, 2000

Burlington – Burlington Elementary School students will not be the only ones who will get some extra cash for a good performance on their report cards this year. Their school will be getting money, too. Burlington is one of 220 schools in the state honored for improving their proficiency test scores. The honor brings with it a $25,000 check from the state.

"We are very pleased with the progress, the improvements and the incentive award," principal Mark Christian said. "The teachers have worked very hard and deserve all the credit for the achievement."

Gov. Bob Taft and Ohio’s superintendent of public instruction Susan Tave Zelman recently announced the school is one of the recipients of the more than $6.5 million in School Improvement Incentive Awards.

With an improvement of 148.2 points over the five proficiency areas and a No. 37 ranking in the state in the elementary school through grade 5 category, the school reached the level it needed to receive the incentive money.

"It’s more of an incentive award than a grant in that it is not nearly as strictly structured as a grant," Christian said. "The state certainly encourages us to use the money to continue making progress and improvements and we intend to do that."

The money has not arrived in the district yet, but once it does, Christian said the teachers will meet to decide how it can best be utilized for the good of the students and continued proficiency test improvement.

"We implemented a couple of things recently that I think helped," Christian said. "A couple of years ago, we went to the departmentalized system in the third-, fourth- and fifth-grades. That way, each teacher only taught the subject with which they are most familiar instead of teaching every subject."

With this system, the students learn earlier through the advantages of switching classes and gaining a full 45 minutes of instruction in the intended subject," Christian said. "Also, the teacher only has to keep up in the many current trends and demands of one subject, so they can focus more intensively on that subject."

Additionally, South Point School District assistant superintendent Chris Lester met with Burlington Elementary teachers for a curriculum alignment, Christian added.

"They decided what specifically needed to be mastered, learned and introduced in each grade and it became aligned all the way through, he said. "That way, everyone knows exactly what they should teach and what the students should learn, so it helps with consistency and makes everything sequential."

Although the funding will come too late to actually aid in improvements in test scores this school year, the district will have plenty of time to decide the best way to use the money for next year’s proficiency improvements, Christian said.

The new awards program, funded in Ohio’s first budget dedicated exclusively to education, is designed to reward schools showing the greatest improvement on Local Report Card indicators.