Conrady Junior High Selected to State Honor Roll
Congratulations to the administration, faculty, staff and students at Conrady Junior High. For the third year in a row, they received the prestigious recognition from ISBE for receiving the Academic Improvement Award. They are one of only 29 schools in the state of Illinois to be honored three years in a row.How do they do it? What happens in these schools to accelerate achievement by all students?
Key factors in school improvement reported in Mission Possible, an NIU survey of award-winning principals in 2004, included the following:
Exceptional leadership is the most pervasive element.
Dedicated teachers are essential.
Nearly every principal cited strenuous efforts to align curriculum across grades with the Illinois Learning Standards.
Teamwork is not a buzzword for these schools; it requires constant coaching, training, and building collaboration.
School teams studied test results and wrote action plans to improve both teaching and learning.
These schools aimed higher than "the bar" and celebrated every step toward success.
A majority of principals credited their school's success to new programs in reading and writing.
Improving test scores was only part of the challenge; the other part was changing attitudes toward change.
Principals say that community wide cooperation is necessary to make change happen.